During our fourth day of Blacksmithing Intensive Learning we continued to work on our projects and gained more experience in the field. We started our day on a bumpy bus ride up to Bryn Mawr and began lighting coal fires in our forges. Every day the fires had been getting easier to light, and today was no exception. For the rest of the morning we worked on making metal hooks, axes, decorative pieces, openers, and canes. We used many techniques to shape our metal such as heating and hammering, filing, quenching, bending, and angle grinding. It is amazing to experience what life was like for a blacksmith because it’s harder, dirtier, and more dangerous than most people realize. Andrew had a “close encounter” with a red hot bar, but escaped with just a blister.
In the afternoon, we continued our projects until clean up time and headed back in the bus to MFS. As we head into our last day of blacksmithing, we hope to complete our projects so we can show our families how much we learned during this year’s intensive learning.