You will remember in Blackstyx 1 that I mentioned the formation of the British Artist Blacksmith’s Association. At the forge where this event took place there was a piece of equipment that completely changed the course of my work, which was an electrically driven power hammer, and I went home determined to get one as soon as possible.

Before the days of Google, trade magazines were the way to find used machinery, and Industrial Exchange and Mart was the route to the 3 hp. ½ cwt Massey spring hammer that arrived not long after in the back of a British Road Services parcel van, all 30cwt of it. Duly unloaded by a friendly local farmer with a fork lift truck (much to the van driver’s relief), I set about digging a hole in the workshop floor, filling it with concrete and then bolting the hammer down ready for use.

The ½ cwt figure is the weight of the tup, or the actual moving part that does the work. At a stroke I was able to forge sections way beyond my own puny efforts, as well as being able to forge down lighter sections much faster. In effect my work rate increased by a factor of about 10, a very handy slave indeed and one that needed no wages !!

However the real joy was in its versatility for a person working on his or her own. The tooling between which the metal is forged is interchangeable, and hence by making up different pairs of tools of different shapes all manner of different operations could be carried out. With the tools held in place by anti-vibration wedges all hell could be let loose with the operating pedal fully depressed, or delicate finishing work be carried out by more sensitive use of said pedal.

The other important event in my progress was attending the first ever international blacksmithing conference in 1980. Here I saw for the first time a whole new approach to designing and making ironwork, in which the whole range of modern equipment was brought into play, thus enabling work to be designed free from the constraints of traditional techniques. Combine this with the ability of a power hammer to create wholly new shapes and forms and you enter an exciting world of creativity and opportunity to make ironwork for the modern era. Combine the strong craft traditions of the European smiths, especially the Germans, and the free spirited approach of the Americans and the world is your oyster !

From then on my work took a wholly new direction, and I began to realise that what the blacksmith exploits is the plastic property of iron and steel. For a substance so hard and rigid this may seem to be an odd notion, so by way of illustration let’s look at another substance that is obviously plastic. Take a lump of clay, place it on a hard surface and push your thumb into it. Deformation takes place and it’s clear how the resulting shape has been formed. Now take another lump and this time slam your fist down onto it. The rapid acceleration and deceleration of the material  is evident in both the shape created, the lines of force that were generated and the surface detail.

Strike a piece of hot iron very hard and the same effects are evident. Normally the smith is working to produce a predetermined shape, and so exercises control over the directions of flow of the material to achieve a result such as a leaf. However, if the metal is offered up to the hammer and allowed to flow, all manner of free forms can be created, and with practice the directions of flow can be controlled to produce repeat elements such as railing tops, each one being individual within a basic shape.

So here is a slide show of some of the many things  that were produced using my new very powerful and versatile ‘slave’.

Next time I will describe some of the travelling I undertook and my involvement with The British Artist Blacksmiths Association, and feature some of my major commissions.