Blacksmithing, Blisters, and Sunday-Stomachaches

The teacher could have just as easily been a gold prospector from the 1800s as a machinist at a local college in the year 2019. He was wearing a white undershirt, jeans paired with suspenders, and a crumpled navy leather hat with a wide brim, was pulling out tools and laying them on corroded slabs of sheet metal that would double as the students’ workspaces. Today he was a blacksmith, and he was going to teach me how to do it. His name was Gary.

I was there to take Beginning Blacksmithing, a class held in an artists village in a small town off the beaten path in Southern Wisconsin. Nine of us were going to spend six hours hammering iron, most of us for no other reason than, “that could be fun!”

We all gathered around an outdoor covered space with five forges, each forge with a bucket of water and mounted anvil within a couple feet. And after learning about coal and the best ways to light a forge, the nine of us split off into pairs to build our forge fires.

I ended up sharing my forge with a man named Ray, and I learned that Ray grew up with a wood stove, so he immediately became fire team captain. (Don’t worry. I was in charge of cranking the bellows. A job I took VERY seriously as towards the end of the day, I found myself saying, “heeeere she goes. Heeeeere she goes. Come onnn, little lady!” when I’d get the fire to come back from smoldering embers. These are things totally normal bellows captains say that are definitely not weird.)

I was initially put-off by Ray when I asked what got him interested in blacksmithing, and he quickly responded, “KNIVES,” but as we built the fire, he patiently talked me through how he likes to build one– a technique we had more success with after failing a few times to light the fire with a donut of newspaper and coal– and once you’ve got one going, how you keep it going.

And– not to brag– once we got ours going, we had the hottest fire of the day. Did you know that when you burn iron, it sparkles like a firework? I know this because I burnt so much, mostly for patriotic reasons. Not for bad-at-blacksmithing reasons. Definitely not those.

Our first project of the day was creating…a nail. A two-inch nail. It was our foray into learning how to taper the metal. All we had to do was stick the end of our iron in the fire, and once it got hot enough, take it to the anvil, and try hammering out the end out to a point.

I knew pretty immediately my arms were not built for blacksmithing. After letting my iron get hot, I pivoted back to the anvil, started hammering, and the iron reacted as if I gave it the stink eye. It was nonplussed. After Ray yelled, “GET MAD AT IT!” I gave it some extra effort because I don’t know that I should contradict someone that into knives, and I started to see progress. But I knew the day was going to be a journey of discovery for my arms. And that discovery would be that my arms are made of actual carbonara noodles.

Our second project of the day was ultimately my most successful, a plant hanger complete with decorative swirl and twist. There’s not much to say here outside of I’m pretty sure I’m a plant-hanger-complete-with-decorative-swirl-and-twist prodigy!

For our last project of the day, we had to split the end of our metal. It involved positioning a pointed hammer over smooth cool metal, edge parallel to the sides of the iron, and with a second hammer, driving the first hammer through to the other side, leaving you with some akin to the world’s worst tuning fork. From there we widen the split, so the metal takes the shape of a Y.

But after five hours of hammering, after five hours of cranking the bellows, after the formation of one blister that took a sharp turn to callus and another that decided to live its truth and take over my whole thumb, after using all the arm muscles I had left, I couldn’t split my iron. Other people were splitting theirs within ten minutes, but for me, I was still working on splitting my iron while others were taking their Y and moving on to turning it into a heart.

The teacher let me trade out the pointed hammer for a smaller, lighter, and easier to control chisel, but even then, progress was slow. And after a few strikes, we’d pick up my piece of iron to check the progress, and he’d say, “can we see through to the other side? Can we see the sun through there? Not quite yet. Let’s see if we can hit the chisel harder this time?” And I’d always answer, “well, I can certainly try.” Because was I going to quit in front of Blacksmither-Gary? No. So I continued to chisel.

Place the chisel. Bring the hammer up. BANG! Place the chisel. Bring the hammer up. BANG! Place the chisel. Bring the hammer up. BANG! Check….still no sun. Can I hit it harder? Let’s see!

This process repeated for twenty-five minutes. And finally, after twenty-five minutes, I started to see the sun through there. Finally, after twenty-five minutes, progress was happening.

On Sunday nights I’ll occasionally get a stomach ache. That growling dread of the work week knocking at your door. Mustering the energy and the fortitude to do it all over again, thinking of that coworker who creates blisters on your patience or that assignment that feels just outside of your pay grade. Some weeks feel like an uphill climb, and all you want to do is admire my mountain from the foothills. Have a picnic, even!

As I was splitting my iron I kept thinking, “at some point, we’ll be past this. At some point, we’ll see the sun through there.” And I had nothing to do but say, “well, I can certainly try,” when someone asked me to hit the chisel harder.

It’s Sunday night. My Sunday-stomachache has rolled in. I don’t feel ready for the week to start, but I also don’t think I have a say. (I do have a lot of thoughts about it, but as of yet, believe it or not, no one has asked me for them!)

But much like splitting iron, I think all we can do is keep chiseling, and see if you can hit life a little harder next time. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t, but you’re still going. And eventually you’ll see the sun through there.