Metal began flaking off the glowing orange steel as it cooled. The student wrenched the bar sideways around a spiral jig until it faded to gray and creaked in protest.
“Cool,” said Hannah Grenier, 22, of Oxford Hills, as she walked back to the forge with a half-completed steel spiral.
“She thinks it’s cool,” said blacksmith Robert Adams, 75, of Winterport. “The end result will be cool. For now, it’s hot.”
University of Maine sculpture students and passersby gathered around a forge and three anvils Sept. 17 as guest artisan Adams led a blacksmith workshop on the creation of steel crosses and spirals he refers to as scrolls. They set up shop by the sculpture building in the Collins Center of the Arts parking lot.
As he instructed Grenier in completing her scroll, he asked for another volunteer to start heating metal in the forge.
“I like them to make stuff,” Adams said. “That’s how you remember.”
Click for the rest of the story by Aislinn Sarnacki in the Bangor Daily News.
Posted in Economy, Education and Schools, Energy, Maine
Tagged anvil, atmospheric forge, blacksmith, blacksmith workshop, Collins Center of the Arts, forge, hammer, Orono, smithy, steel, stimulus funds, students, UMaine, University of Maine
My name is Keith Michaud and this is “Letters From Away,” a blog written by a Mainer living outside the comfortable and sane confines of New England. The blog is intended for Mainers, whether they live in the Pine Tree State or beyond, and for anyone who has loved ’em, been baffled by ’em or both. Ayuh, I am “from away.” Worse still, I live on the Left Coast – in California. Enjoy! Or not. Your choice.
Letters From Away 