Whew

So, metalworking. Finished a ladle a week or so ago, and have been working on joints and forge welding.
I'm not going to cover everything today though because it'd be too long. For the ladle, first thing we did was make a taper on one end of a length of metal. To do this we heated it up in a kiln. I've been using a gas kiln because that is where one of the shorter anvils was located, but some of the class use coal to build fires. Once it is nice and hot, one is supposed to brush of the oxidization flakes with the metal brush shown below. That was the single most challenging thing for me to do the first day. Jamming one's hand along a red-hot poker is unnerving. Also, if done properly, this sends sparks everywhere. I got the hang of it the 2nd week though. Gloves help. Once it's been brushed (and it's hopefully still hot) you hammer it it to the shape you want. As mentioned last post, that is easier said than done. Since the metal heats up, we used tongs to hold the end instead of our hands. Most of my tools can be seen below.

Eventually, after much pounding away, I managed to taper one end, and flatten the other, the tapered end would attach to the bowl of the ladle, and the flattened end would be decorated

All that took me about 6 hours . The Instructor did it in 20-30 minutes.