If I had a hammer

A few months back, I met a gent on OKCupid who, among other interesting things, claimed to be a blacksmith. Having an interest in all arts, especially practical ones, I got in touch. Turns out, his life has been too busy in the last few years to take advantage of his forges, acetylene torches, tongs, and other accoutrements of the art. I can sympathize: it's been over 10 years since I've been in a darkroom, but I still plan to get back into it, someday. But I was a tad bit disappointed: I'd had visions of apprenticing myself, or at the very least, learning how to make a tiny hook and watching in awe as he swung his mighty hammer, blacksmith muscles bulging, soot wiped across his brow. Or something like that.

So when he asked if I wanted to attend a blacksmith convention near Santa Fe, I was on it. Within 24 hours I had my Saturday liberated and was planning what to bring to the campsite. As it happened, the truck was broken so we didn't camp, but everything else was beyond my expectations. We got up at 5 am so we could make it in plenty of time for the 9 am start. The entire event took place in the enormous workshop of Christopher Thompson, a blacksmith of international renown and 25 years of experience. He apparently started out as a sculptor, and his working method still has a free form style, even though his work has to pay attention to carpenter's rules (measure twice, cut once.) He makes staircases and railings and furniture, all of which needs to fit into space or match up.

Before the demos began, I wandered around the shop, marveling at the tools and the shapes. The other 30-odd people were part of the blacksmith community, and they were drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups and talking to each other and looking at the examples of the work that were scattered about the shop and in the grounds. I was more interested in the textures and mystery: what is THIS used for? And why does he need so much of THAT?



In the course of his demo, he showed us some custom lamp fixtures, made to mimic an old design. However, his design had to pay attention to modern situations: for example, he had to design a way for a single person to be able to one-handedly change the lightbulb. The old design was for candles, I think: at any rate, it took an army of servants to care for the lighting. I actually missed some of his explanation, because I was mesmerized by his hands.

He held them stiffly, hanging at the end of his arms. They looked like the tools they are, strong at grasping and holding, with enormous knuckles. I kept trying to capture them with my little Iphone camera, but they were constantly in motion, gesturing, holding things up, cupping the air to describe a form. Several other photographers were probably luckier: they crouched at the front of the group or stood on tables, finding the perfect angle to deploy real cameras with macro lenses.

The equipment included a 500 pound Chambers power hammer. The process goes something like this: Heat the metal in one of the forges, bring it to the hammer. Turn it on, and there's an immense bellows noise and smell of hot oil. The moving upper part of the machine is released with a foot lever and slams down steadily on the stick of glowing metal. Standing with his back in a bow, levering leg extended, the blacksmith holds on to the end, sometimes with a gloved hand, sometimes with tongs, moving the stick back and forth in a rhythm with the pounding hammer. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. The noise is deafening, the stick glows various shades of red, from bright yellow-red to dull blood red, fading to grey. The hammer flattens, makes ridges, the blacksmith turns and twists the metal, creating a long organic shape. Back to the forge to heat up, back to the hammer. What is he making?

Then, as that project cools for the next step, his assistant begins winding a thick coil around a form, slowly winching a glowing heated 2-inch tube of metal out of the fire. He leans on the long lever which turns the form which takes up the glowing metal. As the coil became longer, it begins to buckle, and they have to hammer it down. This gives the metal that was out of the direct fire time to cool down so it can't coil, and then they have to put more people on the lever while another person gets out the acetylene torch.



After it's completed, they start a process of removing the coil from the form. They stand on a large table, with the audience ringed below. The coil is positioned over a wide metal open container, big enough to hold the form. One end of the coil rests on the lip of the container, one person holding it in place with a tong. Two more people rain blows upon the form. But, it doesn't budge. They try various solutions, some involving torches, some involving oil which produces a billowing smoke. I truly can't recall what finally worked!

Once free of the form, the coil is again heated. Standing on either end, the blacksmiths grip the ends of the coil and puuuuulllllll. The result is an elongated open coil, to be used in a sculpture. How, he's not sure: he's going to live with it awhile.

It was organized chaos. They didn't explain what they were doing or where they were going with it: it was blacksmith drama, slowly unfolding until the final product lay on the floor.

Then we had potluck lunch, a nice mix of salads, fruits, salsa and tortillas.

It was hot, and we sat in the patio, outside the old adobe building which housed the official gallery in a series of small rooms. The grounds surrounding the gallery and the workshop were dotted with sculptures, tall and short, 

and off to the far side were the pieces of several more Chambers hammers, rusting in the tall grasses. We later found a 10-year-old hole, dug to hold the enormous 2000-pound hammer which had been brought up from a naval base in CA. (The man there had said, "what would you ever do with a hammer that small?")



After lunch, another blacksmith, this one from Switzerland, demonstrated on a small scale the techniques he used to create large memorial sculptures.




But first he started with the classic candle holder, using the 500-pound hammer. He created a long pointed shaft, then a flattened bowl, with a hole in the end, twisting and turning and morphing until the pointed end was tucked into the hole, creating the handle for round plate. He and his assistant wove a dance, one holding while the other pounded, both alternating hammer strokes. The movements were elegant and precise. You could almost hear music behind it.

His hands were fascinating too.

It was a long day, full of heat and noise. By the end, I was perched on an anvil, resting my tired feet, and N was sleeping in the air-conditioned car. But it wasn't until the end that I was aware how exhausted I was. How can one get exhausted standing around watching other people work? Overstimulated, overawed, surfeited with new images and concepts, that's how.

Two phrases stuck with me:

• "Old craftsmen do not use the Internet."
• "I try to find a form behind the words."

Yes.