"The SouthWest Artist-Blacksmith Association is the home of many talented Blacksmith's in New Mexico and the surrounding states."
get it hot, hit it hard
Jan Meeting Minutes
January 2012 meeting
The January SWABA meeting was held on Saturday the 14th at Bob Keers shop in the Albuquerque north valley with Frank Turley demonstrating.
Frank’s demo was forging a pair of “V” jawed bolt tongs. He forged the jaws from 3/8 x 1 inch flat bar stock and the reins from 7/16 inch round bar, all mild steel. After forging the jaw sections he forge welded them to each end of a 24 inch length of the 7/16th round bar and then cut it in the middle. He said that the forge weld should be done to the side of the rather that the top for greater strength. For flux he used EZ Weld over borax saying the borax is the glue for the EZ Weld to stick to. Frank pointed out that the English usually do not use any flux. He also mentioned that years ago he had seen a German smith that was very surprised when seeing the flux added to the pieces to be welded out of the fire saying he’d never seen that before. When asked how he did it he said he fluxes in the fire. He said that any forging at the weld should be done at a bright yellow heat to keep from breaking the weld loose. Flatting is done at a dull heat since it is just surface finishing. He said that when flatting you can put water on the surface of the flatter and it will help to knock the scale off. His punch for punching the rivet hole is made from W-1 steel. The tongs were assembled and donated to “Iron in The Hat”. Daniel Baumann who has been working with Frank for 1 ½ yrs assisted him as his striker. Daniel is from Germany where he served a 5 yr blacksmithing apprenticeship prior to coming to the USA. He was in San Antonio Texas for 15 yrs before moving to Santa Fe. Daniel brought along a very nice mid-evil sword with sheath that he had made a few years back. Pictures of it are in the photo file.
Frank did an interesting history talk on leg vises and showed some vises from his collection as well as one old vise owned by Thomas Powers. Most all leg vises are from 100 to 250 yrs old and are generally classified in three categories , early, middle and late. A great source of information on leg vises is a two part series on restoration of leg vises by James R. Melchor and Peter Ross in Anvil Magazine starting with the July 2001 issue. Anvil Magazine is available on line at anvilmag.com however you must have a user ID and password which comes with a subscription to access the articles. Note that they do have a number of good articles and interviews with well known blacksmiths and farriers that are available without a password.
Business Meeting:
Kevin Dunlap was elected as the new Treasurer. Many thanks to Tom Hanson for the great job he did as treasurer for the past 6 yrs.
A reminder about the upcoming 2 day SWABA conference in Las Cruces on the 18th and 19th of February with Bob Bergman demonstrating. The Conference flyer with sign-up form is on the SWABA website. Be sure to bring an item to donate for “Iron In The Hat”. I would encourage everyone to bring something they have made since I think we all appreciate getting an item made by a fellow member.
Drawings were held for “Iron In The Hat” and a pot luck lunch with plenty of good food was enjoyed by everyone..
Thanks to Frank and Daniel for a great demonstration and to Bob Keers for hosting the meeting.
Alex Ivey ( Secretary)
Read MoreJack Beadersted’s Photo Archive
Jack Beadersted has sent me a CD of photos from past meetings of the SWABA membership. I will be posting them as time permits. You can find them in the Photo Gallery links in the Right hand Sidebar.
Read MoreDec meeting rescheduled to Jan
We have rescheduled our canceled Dec 3ed meeting to January 14th at
Bob Keers shop. Frank Turley will demonstrate. Bob’s address is 7037
GuadalupeTr. NW Los Reanchos (Cell 220-1906). Please bring your
“Iron in the Hat ” and your pot luck contribution!
Please register ASAP for the Febuary Conference meeting in Las Cruces
forms are here.
December meeting postponed
The Dec 3rd meeting has been postponed due to the weather forecast of wind and snow. We will reschedule the meeting to a later date. I will post the new date and location as soon as I can find a location and date.
Len Stans
Annual conference In Las Cruces
Here is the flyer and registration from for the 2012 SWABA conference in Las Cruces.
Use this link to display and print the PDF for Flyer
Oct Meeting
October 2011 Meeting
The Oct. Meeting was held at Thomas Powers shop in Lemitar, NM. Thomas did three demonstrations. The first was to forge a Viking flint steel and since his demo was to show how to forge titanium that’s what he used instead of the usual which would have been high carbon tool steel. . His second demo was making elongated basket handles bundled from 1/8 inch round stock that he gets from used up political signs. He uses this style of handle on his camp cookware which is copper bottom revere ware picked up from flea markets and second hand stores. His third demo was forge welding the start of a pattern welded billet from band saw blade and pallet strapping. Just to show that you don’t need a perfect anvil for forging he was forging on one that had the heel missing. Since there was no hardy hole he fashioned his own by clamping a piece square tubing at the heel end and it works just fine.
Even though the crowd attending was small we did have an “iron it the hat” drawing and a pot luck dinner was enjoyed by all.
Thanks to Thomas for hosting a very good meeting and for his demo’s.
Alex Ivey (Secretary)
Looking to buy an Anvil