How I became a blacksmith (part I)

Two of the biggest changes in my life took place within two days from each other. In fact – within less than 40 hours from each other. On December 8, 2011 I met my future husband. It took me an hour to fall in love (he was faster). On December 10, 2011 I met my first forge that I got to work at.

This is, or was back then, the inside of Sven de Lang Smederij.

The events that led to me hitting hot iron with a hammer for the first time were not pleasant. I suffered a burnout. At that time I was working as a graphic designer…except I actually wasn’t, because just looking at Photoshop made me nauseous. I was attending both regular therapy and seeing a work psychologist, who worked with me on figuring what else I can do. It was both terrifying – I have never had a job that wasn’t graphic design, from assistant to art director – and liberating. Because when you don’t know anything, that means you can pick whatever comes to mind, and you’ll suck at it. Whether it’s a sensible job or following a dream, you’re going to be equally terrible. In this frame of mind I bumped into another graphic designer with a burnout, and while browsing his portfolio I saw a fence he designed for, if I recall correctly, Westin or Sheraton hotel. (Coincidentally I used to work for both as a designer.)

“How interesting,” I said. “So you designed this and a blacksmith made it? I didn’t know blacksmiths existed outside of open air museums.”

“Oh yes,” said the other designer. “He gives short courses, why not try it?”

This was how I found myself on a train to Kampen, over two hours away from where I lived, shaking in excitement and anxiety, on my way to meet a Real Blacksmith.

We worked for six hours, with a lunch break. I was worried whether I would prove to be physically strong enough. That was not a problem. My pink, gentle hands were. First I got blisters. Then the blisters burst. Then the skin came off, replaced by coal dust. To finish things off, I hit my right hand with a hammer I was holding in the aforementioned right hand. I have no clue how exactly I managed that, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I fell in love for the second time in three days. My hands hurt as hell, even though I didn’t get a single burn (that would change many times in the years to come), I was dirty as hell, my – ahem – work wasn’t top notch. I almost died when Sven handed me a gas torch as if it couldn’t explode any second. But I also knew this was it. Same as with my future husband. It wasn’t me wondering whether the choice would be right. I had firm, unshakeable knowledge that it was. I was right in both instances.

This is not the most brutal photo of my pain and suffering. I’m proud of it.

When I returned home, I was nearly unconscious from excitement. I placed my three works on the sofa next to me, stared at them longingly, then fired up YouTube to look at forging videos. Sound carried in the building where I lived, and my upstairs neighbour was home. I could only imagine what he thought about the bang-bang-bang-clang-clang sounds penetrating through his floor. But I had no time for imagining that, because I was watching the process of forging a rose.

I only wanted one thing: to go back. Immediately. The tiredness, the blisters didn’t count. One of the reasons for my burnout was producing materials that would stop being useless a few days later, or simply files. My computer looked the same before and after. When talking to the work psychologist I said that I loved working on my own, I loved fire, I loved working with my hands, I wanted to produce tangible objects, ones that would last, I wanted to use my muscles. We considered cage fighting, architecture, painting, but it just wasn’t it. Blacksmithing wasn’t even a dream. I seriously had no idea it was possible to do it in the 21st century, and similarly to every other guest at Sven’s forge I asked about shoeing horses. (Answer: very few blacksmiths shoe horses at all. In rare cases when it’s necessary a farrier takes care of that. And indeed, in the 4.5 years that I spent learning, then working I have only seen a horse being shod once. At a blacksmithing convention. All of us crowded around the master smith to see such curiosity. The horse was not happy.)

This proved to be very difficult to reproduce on my own later. So I tried until I made it.

There were two problems on my way to working with Sven. 1) He lived two hours away. Which would be quite a lot of commute. 2) He already had an apprentice. I begged anyway until he got a restraining order against me. Kidding! He just bought a taser. But even as I pleaded to be allowed to ruin my pretty hands and set myself on fire at his forge I knew that there had to be an easier way to do it. I just had to find that way. Every (half-burnt) cell of my body wanted to do this. The work psychologist was delighted – I made her job so much easier when we simply skipped the last four appointments. I found out what I wanted to do. I still received unemployment benefits. It was the perfect time to start learning my future job – in my head there was no way around it, this was it and there was no option I wouldn’t be pursuing that track.

Some of my ex-colleagues met me for drinks, and they confessed they were quite envious, because they had no idea what their dream job would have been. They just did their job because, well, money is nice, mortgages don’t pay themselves, plus it was the time of crisis, when jobs were scarce. This worked both for me (not a lot of people competed to become professional blacksmiths) and against me (not a lot of people had money to spend on handmade ironwork). But both the work psychologist and me agreed there was no point in me trying to do Reasonable Things – too many people were busy trying and failing to do the same Reasonable Things, but they had experience and knowledge I didn’t have. And forging was something I wanted to pursue so much that it seemed very unlikely I’d lose motivation.

There was just one problem. In the course of my life until then I already decided to become a guitarist (when I discovered I had to practice a lot I gave up), photographer (I discovered that I liked snapping a pic or two, but having to actually work on assignments bored me off my tits), painter, writer (I have quite a lot of first halves of first drafts, let me tell you), love and sex coach, and most probably things that I got over so fast I forgot I even tried them in the first place. But none of those things came with a warning I might stop enjoying them two days later. There was a non-zero chance I would get over forging, the same as I got over the idea of being a guitarist and a painter…and there was only one way to find out.

Power hammers are awesome.

To be continued…

4 thoughts on “How I became a blacksmith (part I)”

      1. Agree with Lady Pamela Rose. There’s something so fulfilling about hearing someone describe what they are passionate about. It’s a love story.

Leave a Reply to ladyblue2405 Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top