PHF May Newsletter, 2012

PHF May 2012 News and Announcements It's Our Birthday! Volunteer Opportunities Classes Available in May Teen & Tween Classes Open Smithy Special Events Special in May Words from the Smith

It's Our Fifth Birthday!
May 5th, 5:00 pm
Come one! Come all! Bring something to grill and celebrate five years in business!
If you haven't had a chance to see the place yet, this is a no-strings-attached opportunity to do so. No hard sell of either classes or things, just a way to find out how it is that Mike and Carl get so dirty, though we'll have the place cleaned up a bit on your behalf. More details
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Volunteer Opportunities:
A Forging Party on the Waltham Common
May 12th & 13th
The weekend after our Fifth Birthday is the The Watch City Festival which is sponsored by Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation.
We would love to have any of our students or fellow smiths join us.
This festival is tons of fun, and even more so when you see it from the forge. If you have your own forge, please feel especially encouraged to bring it and show off your skills. If you don't bring tools, you are welcome to come and maybe work at our forge, or simple help schmooze the public. We'll be demonstrating on the Waltham Common, all day (10-7) Saturday and Sunday. Please let us know if you can make it.
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May Classes:
As of this writing, there is still room in the May classes listed below. Click the class names below for more detailed information.

A Taste of Blacksmithing ($60)
May 3rd, 14th, 16th, 6:30PM to 9:30PM
May 18th, 7:00PM to 10:00PM

Rudiments I ($320)
May 9th, 23rd, 30th, and June 6th, 6:30PM to 9:30PM

Sundays at the Forge: ($35)
Twisting the Afternoon Away
May 6th, 2:00PM to 5:00PM
and
Striker Team
May 20th, 2:00PM to 4:00PM
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Teen & Tween Classes

A Word from the Youth Coordinator:

If you have a youth interested in blacksmithing in general, or blacksmithing camp this summer, please note we have an e-mail list where we send out information on classes specifically for youth! Send us an e-mail and we're happy to put you on it (it's very low volume, we promise no more than 12 e-mails a year, and we won't sell your address to anyone).

A Tween's First Taste of Blacksmithing $85 (maximum 4 students)
May 4th 11:30AM to 3:00PM (includes lunch break: BYOL) A variation on our "A Taste of Blacksmithing" adjusted for younger students.

A Teen's First Taste of Blacksmithing $60 (maximum 8 students)
May 29th 11:30AM to 3:00PM (includes lunch break: BYOL) A variation on our "A Taste of Blacksmithing" adjusted for teens.
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Open Smithy $25/hour  - A Taste of Blacksmithing or equivalent required

Thursdays - May 10th, 17th, 24th, and 31st 6:30PM to 9:30PM
Friday - May 4th, 6:30PM to 9:30PM
Sundays - May 6th, 4:00PM to 9:00PM and May 13th and 20th, 4:00PM to 6:00PM
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Special Events:

Birthday Open House
May 5th, 5:00PM
Bring food to grill, eat, drink, and be merry, while we celebrate 5 years at the forge (feel free to bring friends, extra points fro bringing five of them)!

Watch City Steampunk Festival
May 12th and 13th
Experienced students please let us know if you want to come and help schmooze/smith with us - it's a great festival so come and have fun even if you're not going to swing a hammer. http://internationalsteampunkcitywaltham.org/

New England Blacksmiths Spring Meet
May 18th - 20th
Blacksmithing networking and learning. We can't recommend this enough! Check-out their website.

Knifemaking
Advanced Knife Making III--unplugged ($600)
June 25th through 30th (all day, all week, self-paced)
Students will choose their own hours to fit their schedule over the course of five days under the tutelage of Shane Stainton in what has become our annual advanced knife-making experience. This year, we'll be working exclusively with traditional knife-making techniques, no power tools.

Nothing But Knives is a prerequisite for this class.

Making Iron
July 7 Bloomery in Stowe. Some practical fireworks. We will attempt once again to smelt iron from ore. More details next month.
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Special in May:

Mother's Day Gifts ~ looking for something for Mom for Mother's Day? A gift certificate will let her pound on hot metal while thinking about how much you kids drive her bonkers she loves her lovely, caring offspring. For something less stress relieving, we'll have our work available at the Watch City Festival and at our May 5th open house.

Month of May Discount:
SCA members get %10 off for the month of May.
Happy New Year!

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Words from the Smith:

Light My Fire

A couple of years ago a smith on vacation dropped by for an open-smithy fix. He lit his fire with newspaper, but he rolled it up in a mushroom-cap shape, unlike the sphere I usually make and teach. I pooh-pooh the technique largely because I was convinced _my_ method was as good or better, and it had been serving me for years. Well... Several weeks ago I tried his method on forge 4 (the rivet forge near the big door) and it worked _really_ well. Instead of the ball of paper trying to 'float' up when the coal and coke are disturbed, it was a flat thing that stayed buried even as I jostled stuff about and piled yet more fuel on top of it.

Heh, every now and then, y'learn something.

I still like three full sheets of newspaper, but now I take them all at once and crumple/roll an edge toward the center, as I get close, I rotate the mess and still gripping near the center roll the upper side in and rotate and roll, rotate and roll until I'm ~270˚ around the circle and it's 6-8" across. I tuck the remaining tail in with the thin tips sticking out so I can light them (demonstrations avalable). The final product looks a little like a very-short-tentacled jellyfish. Light the 'tentacles', put it over the tuyere, give it a little air, pile fuel on top, then give it full air.

The nice thing about this method is that as the paper burns out (unlike the ball-o-paper method) it doesn't leave a void with a solid dome to the top of it. This means that as the paper burns away, there's a decent chance the fuel will collapse into the void on its own and not require stabbing with the poker. And that means we can get the forges all lit a little bit more quickly before our "A Taste of Blacksmithing" classes. I'll be doing it this way at the Fitchburg Forge-In this October when I attempt to reclaim my title.
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Prospect Hill Forge: The Blacksmithng Classroom
781 816 9433 (781 81 oxide)