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By David Robertson
My name is David Robertson and I have been smithing for over 20 years now. Whew, time does fly!
I started back in 1987 with no idea of what I was doing and a need to do everything I did on a tight budget. I started as a hobby which grew into a hobby business, which followed into a full time business. My smithing was at the hobby business stage while I was training as a geological engineer. When I left school I still needed to pay the bills and engineering jobs were not just around the corner so blacksmithing became full time.
After 20 years I still get a thrill from taking raw material and transforming it into something both useful and elegant, and I expect my work to last long after I do. Few other mediums are so elegant and long lasting. Consider this book a good solid foundation to start to explore smithing.
I have made lots of mistakes over the years but have found that a few good books have helped me along the way. When I was starting out I would have loved to find a book like The Fundamentals of Blacksmithing. I wrote it with the beginner in mind. It is clearly written and illustrated for novice blacksmiths. This is not a series of projects to try your hand at. It is a series of techniques that build on each other to develop your skills as a blacksmith. The techniques can be incorporated into larger projects as you master them.
Included are plans for a small coal forge, and a small gas forge. If you are truly interested in building a gas forge I would suggest that you look at my Gas Forge Construction dvd . The video goes into much more detail than the plans in the book and shows the step by step process that is involved.
Please be aware, you use any information in this book at your own risk!
Smithing itself has inherent risks with it. Open flame, hot metal, bits of metal flying around just to name a few. As we all know, anything rewarding has a certain amount of risk to it. Take precautions and you can develop an excellent hobby.
Smithing has seen a new dawning age in the past few years. It is a hobby that both men and women are taking up and some are turning it into a new career. It requires a smaller budget to start than many other pastimes, and can (at least in the beginning) take up a smallish amount of space.
The ebook is broken down into chapters that roughly follow my Basic and Intermediate Blacksmithing Courses that I offer at my shop. I do strongly feel that nothing replaces one on one instruction in the finer points of this craft, but if you are looking to test the waters in this ancient art The Fundamentals of Blacksmithing is an excellent place to start.
A sampling of chapters are:
Safety