I spent two days in the tooth with Louisiana’s blacksmith. Here’s what I learned. – The defender

On one of the most cold mornings in the memory, I found myself in a large red barn in Port Allen, taking a forge class.

“A stroke while the iron is hot,” it has become new after the two -day seminar.

Ben Deshotel was my teacher. The one -one class left me more to look at the three nails and open the bottles I made.

Deshotels, with the West Baton Rouge parish museum, taught my class. In both mornings I arrived in the barn, he was already hitting the fire in the tooth. I was grateful for the warmth.

He started by explaining the process of making the right fire for the blacksmith.

“You never want to put green coal because it makes a nasty yellow smoke,” he said, explaining where to put the coal so that they turn to the coca, which burns more hot and cleaner than the coal.

Once the fire was right, the business showers began to demonstrate the process of preparation of the nail. Then we went through the nail -by -step process. He would take a step, then I would try to follow the example.

He offered safety tips as he moved around the workspace.

“The metal doesn’t start to light up to about 800 degrees. So, just accept that it’s all 800 degrees before you touch it,” he said. “What I really mean is never just grab something.”

I assured him that I would do my best to grab anything, but with the chance I made, he pointed to a bucket of water.

“If you burn yourself, the metal is so hot that it warms your flesh to the place where, although you are dropping the piece, it still cooks the flesh below,” he said. “So you want to dip your hand in the water.”

With this graphic warning, I approached the experience with appropriate caution.

Despite the risks, I loved the blacksmith process. I like practical things, and my blacksmith makes a complete sense for me. This requires the right tools, know-how, brute force and finesse. Putting a piece of steel in the fire and waiting until it was red hot, after which it used a hammer to beat and shape it was empowering.

It is a pride that after I made my first nail, Deshotels said it was the best first nail he had ever seen – maybe he says this to all girls. Nevertheless, throughout my life, I have not been proud of a nail.

We continued to do two more nails as he explained that he and any good blacksmith could do a nail in one shooting.

With my limited skills and strength, I had to put a piece of metal back into the fire at least four times – just to make a nail. Getting to this point is complicated and requires you to hold the hammer at 45 degrees and hit it accurately, repeatedly.

The smallest hammer that is offered for me has weighed about 3 pounds. After making three nails, my right hand was wet noodles. On the day after the forge workshop, I barely managed to lift my insulated glass of stainless steel full of ice water.

Twice as my hand was hesitant to help move the process and save my hand, the Deschtel entered and we turned back and back, fucking in a rhythmic approach for songs that reminded me of a chain band.

After my first grade, when I proudly showed my husband’s three nails, he looked at them and said, “Do you know that in certain Pacific Islands, long ago, each of these nails would cost three goats?”

This is the species of the little things he is ready, but the insight has helped to put the way in which forging turned the world into perspective.

One of my favorite moments at the workshop was when we worked on the opening bottle, which had a delicate curly signal at one end and twisting in the middle. I liked to learn to create the delicate characteristics-and the feeling of twisting a steel circle and a circle was bending. I knew intellectually that the heat made metal consters, but the fact that I was part of and even controlling this process gave me a connection with tools, the process and different time.

I expect to use this bottle opening for years to come. This is something of beauty.

Weeks later, the blacksmith is still with me. Forming metal, knocking imperfections and watching the transformation of raw material in something useful is both reality and metaphor.

A good teacher, hard work, right tools, patience, practice and warmth are the basic elements of attracting something beautiful in existence.

The West Baton Rouge parish museum offers a $ 200 workshop for a person, along with various other woodworking workshops, tatting and other art classes/sewing. .)