Building Our Workshop

Now that we've managed to start collecting some equipment (i.e. our anvil), we needed a place to house it. We pondered lots of different options ranging from full-scale construction of a building to a small mosquito tent and settled on something in between. We are fortunate to have some wonderful family members who have a bit of land and were happy to let us set up a small workshop at the back of their property (thanks P & K!).

This area was basically a meadow, so to prevent sparks from igniting the grass underneath us, we trucked in a bunch of stone-dust to act as the floor of our workshop. Thankfully we had lots of rain during the two weeks it took us to move all of the stone-dust. This helped to pack down the dust so that we didn't have to do it!

The start of our floor.

For the workshop, we opted to keep it simple and put up a basic shade structure. We used fencepost spikes to secure the posts and just ran some roof rafters between the two sides. For right now we've just used a tarp to cover the structure. We're not sure if this is going to work in the long-term, but we can always replace it with something more permanent.

Putting up the posts.

Finishing off the structure.

Since we live in Ottawa, we will have to make some modifications if we want to keep the workshop running in the winter. For the summer and fall, we are going to enjoy our open workshop with a lovely view.

The final workshop.... with nothing in it.

Our Anvils

There are lots of pieces of equipment that are necessary, but the two critical ones are an anvil and a forge.

We started hunting for an anvil right away, scouring the internet (Kijiji is a good source), looking for auctions, and checking out antique stores.

Our English pattern anvil.

We got very lucky and found an anvil in pretty good condition at Rideau Antiques in Lombardy, ON. I believe it  is an English pattern anvil that is on the smaller side (~100 pounds), but it should get us started. This is a good time to mention that there are lots of great links on the internet that provide advice about what to look for in anvils (see http://www.beautifuliron.com/gs_anvils.htm as an example).

We've also managed to pick up a smaller anvil that likely wont be able to handle any heavy work (it dents easily) but will be good for lighter work.

Our small anvil (~30 pounds).

We managed to mount our anvil on some 6"x 6" posts using some heavy chain and some large spikes. We copied the design from anvil mounts that we've seen in a couple blacksmith shops. A big log would also work, pretty much anything that is heavy and wont move around when you start hammering. Our mount seems pretty stable, the whole thing is pretty damn heavy so it shouldn't move around too much!

Our anvil on it's new wooden mount.

Our Intro to Blacksmithing

In mid-April we took an introductory blacksmithing class with David Robertson (http://www.artistblacksmith.com/). We were both curious and excited to get our hands dirty. During the class we learned how to make hooks, fire pokers, tongs, and a chisel. We also had 4-5 hours at the end of the class to work on a personal project, this was a great time opportunity to explore and play with all of the techniques that we learned during the class. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time with David and we were both so inspired that we immediately started making plans to set up our own workshop.

A selection of hooks.

Our fire pokers and tongs. These are the only tongs we have so far so they will get lots of use in our new workshop.

Chisels (we learned how to temper the steel to ensure it would hold an edge).

Introduction

Hello all,
 I've decided to set up this blog to track the progress of myself (JM) and my partner (MC) as we setup and create our own blacksmith workshop. We are both very new to blacksmithing (having only taken a weekend long introductory class), but we have decided to setup our own small shop in the Ottawa area. We've already managed to make some good progress, so over the next couple of weeks I will bring the site up to speed!

"No one is a blacksmith when they are born" - Finnish Proverb