Today, Jack, Christian, and Jakob worked diligently on household utilities such as a fireplace poker and a spatula. Bruce brought the cows over to the forge area to keep us company and to graze new lands. Some brave blacksmiths even went over to confront the animals and became friends. Liz, Robbie, Roman, and Tanay...
Continue readingFellowship of the anvil
Today, we all got started by dropping our bags in the main building. Then we walked over to the forges to fire them up. After a few minutes most of them were hot enough for blacksmithing. At 11:30, the call for a early lunch was made and a few people walked back to the...
Continue readingRain, Rain, Go Away!
On the bus, it was stormy and rainy. We were all anxious to go blacksmithing and have a lot of fun. Soon the clouds parted and we were able to strike up a fire (albeit with some struggle) and continue our projects. The first hour went rather smoothly, with everyone working on their projects....
Continue readingOUR SNOT IS BLACK
The weather this morning did not want to cooperate. Thick fog slowed our journey back to Harriton House. Once back at the forge, we learned the proper way to start a blacksmith fire, complete with acetylene torches. Five fires were blazing by 10 so we spread out and got to work on our projects....
Continue readingBlacksmithing: HOT METAL
“Hot metal!” was the phrase of the day, a safety mantra to keep people out of harm’s way! We started our IL adventure at the Harriton House by learning a bit about the history of the grounds, which date to the early 1700s. We then were shown some ideas for what we could...
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