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Old 06-24-2008, 08:53 AM
J.Arthur Loose's Avatar
J.Arthur Loose J.Arthur Loose is offline
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Bladesmithing classes at Peter's Valley Craft School

I've taught now for 3 years at Peter's Valley Craft School in Northwest New Jersey and this year was really pleasant. Usually I have 9-10 students and I run myself ragged checking up on everyone, showing them hammer tricks, blade shaping, geometry and all the rest. This year I had five students, all reasonably experienced and self-directed... one of whom was a very spry 77 years old. We started off the first day forging blades in mild steel and by day two, everyone had at least one blade forged out of 1084. Peter's Valley has 10 forging stations and it was fun getting back into the coal.




On day 3 we began grinding... now that we have two Baders with flat platens the grinding stage of the class goes a lot smoother. I like to finish day 3 with heat-treating demo where I show students how to read the transformation from pearlite to austenite and back down, including recalescence, which is always a big hit with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the magic of what we do.




By day 4, some students wanted to go back to forging and some wanted to explore forge-welding cable damascus. Doug, pictured below, brought some really nice quality cable and got some practice on the air hammer for drawing it out after welding. I disclosed my secret coal-cave? technique, which I developed during my first year or so of bladesmithing, when I did all my damascus blades in coal. It creates a really clean space with good atmospheric control for doing damascus & heat-treating. With the help of a thermocouple we were able to show what was really going on in there and sure enough, bringing that coal-cave? down lets it sit right at 1450-1500 for the heat-treat. Bringing it up we were able to keep it right around 2300 without overheating & melting things.





I have really come to enjoy teaching these classes. There aren't too many other craft schools embracing knives, and department head Dick Sargent is mostly responsible for it. Dick is an amazing volume of blacksmithing & fabricating knowledge and I love talking shop with him. There's also a lot of smelting energy happening at Peter's Valley, again, due to Dick. Here is an article from Ornamental and Miscellaneous Fabricator on curved stairs including some of his work, which is pretty amazing.

I'd also like to take a moment and mention that Don Fogg is teaching a class on hamon at Peter's Valley from Aug 22 to 26.
Hamon the Art of Temperline: Creative Heat Treating

I'm thinking of auditing in exchange for doing a demo at the Peter's Valley Pig Roast later this year... sign up soon!


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