First Saturday Session 6/22/19

1. Grind down the marks on your hammers that you plan on using.

2. Have aprons and safety glasses, ear protection, coal bucket, ash bucket etc set aside.
3. Define your work area - under a tent is fine and not wood floors, crush stone works the best.
4. Have your anvil mounted on the timbers and in place for the day.
5. Have your forge in place with some newspaper, pieces of wood and "green" coal on hand.
6. Each smith should wear long pants and cotton shirts. I prefer work boots or steel toe shoes.
7. Don't worry about mounted the vise for this session, we can work around it for the first few times.
8. Be prepared to work on your feet for two hours, hammering is hard work and we need to build up out stamina.
9. We will first learn how to start a coal fire from scratch, make sure the blower if attached to the forge and working.
10. Then we proceed to the parts of the anvil and the many functions that we use it for in the forming techniques.
11. Lastly, we will train our arms to hit the same place over and over again.

To get a jump starts on the session, here are a few books I would recommend purchasing:

The Home Blacksmith, by Ryan Ridgeway

The Backyard Blacksmith, by Loreli Sims