Welcome to the fascinating dynamic of hammer, anvil and hot iron! Our exciting Blacksmithing workshop will put the hammer in your hand.

Professional Instruction

Our teacher is Tom Allison, an experienced professional with a passion for blacksmithing. With his easy-to-learn methods and expert guidance you can start forging straightaway.

Learning by doing: forge your own tools!

Each participant will gain experience by crafting their own unique tool. Imagine, in years to come you could still be using a knife, chisel or fire poker you made yourself!

For those who fall in love with this craft and want to learn more, we plan to offer an advanced workshop.

1-day course

The blacksmithing day of the craft/traditional skill course is designed to give you a taste of the practical blacksmithing. The course will cover safety tools and equipment needed and how to set up a blacksmith forge. The blacksmithing techniques covered will be drawing down and forging a basic set, bending, chasing. Depending upon individual skill level we would hope that you would be to make 2 pieces: One an iron leaf ended fire poker. This piece incorporates all of the above techniques. In the afternoon would progress to a simple knife. The knife will be made from either steel or stainless steel, this giving the student experience of the difference between iron and steel, and how it is forged. This piece will help to further develop the primary blacksmithing technique of drawing down (thinning out).

2-day course

In the 2-day course we will cover safety and equipment. We will proceed as the one-day course, starting with the basics and the forging of and iron leaf ended fire poker in the morning. The afternoon will continue with the one-piece knife from stainless steel or steel. The second day will continue with tool making. The student will be given the option of making either a 2” (50mm) wood chisel or a spoke shave/draw knife. These pieces are made with help of a striker (helper with sledge hammer). This introduces new techniques and skills and is valuable in widening the scope of forged work that can be under taken whilst also identifying the personal limits; it also is helping our proto smiths to understand their own personnel forging limitations

4-day course

This is an in-depth course giving participants the chance of immersing them selves for a few days in the world of blacksmithing. Open to all levels of experience from beginner to advanced. This course will be very much tailored to the student’s own focus of interest within blacksmithing. For a beginner smith this course will follow some syllabus as the 1 and 2 day course. Further techniques covered will be hole punching, splinting and cutting, mortise and tenons, metalwork joinery without welding and how to make blacksmith tongs and hardening and tempering. This is just a suggestion of what I would cover in the course to provide the must common and essential techniques of blacksmithing, but is very much open to personal tailored approach