Hammering through History: Meet the Blacksmith
It’s definitely not your typical desk job: When Robert Swim gets to work each day, he picks up his hammer, dusts off an anvil and heats the forge to a blazing temperature. But he’s doing so much more than playing with fire for a living: He’s connecting with more than three millennia of human existence.
“Humans have been working with iron for more than 3,000 years,” Swim said. “It’s one of the first major technologies of the world and connects to almost everything we do today.”
Swim, who has more than 37 years of experience as a blacksmith, will be leading a forge welding demonstration here at the Park on Saturday, November 28.
“Forge welding is the oldest process of joining two pieces of metal together,” Swim explained. “It requires heating the fire to a temperature between 2,000 and 3,000 degrees and creating an atmosphere where no oxygen is present. We have to achieve conditions that don’t exist naturally anywhere on earth,” he said.
An iron ring with the two ends welded together.
Experienced blacksmiths can tell if the metal has reached the correct temperature by its color (it should be a “dead salt white” color, Swim said) and by feel.
“When you’ve done blacksmithing as long as I have, there’s a certain way it feels through the hammer – you just know it’s right,” he said.
At the correct temperature, the metal will throw off sparks like a firecracker and the blacksmith has only a handful of seconds to finish the weld. Borax is used to cover the surface and go down into the cracks where the two metals join.
Borax doesn’t burn even at that high of a temperature. Instead, it melts into a gel and prevents oxygen from forming on the iron, officially sealing the two metals together as one.
“You seldom get to see somebody forge weld,” Swim said, “so it’s one of the things I like to present because you just don’t have many opportunities to see it done anymore. It’s something you can only learn by doing; there’s no way you can learn blacksmithing from a textbook. For me, blacksmithing is actual time travel, carrying on a tradition that’s one of the oldest in the world.”
Swim enjoys getting creative and has many of his ironworks on display at the blacksmith shop. A couple of favorites are the iron roses and the dragonfly. “If I can imagine it, I can probably turn around and make it,” he said.
The forge welding demonstration will take place at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the 1890s Blacksmith Shop on Saturday, No. 28. Cost is free with general admission. The Park is located at 10215 F.M. 762 in Richmond. For more information, click here or call 281-343-0218.
– Post by Jennifer Farrell, Marketing Director and Blacksmith Wannabe!
