Oklahoma Coal Again

I checked the date and it was almost exactly a year ago when I went to the coal mine for a load.  When I’m running low I tell Betty and she calls the scale house to confirm that they will have coal crushed to appropriate size for smithing and checks the price and makes sure our anticipated arrival time will work.  Everything looked good for a run today.  The price had gone up from $125 to $130 a ton.  US green folding money, of course.

To get a more useful price I have to figure in the hours and mileage and gasoline cost and lunch before we head back.  The actual cost is really $300 - $400 a ton delivered and in the bin.

Orio, one of my great helpers, did most of the driving.  The weather was perfect.  We saw many box turtles crossing the backroads in their summer migration and the wildflowers were beautiful.  The country was much greener than in the past couple of years when drought has gripped this region.  By the time we got to the mine at 1125 there was evidence of recent rain with water standing in the low areas.  

We weighed in and drove to the loading area for “chicken coal.”  We opened the bed and got back as a huge front end loader scooped up a partial bucked load, probably it could hold 10 cubic yards or more, and carefully filled the truck.  We leveled it off and worked it into all the corners.  This was too far to drive for a partial load.  The coal was wet and this made loading less dusty but we surely paid for some water.  We got the bed cover closed and weighed out, paid and were gone in about 15 minutes with just a bit over a ton.

Now it was time to look for a place to eat.  We found a nice buffet in Coffeyville, Kansas with salad, fried fish, ribs, chicken and great bread pudding.  I had never been in town when the Dalton Museum was open, but today my luck changed.  We spent an hour looking over the displays and I would definitely recommend it to travelers, especially those interested in western history and gun enthusiasts.  $3.50 is a bargain price.

One unanticipated pleasure for me was learning about the Patty Page connection with Coffeyville and seeing some of the material they have collected relating to her vocal career.

There was an interesting video playing which reenacted the events of the Dalton’s failed bank robbery.  One thing it points out is that this is an early example of average citizens who were just not willing to take any more of this thuggery.  In 1894 most people wren’t wearing iron on the hip any more so they rushed to the hardware store where guns and ammo were quickly distributed and they took up positions to block the escape of the gang.  The rest is history which you can see at http://www.daltondefendersmuseum.com

We were home before dark, still too stuffed to eat supper.  The weather is perfect to sit outdoors and enjoy the evening and later it will be great sleeping with the windows open, but tomorrow somebody is going to have to shovel all that coal into the bin at the studio.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Another Online Reference

Well, it’s too hot to forge again and I have been really busy with other things so there hans’t been much to post.  I am about to start assembling sale items from the hundreds of parts which have been forged already.

The time away from the studio has been used to clean out a lot of files on the computer and in the hanging file cabinets.  It has also allowed me to do some more web exploration looking for items of blacksmithing interest.  This is one I thought would be worthwhile to share.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/ah637e/AH637E00.htm

Today it may only be 85º so the forge will get fired up.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Grandfather was a Blacksmith

Almost every smith will say that from time to time a visitor will announce, “My grandfather was a blacksmith.”  Eventually, that event will become less common.  Blacksmith numbers are not what they were a century ago.

One of the friends, Scott Miller, who often helps me can confidently claim his grandfather, Jim Lewis, was a blacksmith.  He has the proof of it.  A history of his hometown, Lebo, Kansas, contains a photograph of the grandfather and great-grandfather standing by the door where they burned the cattle brands of their rancher clients.  The old building stood from the 1880’s until 1951 when it was replaced by a Quonset hut, which became widely available for civilian use after WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut

Scott has a good eye for design, a devotion to technical competence and the strength to pull it together so one more branch is forming on the blacksmithing craft tree and someday there will be others who can say, “My grandfather was a blacksmith.”

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Groove, Slit, Slot, Hole

Even if we are familiar with the language we are often not precise in picking our descriptive words.

A groove is a long, narrow indentation. Such as a furrow, trench or the spiral groove of a phonograph record. There is no “all the way through” connotation. It walks the boundary between a line and a hole. Think of the mark left by the blacksmith’s veining chisel.

A slit is a long narrow cut with an “all the way through” connotation.

The insect emerges from a cocoon through a slit. The scissors cut a slit in the paper. The knife slit the throat. The notion is that there is a lot of length and virtually no width. When the blacksmith’s slitting chisel pierces a bar it creates a slit.

A slot is a wide slit - longer than it's wide, which is designed for something to pass through. Often the shape of a long rectangle like a coin slot, a letter slot, or a ballot box slot. A blacksmith’s slot punch knocks out a rectangular slug.

http://www.blacksmithsjournal.com/archives/issue_153.php

It can get more complicated. Essentially, I have described several kinds of “holes”. A hole is a hollow space in either a surface or a solid. So, a hole can be a cavity or an aperture (fenestration) depending upon the “all the way through” nature of it.

Often holes imply a roundness aspect more than a linear aspect. Paper and leather hole punches remove circular drops. Most blacksmithing hole punches make round or square holes. But the majority of square holes start as round holes and are drifted square.

This site gives a nice pictoral and text description of punching round holes. http://ironoakfarm.blogspot.com/2010/07/fiery-friday-punching-hole-in-steel.html


I’ve been making a lot of square holes this week while building the pieces for a railing grille with a lot of passthroughs so I began musing about the general nature of these negative spaces.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Besler's Iris

When I’m working on a sculpture project it seems to help me if I imagine some story or theme related to the ironwork.  In this case, a delightful couple from Louisiana wanted a depiction of “Iris” which could be displayed on the wall in a given space.

First,  there were some technical decisions to be made.  I decided to concentrate on the German bearded rhizomatous plant variety as it is the one we see most commonly.  Next, I decided to create elements which were close to life size and representational and I chose the space orientation and decided to avoid framing to let the flowers “live free.”  

With those guidelines I did some image research looking to see how other artists, sculptors, painters, photographers and scientific illustrators had rendered their subjects.  Although Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” immediately came to mind, I specifically was recalling some images of the scientific illustration type I had once seen.  What I discovered that looked familiar were images recorded by Basilius Besler.

“His work, “Hortus Eystettensis” (Garden of Eichstätt), is man’s earliest documentation of a specific garden and over 1,000 varieties of flowers were depicted in 367 exquisitely engraved and colored plates. In the early 1600s, the Prince Bishop of Eichstätt in Germany created what was probably the first comprehensive botanical garden devoted to flowering plants.”  A quote from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortus_Eystettensis

That extraordinary work set a new standard for scientific illustration and it seemed to point me to the rest of my challenge.  I have forged and fabricated iris from my earliest blacksmithing days.  The entrance to my home still displays an iris hand rail and an iris wall sconce.  They are no longer representative of what I think of as good work but they are a reminder of where I began. Now I wanted to rethink iris in iron and try to achieve a new artistic interpretation.

I began by studying some flowering plant botany again and then specifically iris pollination.  Sometimes I think I forget that flowers are all about reproduction of the species and it is a happy coincidence that they are so visually appealing to us human beings.  Iris need to attract insect pollinators.

“The iris flower is of interest as an example of the relation between flowering plants and pollinating insects. The shape of the flower and the position of the pollen-receiving and stigmatic surfaces on the outer petals form a landing-stage for a flying insect, which in probing for nectar, will first come into contact with the perianth, then with the stigmatic stamens in one whorled surface which is borne on an ovary formed of three carpels. The shelf-like transverse projection on the inner whorled underside of the stamens is beneath the overarching style arm below the stigma, so that the insect comes in contact with its pollen-covered surface only after passing the stigma; in backing out of the flower it will come in contact only with the non-receptive lower face of the stigma. Thus, an insect bearing pollen from one flower will, in entering a second, deposit the pollen on the stigma; in backing out of a flower, the pollen which it bears will not be rubbed off on the stigma of the same flower.” A quote from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_(plant)

So in the final formulation of the plan for my new iris motif I would try to represent the reproductive anatomy more attentively and in overall form imitate the scientific illustration style of Besler.  The final note to this story is that 2013 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of “Hortus Eystettensis” so this piece I consider a tribute to Besler - “Besler’s Iris”.

The owners sent me a photo of the iris in their home.

https://www.rare-maps.com/postersDetails.cfm?pid=350872&CFID=12066846&CFTOKEN=64695164&jsessionid=8430bbbd7228912d907c392842c73773b528

Some of Besler’s other illustrations can be seen here:

http://www.bergbook.com/htdocs/Cache815.htm

http://www.panteek.com/besler/

http://www.nytstore.com/1/1/6148-mourning-iris-florentine-iris-dalmation-iris-plate-120-besler2.html

Portraits at the Forge

It’s not uncommon to come across photographs of smiths standing beside their anvil.  However it is unusual to find a painting of the same type.  Paintings of a more general nature are the ones which show activities in and around the shop such as “Horse and Buggy Days by Paul Detlefsen.

http://www.barewalls.com/pv-488873_Horse-and-Buggy-Days.html

The portrait which fascinates me most is “Pat Lyon at the Forge” by John Neagle in 1829.  There is a fascinating story associated with its commissioning which you can read -  America’s First Bank Robbery

http://www.ushistory.org/carpentershall/history/robbery.htm  This, in my opinion, is a true portrait.

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris painted a lot of scenes depicting early American History.  His painting “The American Cincinnatus” purports to show George Washington forging.  I don’t know if this would actually qualify as a portrait as it wasn’t posed but rather imagined.

http://www.fineartprintsondemand.com/artists/ferris/american_cincinnatus.htm   George Washington was often compared to the Roman citizen-farmer leader.  http://www.mountvernon.org/educational-resources/encyclopedia/cincinnatus

A few years ago a friend of mine asked if he could come to the studio and photograph me at work.  He likes to capture a subject then make a painting similar to the image.  He has spent a good bit of his retirement time in that activity.  When finished, he gave me a print.  So now I can join that small group of smiths who can display a painting of them at work on the anvil although this smith will never be considered an American legend.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

The Yellen Gate Project

This morning I came across some YouTube videos I thinks most blacksmiths will enjoy.  The are part of a series of films made to document the various crafts engaged in preservation and restoration.

There is a series of six videos of a workshop sponsored buy the Samuel Yellen Foundation and held in April 1986 at the Yellen shop in west Philadelphia shortly after Harvey Yellen’s death.  The journeyman blacksmiths attending worked with shop employees to build a memorial gate honoring Harvey Yellen who ran the shop for about 40 years after Samuel Yellen died.  The taping was directed by Jack Andrews.  The workshop was led by master blacksmith Francis Whitaker, Aspen, Colorado.

Workshop Participants are listed as:

 John Dabate, Providence, RI

 Glenn Horr, Berkeley Springs, WV

 Thomas Latane, Pepin, WI

 David Norrie, Ontario, Canada

 Randy Oberg, Cohasset, MN

 Patrick Porter, Tesuque, NM

 Pete Renzetti, West Chester, PA

 Matt Rutz, Des Moines, Iowa

 Jon Siegel, Andover, NH

 Durand Van Doren, Trumansburg, NY

 David Munn, Virginia

 Stanley Franklin, Virginia

“Ornamental Wrought Iron I”  was filmed in April 1986 by Preservation Techniques, Inc - Gersil N. Kay, Chairman.

 It explains the program was videotaped on Location Samuel Yellen Metalworkers Company and lists Mrs Harvey Z Yellen as President, Mr. Lou Buccanera as Manager, Mr. Fred Crist as Artist Blacksmith and Mr. Jack Andrews as Consultant Designer.

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.1 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_IUu0t9su0

Introduction by Jack Andrews.  History of the Yellen shop.  Francis Whitaker with 64 years of blacksmithing experience had already led approximately 140 workshops all over the country since 1976.  Fred Crist, head blacksmith at the shop, describes the project, blacksmithing tools, modeling and safety.

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.2 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB7H0xvQmhs

Fred continues describing some tools. David Norrie explains striking. Glenn Horr demonstrates stamping, wire brushing and straightening.  Pete Renzetti describes the gate project in more detail. 

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.3 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0viHnqB0wW4

Pete describes traditional techniques. Matt Rutz describes punching holes.  Pete forges a tenon. Francis demonstrates forge welding a square corner.  Fred Crist describes the stock to be used.

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.4 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPpGcVGhUzg

Fred Crist forge welding a fleur-de-lis.  Francis and Peter demonstrating keyed tenon joinery and twisting a bar.

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.5 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPpGcVGhUzg

Francis Whitaker and Peter Renzetti continue the twisting of a decorative bar the assembly process.

Ornamental Wrought Iron I Pt.6 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYq5FXGdbMQ

This is the list of credits and some more images of the shop.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/