Support for Blacksmithing?

forgingfool

Why is there not any support for Blacksmithing in Ireland given its huge cultural impotence and contribution to our built heritage? There is no training available to Smith's in Ireland, yet through out Europe it is still held up as one of the key art-forms and as such well supported.

forgingfool

Here is a list of some of the courses in Blacksmithing avilible across Europe incase anyone is intrested:


International College of French Wrought Ironwork

[For people with at least 2 years experience]
Maison des Compagnons du Devoir,
Chemin de Reims,
51140 Muizon,
France
Phone: 01033 26020931, Fax: 01033 26029639


The Venice European Centre for the Skills of Architectural Heritage Conservation

[This institution is running 2 week and 3 month courses in wrought ironwork]
Apply to:
AI DIRETTORE,
Del Centro Europeo di Venezia per i Mestieri,
Della Conservazione,
Del Patrimonio Architettonico,
Isola di San Servolo,
Casella Postale 676, I-30100
VENEZI,
Italy


HDK Stenby (Göteborgs universitet)

Jeff Kaller
t.f. rektor/bitr. högskolerektor
Stiftelsen Stenebyskolan/
HDK Steneby (Göteborgs universitet)
Hemslöjdsv. 1
660 10 Dals Långed
Sweden
Phone: 0531-710 05 alt. 0761-17 08 60
email: jeff.kaller@steneby.se
http://www.steneby.se

Steneby is the collective name for the stimulating educational and cultural activities found in the invigorating setting at Dals Långed in Sweden's Dalsland Province. Today the Stenebyskolan Foundation and the School of Design and Crafts at University of Gothenburg offer a broad spectrum of one and two-year preparatory courses in the art's field, as well as university education at both the bachelor and masters levels.

Herefordshire College of Technology

HCT is recognised as the foremost national centre for training Smiths who wish to work in the various areas of forged iron, ranging from traditional to contemporary design work. The following courses are available at the Rural Crafts Centre at the College's Holme Lacy campus.

BA Honours Artist Blacksmithing
Foundation Blacksmithing & Metalwork
BTEC National Award in Blacksmithing & Metalwork - Level 3
BTEC National Diploma in Blacksmithing & Metalwork - Level 3

http://www.hct.ac.uk

Warwickshire College

A range of full-time courses, all including the essential skills of forgework, welding and fabrication, drawing and design, plus business management awareness. Our emphasis is on artistic blacksmithing skills, with students encouraged to develop their own style and compete at major events.

BTEC National Award - one year
BTEC National Certificate - one year, for people with significant prior experience
BTEC National Diploma - two years

Entry onto courses requires some relevant prior experience in forgework, metalworking or related crafts. A sound academic background is desirable but commitment and aptitude to the craft are more important.
We also offer evening classes, or bespoke courses for groups.

Warwickshire College,
Moreton Morrell
Warwick
CV35 9BL
Phone: Richard Bacon 01926 318260
http://www.warkscol.ac.uk

irishlostboy

forgingfool wrote: »

Why is there not any support for Blacksmithing in Ireland given its huge culture impotence and contribution to our built heritage?

i think you meant cultural importance?

there is a lot of blacksmithing in ireland, although it is still pretty old-school in its presentation to the world, so you probably wont find it in a college under the heading of "arts". there are still pleanty of blacksmiths and farriers working today in ireland either as their main business or as a hobby, so if anything blacksmithing is more alive and well than if it were locked up in the guilded cage of art in a college.
i will be having a bash at the blacksmithing course down at CELT this spring.
http://www.celtnet.org/page4.php
plus there is lots of information available all over the net without consigning yourself to a college degree
http://www.youtube.com/user/purgatoryironworks

forgingfool

I know there are a lot of smiths in Ireland, I'm one of them. Working full-time in my forge.

If you think there's no contemporary forge-work in Ireland think again. Try looking up these smith's sites:

http://www.markkeeling.com/
http://www.ironexcellence.com/
http://www.michaelbudd.ie
http://www.michael.calnan.dk
among many others.

The reason we need training is that forge-work is not as easy as going along to a few weekend courses and hay presto your a blacksmith. It's a life's time study of complex techniques that take years to master even with good training. The courses I have listed focus on technique as well as design and are well rounded. Secondly as you have illustrated by your reply, blacksmithing is not well publicized in Ireland and a full-time college would bring recognition and greater understanding to the 150 to 180 practising smiths in Ireland today. It would also help to bring in fresh blood which every art form needs in order to move forward. And finerly many public commissioning bodes whether you or I like it (and I don't) make accredited qualifications a requirement in there proposals. This makes it had for t smith's to get commissioned for work.

irishlostboy

ya, i pretty much grew up in a forge. my step-dad ran the forge down kerwins lane in galway back in the 80's so i am not exactly clueless to blacksmithing. i worked my summer holidays there back when i was 6 and 7 years old. that was a long time ago, and bar making my own knives and tools i have no interest in working in the industry.
ya, blacksmithing is underpublicised in ireland. but publicity is the responsibility of the company. most smiths i know of have enough work to keep them busy without any publicity.
as for accreditation, ya sure a good course would be good, IF it were a good course. probably what you would end up with here though is some FAS joke of a course. i saw a presentation of furniture from one of their "mastercraftsmen" type carpentry courses years back. i was fit for tears at the wood-butchery that was produced. sure would hate that kinda thing in blacksmithing.

a few weekend courses wont make you a blacksmith, sure. it can put you on a road of self-learning (which is the only real learning. you cant teach someone who cannot learn etc.) which with time and persaverance will make you a blacksmith.
i mean, would you take an aprentice who has come from a leaving cert, done a diploma course and nothing else, or would you prefer someone who went out and actively pursued learning through their own channels and through their own graft over time? i know which option is going to be the more likely to stick at the job. and blacksmithing is very hard work indeed.

the old crafts are often portrayed as dieing crafts which will be forgotten, but i dont think that is totally true. they will reinvent themselves in their own way.
of course if you as a smith wanted to publicise blacksmithing as a whole and help ensure it does not become a lost art i do hope you take on apprentices and explore alternitive means of education and publicity. the fella over on purgatory ironworks is doing great from his youtube videos and is single handedly responsible for a massive resurgence in smithing in his area. he took his old skills, combined them with modern communication and hey presto! everyone is a winner.
regards government bodies etc, i dont think many of them come on here. best bet is to write a proposition to your local college, board of education etc. you wont find dissagreement here with the sentament that blacksmithing (as well as other crafts) should recieve comparable attention as other european countries in our education system.

forgingfool

Are these blacksmith friends of yours blacksmiths, or just fabricators that weld a few things from tra-tec together and call it "wrought iron work" or are they farriers? Shoeing horses has little or nothing to do with blacksmithing, which is the art of sculpting hot metal into tool, gates, fire greats and just about anything else you can think of.

It's grand you saying its the responsibility of the company for marketing and you do have a very valid point. But if you really look into it, no industry in Ireland thrives without some sort of help. Even large companys like Google are given help by the goverment in tax insentives and college courses that support their business and provide staff that are capable of helping your company to move forward. So why shouldn't an Irish and mostly rural industry deserve the same support? That's all we want.

If you want to see forge work on youtube look at these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fJyZ3_hTI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKHfpS6l16c&NR=1

irishlostboy

forgingfool wrote: »

Are these blacksmith friends of yours blacksmiths, or just fabricators that weld a few things from tra-tec together and call it "wrought iron work" or are they farriers?

you decide.

i know a good stainless steel fabricator too. large scale operation. does stuff like shoping centers and the like. so ya, i know the difference. not to mention the already mentioned fact i grew up with blacksmith...

forgingfool wrote: »

It's grand you saying its the responsibility of the company for marketing and you do have a very valid point. But if you really look into it, no industry in Ireland thrives without some sort of help.

and not one of those industries recieved a bit of help until they themselves put in the ground work. first you need a unified blacksmithing union of some sort. a lobbying group. then as a group you need to do some lobbying. you have to spend money to make money. companies go to great length to get their govenment incentives and tax breaks. the government doesn't just do it off its own bat.
same with college and IT courses. someone needs to submit a course proposal. it wont happen from within a college. they dont have the skills or interest, and probably not the facilities.

boards is a great place to argue and insult people, make a lot of noise in a little space. it is also a useful place to shoot ideas back and forth and perhaps get some new ones. but government dont hang out here. especially not in the arts and crafts section. to pursue the area you are talking (govenment funding, intigration into the education system) you will need to get a lot of like minded people on board and then you need to take the long and tedious official path. not fun, but is possible. i do wish you luck if you choose to give it a go, and if you need any help with online media once you are going, give me a yell. i see the irish artist blacksmiths association do not have a website. or any online info. that might be a start.
it is 2010 and even my local kayak club has a nice website. which gets about 100 hits a day. and gets us new members all the time. so, internet does work. i would consider that step 1 for the IABA, if it is up to doing its job. if not, you should take it over amd make it do its job. its probably not the answer, but it is a way forward at least. hope some of these ideas help.

forgingfool

We have done the ground work. I have written two proposals on the future and training of blacksmithing in Ireland over the last three years, they both got shelved by the Crafts Council. But they did use all my ideas for their silverworking course. We have just had a major feasibility study carried out and are about to publish it. None of this has been funded and we have given our time free of charge to it because we believe that forge-work has a lot to offer the country. We allready have €600,000 worth of equipment gathering dust in Mayo to start a course with.

We have been trying to raise our profile as well. We demonstrated forge-work at Bloom last year and on the Late Late show and at the ploughing as well as holding two forge-ins having an article published in the Indo about the lack of support. We had four questions asked in the Dail on the same subject, all to no avail. We will be launching our website next month and hopefully that will help to inform the public as to the work we are carrying out.

There is only so much you can do even as a group. I don't think we can be accused of sitting about waiting for other people to do our work for us. I have been all over Ireland meeting with people trying to get things going as have many other smiths. None of us are looking for money for ourselves. I have given training free of charge to many students wanting to get into forge work. And I know others do the same, we do this as we know what it is like to want to get into something like this in Ireland can be like banging your head against a concrete wall.

irishlostboy

forgingfool wrote: »

we do this as we know what it is like to want to get into something like this in Ireland can be like banging your head against a concrete wall.

ah no, if you bang your head against the wall you will at least get a nice paint effect for your efforts.
sounds like you are putting the effort in. some questions. are you answerable to this crafts council and are they representing your interests correctly? are they your intermediery with colleges or board of education, or are you going direct? would blacksmiths be better off representing themselves free from them?
as i have not really heard anything at all about the IABA before this i take it that more publicity is needid most likely. what avenues have you taken and what ones need to be further explored? ya, a website is important. getting websites to work is another thing entirely. you need to develop an active community to use the site. this is a complex thing and cannot just be a bunch of smiths. its tricky. interaction with the community at large is very important. most people think everything comes from the shops. it is liberating when they can see, or better yet participate in the creation of things they desire.
perhaps some networking with people of similar mindset will attact the right attention? get in touch with donal at the bushcraft club.
http://www.irishbushcraftclub.org/index.php
they are very interested in blacksmithing and similar old crafts.

now, what other areas need looking at? i know a few lecturers in various colleges, and i will talk to them when i get a chance to to see what they say about getting a blacksmithing course up and running. bar that, i am out of ideas.

forgingfool

Here is the new Irish Artist Blacksmith Association website:

http://www.irishblacksmiths.com

This will give you a good view into the work and scope of blacksmithing in Ireland and the world today.

Tiriel

Thanks for posting that forgingfool - there is some really beautiful work in the galleries there. My Grandfather was a blacksmith, loved listening to the old stories

forgingfool

Cork_girl wrote: »

Thanks for posting that forgingfool - there is some really beautiful work in the galleries there. My Grandfather was a blacksmith, loved listening to the old stories

Thanks Cork-girl, very glad you like it.

whorobbedme

For the last few months iv bein looking for a Blacksmihting course.
i have found 2, both in mayo. the first is a 5 day course in Enniscoe House. the second a 2 year course at the Cearta Inneona National Blacksmithing & Forging Centre in Belmullet, which im not even sure if its still up and going.
one of the problims for me is i live in Kilkenny which is a 5-6 hour bus jurny to Mayo.
At one stage Kilkenny city was full Blacksmiths, now there are around 2 in the county and a hand full of farriers.

At the moment myself and my cousin are using a home made forge built with a car wheel and a hand turned blower which my cousin built out in his place.
i dont have very much experience in Blacksmithing. but im hungery to learn more

forgingfool

whorobbedme wrote: »

For the last few months iv bein looking for a Blacksmihting course.
i have found 2, both in mayo. the first is a 5 day course in Enniscoe House. the second a 2 year course at the Cearta Inneona National Blacksmithing & Forging Centre in Belmullet, which im not even sure if its still up and going.
one of the problims for me is i live in Kilkenny which is a 5-6 hour bus jurny to Mayo.
At one stage Kilkenny city was full Blacksmiths, now there are around 2 in the county and a hand full of farriers.

At the moment myself and my cousin are using a home made forge built with a car wheel and a hand turned blower which my cousin built out in his place.
i dont have very much experience in Blacksmithing. but im hungery to learn more

The course in Belmullet is not running and I'm not sure about Enniscoe. Have a look at the training page on IABA's website http://www.irishblacksmiths.com There are one day courses available in Co. Wicklow. Other than that you have to go to the UK or elsewhere. You could get in contact with any of the IABA members in you area to see if they will give you a few pointers, you'll find a listing of members by county on the site as well.

whorobbedme

thanks for the link
the course in Enniscoe is on the 21st of April and they will be holding more in september and october depending on intrest.

whorobbedme

im building a bick coal forage.
has anyone any advice on how i should build it.
there's not much information out there on brick coal forges.

forgingfool

whorobbedme wrote: »

im building a bick coal forage.
has anyone any advice on how i should build it.
there's not much information out there on brick coal forges.

It all depends on what type of work you are intending to do in the forge and whether you want a side blast or bottom blast forge. Try looking at the I Forge Iron website they might have plans on there or you can ask for help on their forum. One thing I do know is not to use cement as it can interfere with fire-welding. You need to use a lime mortar and mix it with fine ash from the fire.

whorobbedme

cool, i'l check them out.
im planning on learning to weld with it.
its the size of the fire pot and what to use for the heart im having problims with.
i plan on doing some larg work too
im going for a bottem blower and thinking on using a break drum from a car for the fire pot.
was thinking red clay brick for the heart but im afraid it might crack and inter fear with welding and that

forgingfool

whorobbedme wrote: »

cool, i'l check them out.
im planning on learning to weld with it.
its the size of the fire pot and what to use for the heart im having problims with.
i plan on doing some larg work too
im going for a bottem blower and thinking on using a break drum from a car for the fire pot.
was thinking red clay brick for the heart but im afraid it might crack and inter fear with welding and that

Try and get hold of a truck brake drum, there bigger and a bit more heavy duty. You could set it into a piece of plate steel instead of directly onto the brick. That is what I did, in that way you are not in contact with the brick and they are less likely to crack. Don't weld the drum onto the plate as the drum is a type of cast metal and will expand at a different rate to the plate and will soon break up under the strain.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

whorobbedme

what thickness of plate steel would you reckon would do?

i'l post up my plans for the forge as soon as i get them drawn up for feed back

forgingfool

whorobbedme wrote: »

what thickness of plate steel would you reckon would do?

i'l post up my plans for the forge as soon as i get them drawn up for feed back

I would say a minimum thickness of 5mm but the thicker the better. The fire pot will take most of the heat but the plate will still warp. I have bolted my plate down rather than cement it in. Also I have left the fire pot loose in the plate so that they can expand and contract at their own rate without braking each other apart.

whorobbedme

was thinking of setting a few brackets into the brick work to sit the plate on.
and then go up the hight of a brick on the flat above the plate to hold the coals in.

what sort of brick should i use? thinking on refractory brick its 9x4.5x3 and costs 2euro a brick

forgingfool

I'd use high density fire bricks, they are hard to get in Ireland. The ones you get here brake up. I used 100mm x 6mm flat steel and bolted it too the plate and then cut-out a section to slide the steel into the fire.

frankie2shoes

whorobbedme wrote: »

was thinking of setting a few brackets into the brick work to sit the plate on.
and then go up the hight of a brick on the flat above the plate to hold the coals in.

what sort of brick should i use? thinking on refractory brick its 9x4.5x3 and costs 2euro a brick

Slightly off topic but where did you source the refactory bricks?
am planning on building a pizza oven and am having difficulty sourcing refactory bricks

whorobbedme

frankie2shoes wrote: »

Slightly off topic but where did you source the refactory bricks?
am planning on building a pizza oven and am having difficulty sourcing refactory bricks

here's there web page for ya

http://www.dineensales.com/Contact.aspx

whorobbedme

how would a steel frame made of steel angle and square tube hole up insted of fire brick to hold the steel plate and fire pot.

what typ of fule do you use and where can you get it?

yosemite_sam

whorobbedme wrote: »

For the last few months iv bein looking for a Blacksmihting course.
i have found 2, both in mayo. the first is a 5 day course in Enniscoe House. the second a 2 year course at the Cearta Inneona National Blacksmithing & Forging Centre in Belmullet, which im not even sure if its still up and going.
one of the problims for me is i live in Kilkenny which is a 5-6 hour bus jurny to Mayo.
At one stage Kilkenny city was full Blacksmiths, now there are around 2 in the county and a hand full of farriers.

At the moment myself and my cousin are using a home made forge built with a car wheel and a hand turned blower which my cousin built out in his place.
i dont have very much experience in Blacksmithing. but im hungery to learn more

Your right, there was a state of the art blacksmith school in Belmullet. There must have been millions thrown at it but Shell are now using the building

whorobbedme

yosemite_sam wrote: »

Your right, there was a state of the art blacksmith school in Belmullet. There must have been millions thrown at it but Shell are now using the building

i wonder what they did with all there equipment?

ThOnda

I'd love to do a photographic documentary project on blacksmith and their workshop. Having full time job, that would be limited to weekends and evenings.
Do you think any of the blacksmiths would be interested?

artyeva

whorobbedme wrote: »

i wonder what they did with all there equipment?

shell only have a ten year lease on that building and they moved in 2 years ago. the building was ''decomissioned'' if you want to put it that way as a blacksmith training site for about 5 or 6 years before they took up the lease. it had closed due to lack of funding [so they say round here anyway].

all the equipment is still there - boxed into the building. shell kind of built their offices around it, if you know what i mean. it's all still in there, in case it needs to be re-instated as a forge once shell move out.

forgingfool

Yeah it should be restarted as the blacksmith industry is crying out for training here in Ireland. There is €600,000 worth of equipment just sitting there, but Údarás na Gaeltachta have stood in the way of it re-opening. Údarás had two proposals put to them before Shell took over the building and did nothing about them. Now it is possible to move it somewhere ells in Mayo and they are blocking that by refusing to release the equipment despite the fact they did not pay and don't own it.

whorobbedme

how can they hold on to it if they dont own it? who dos anyway?
i say we liberate it. i could do with some equipment

whorobbedme

bein working on building my forge the last few months, heres a link to some photos, im happy to answer any questions or take advice

http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=58476&id=1069807103

O'Coonassa

Bumping this old thread just to try and discover if it's still the case that if you're looking for a full time course with a recognised qualification at the end of it you have to leave Ireland?

dollydishmop

forgingfool wrote: »

Warwickshire College


Warwickshire College,
Moreton Morrell
Warwick
CV35 9BL
Phone: Richard Bacon 01926 318260

Awwww....completely off-topic, sorry, but that is such a blast from the past....when I was a wee lass studying at Warwickshire College many moons ago, Richard was my business studies tutor
Delighted to see he's still there...can't remember much about his teaching skills, but I do remember that he was a good laugh!