Afternoon visit with Stuart Willis

[nc_cooter]

I finally made a visit to the S Willis Forge, located about 20 miles from where I live. He even has a cool address "553 Blacksmith Trail".
Stepping through the door was like a time warp back to the local blacksmith shop in the community where I grew up. The smell of a banked coal fire, racks of stock, piles of stock, hammers, tongs and in general, the controlled chaos of a working blacksmith shop.
For the next few hours, we covered both BS's, blacksmithing and the other one. This was the first time I had ever watched anyone other than me pound steel. Boy, did I ever learn a thing or three. It was a pure pleasure to watch a "master of his craft" at work.

Thanks Stuart.

 

[J.S. Carter]

Thats awesome, I recently got in on an spur of the moment mini hammer-in at a buddy of mine's house, Jeff Davis. (MadAxeMan for all you old timers) we were hammerin out a gnarly period knife when 2 other local black smiths show up and we watch this dude turn out a wrap around hawk in like 5 - 10 minutes, it was amazing. I got a few lessons in forge welding definantly

 

[Stuart Willis]

After leaving my shop I got the grand tour of Mike's shop. He has has some really nice equipment and great ideas about space saving. I plan on stealing some the ideas in the near future when build my new shop. We really had a good visit and needless to say we both have all the Bull cleaned out of our shops now.