New Ideas

I was going to blog last night but the movie “Omega Man” was on and I just had to watch it! I only made it to 2 am and never saw the end. So here I am tonight to talk about new friends and new ideas for blacksmithing.
Having said that, I would like to introduce you to Conan. No not the ginger comedian on late night TV and no, despite the once feral beard adorned, it’s not the barbarian… but one of the towns ambo’s, Conan Court. Now for those non Australian readers I am not referring to the Australian indigenous race, “ambo” is short for 'ambulance driver’, I just had to clear that up!! Conan and his lovely wife Caritta are amongst our new friends made here up on the plateau. Our kids go to the same school and Tush and Caritta spent many a rhythmic hour beating on some old goat skin djembes in their drumming class.

A couple of days ago I bumped into Conan outside the local grocery shop and we got talking. Straight up he mentioned that he had been following this blog and found my last post to be interesting. Obviously eager for some positive recognition I started rambling on about the blog. Now of course he had read it so it was of no real use reciting it to him (which I found myself doing) but then it occurred to me, perhaps he is taking the piss. It did take a little more convincing that he was genuinely interested in the idea of discussing the journey of relearning and discovering new techniques of blacksmithing. Now I should mention that Conan is not the only person in Dorrigo that has expressed interest on the ancient art of blacksmithing. I will one day collect all of those interested parties to join me in a Wombat Forge blacksmithing day. I could invite the other local smiths up and have a weekends worth of bashing hot metal. Yeah good idea!! But I digress! A part of my conversation with Conan included various other items I might consider forging. Admittedly I will confess that in this short time of knowing Conan my impression is that he is a tea totaling vegetarian that treats his body like a temple. That is compared to yours truly who treats his body like a greasy take away on the ground floor of a saloon. lol I am not sure what image that conjures up in your minds but lets just say I don’t treat my body in a healthy manner.
Anyway back to the alcohol free veggie. I’m sure you can fathom my slight surprise when Conan enquired whether I could forge for him an ear cuff. Initially my mind went blank and I thought that it was some sort of “rooster ring” (think about it) that was until he produced his phone with images of ear cuffs. Feeling slightly relieved it wasn’t what had popped into mind at first, I thought great!! Some one with an interest in what I am doing producing an idea which has, as yet, eluded me. To be honest I do not recall having met any blacksmith that produced jewellery that has made such an item. So on Monday, I will cut up some 1mm stainless and experiment with various patterns, sizes and treatments to see what I can produce. Now I am not claiming success as yet but just the idea of making something so small and intricate with the forge most definitely has caught my interest. Who knows I may get around to forging some demascus ones. There are dozens of possibilities! I am limited to my own imagination. I will let you all know how I get on but as I intend only to spend 1 day on this I doubt if I will get around to making a demascus version. It will have to wait until I have some demascus packs laying around.

One thing Conan had noticed was that I was wearing my new wrist band that I had forged just the day before as a little experiment. I haven’t as yet mentioned this to you all but about 4 months ago during one of my weekly visits to the local tip I stumbled upon a large amount of saw blade. Now I can hear you all saying ‘so what!’ but what I found was about 40 metres of 12 inch bandsaw from the local sawmill. Wahey!! Just think of the amount of high carbon steel I have just saved! It was like all my Christmas’ coming at once!! It has occurred to me that this particular saw blade is perhaps responsible for the butchering of thousands upon thousands of innocent trees. Now one can never say what become of those kilometres of sawn timber but as a tribute to those lost trees I will cut up (ironic I know) the blade and it will go on living in various forms of wrought iron products. I might even make it more ironic and use the blade to support timber in various ways. Well what ever I do with it I have calculated I have enough material to make over 100 of said wrist bands. The bands themselves utilize the otherwise useless teeth of the blade and the rest will be ferreted away for the used of forging demascus packs. On a technical note: cutting a 200mm strip off this saw blade decimated one whole angle grinder disk. Amazingly hard metal! On a less technical more of a amusing note; the sparks produced while cutting were almost identical to the star like sparks that a ‘sparkler’ produces. Very pretty and fairy like sparks that kept me amused throughout the cutting process. Oh I almost forgot.. I was in town for a very short time and spoke to only a few people but the feedback for the wristband was an excitingly positive one. So I shall produce ‘half a d’ in various sizes and place them on the www.etsy.com/shop/RedHavenStudios on Monday night. Stayed tuned!!
So thanks to Conan I have all of Monday to work on and perfect a new product.. well experiment with at least. If any of you reading this have thought of something that would be nice to see created out of metal, then please feel free to respond to this post or email me at wombatforge@yahoo.com.au if you are a little shy. I am so loving this experimental part of blacksmithing so please even if you think it possible or not, let me give it a shot and then I will report back on to the success and or failures of the attempt.
OK that is it for now.. a short one this time round. I will catch up with you all on Monday night to report of the ‘rooster rings’ I mean ‘ear cuff’ project and to inform on any new product uploaded to the ever popular Etsy shop. Oh and if anyone has any information regarding the average size of the human ‘helix’ (the fold of skin at the top of you ear where one would utilize an ear cuff) please feel free to inform me of that as well!

Until then,
Wombat