Attendees: Nick Brown, John Kuhlenschmidt, Darian Cho
Opening Statements
- Shop progression
- Equipment updates
- Classes and open forge schedules
- Upcoming blacksmith events
- Future goals for blacksmith shop
Blacksmith shop progression
The blacksmith shop has gotten quite the overhaul this past month. From taking the once crowded shop to a much more user friendly shop layout. We have taken the pallets that once held the hammers, tong, anvils and stumps out and placed the equipment in a more permanent home while bringing the pallets to the trailer. Placed the anvils more around the forges, and moved the hydraulic press in a more efficient spot. The shop has much more room to walk without concern of bumping into everything as once before. As well as organizing the few shelf’s we have in the shop.
Equipment updates
The equipment has stayed the same without issues and we have added a few more to the family. John and I have worked on adding a few things to make our life’s a bit easier. Starting with a battery for our clock! While it seems small we can now tell the time instead of being in a complete time continuum. With this addition we have also added a white board on the wall paired with marker and eraser. For ease of explaining any projects we are working on. We also added a tempering toaster oven to aid in knife making and any other low heat uses.
Classes and open forge schedule
The classes for this month we based around the induction forge as well as the kmg and cold cut saw. With the help of John and I we taught a few this month to get people more familiar with the blacksmith equipment. This was a great month for the classes as it brought quite a few to be more interested in working in our blacksmith shop. Our open forge was not the biggest turn out as it had been posted late but still had one come to visit and make a bottle opener.
- Open forge on August 20th @10am
- next classes yet to be determined
Upcoming Blacksmithing events
There has been word having an event/class in October held at DMS taught by Mark Aspree. Mark is a well known blacksmith that is looking to teach a class on door hinges and latch. This will be a more in-depth class on the working of planning and executing the project with great detail. Dan has more info on this and will be working to get everything sorted out. As far as other classes in the blacksmith shop we want to continue to bring an entry level class each month to bring in newbies and we’ll as introduce more advanced classes which has been talked about.
Future goals for blacksmith shop
We have accomplished lots of changes in the shop this past month to welcome in more and strive to keep that going. There is a few pieces of equipment such as the heat treating kiln and the sand casting that have been looked into. We have pieces a kiln together and need to finish after ordering one part for it. As far as the sand casting there are many people wanted to get going on building an effective way to make this happen safely. Other than these two things the shop is looking to keep growing in the tool made as well as the projects created. We are pushing to introduce more advanced classes paired with possible demonstration for any tours to bring in new traffic.
