“I would encourage people to investigate the way things were made in the past, by our ancestors,” blacksmith Adam Palmer told me. “There was a lot of talent, and a lot of that is getting lost.”
Making things by hand inspires Adam, blacksmithing on and off for the last nine years. His first forge consisted of a wood stove, a hair drier and a dumbbell weight for an anvil.
He’s upgraded since, and now uses a propane fueled forge. He has made a lot of his own tools, which Adam explained is an inherent part of the craft: “There is a freedom to it — I can make any tool I want.”
“I’ve made my own chisels, punches,” he said.
Adam often uses upcycled steel. Repurposed metal varies in quality, and Adam has no way to test it. For custom orders and other works, he uses steel or other metals ordered from a manufacturer.
He is careful to disclose to customers when he has used upcycled metal.
Self-taught in his art, Adam has never taken a blacksmithing class. “I was kind of a stereotypical boy when I started to get into this — I wanted to make all these knives and axes,” he said.
The first knife he made shattered, because he couldn’t get the metal hot enough in his original wood fired forge. Now his skills and tools have come a long way, and he makes beautiful knives, mostly on commission.
Lately, Adam has enjoyed making things different from his original interests — keychains and hooks decorated with hearts, flowers or leaves, cute little mushroom men, hair pins and other decorative items. “I kind of just made whatever I’m interested in.”
The mushroom men are small metal mushrooms with faces on the stems. “That is one thing that made me smile while I was making it,” Adam said.
Adam has dabbled in making jewelry using a variety of metals — stainless steel, brass, aluminum, copper.
Adam described how he made a trowel. He started by figuring out which features he liked and didn’t like in various trowels.
Using a steel shovel blank from the old Ames plant in Clarksburg, he made a tool to help create a nice, curved shape.
Next, he turned the handle out of West Virginia walnut wood and capped the wood with copper pipe fittings. He assembled the tool, shaped the edges slightly and coated it in boiled linseed oil to give it a nice dark finish.
A lot of his projects are like that — only a small percentage of the process is actual blacksmithing.
Adam really enjoys the work when the process is flowing. “I really like when I’m doing the forging on something I’ve done before, and I’ve really got it down pat so I can do it very quickly. That’s very satisfying,” he added; “you get a rhythm, it’s like music.”
He described another aspect of blacksmithing he likes; “it’s fun to make things go squish. That’s all blacksmithing is — advanced, hot squishing.”
“A lot of care and attention to detail goes into anything I make. There is so much of that that goes into making even a simple item like a hook,” he said.
Hammering away in his forge, he thinks about those who’ve practiced this art before him.
He observed how we often tend to idolize historical craftsmen — think about objects that end up in museums. But for many, this work was just a day job and not everything they made was great. With that in mind, Adam encourages all artists to give themselves grace to make mistakes.
ALDONA BIRD is a journalist, previously writing for The Dominion Post. She uses experience gained working on organic farms in Europe to help her explore possibilities of local productivity and sustainable living in Preston County. Email columns@dominionpost.com
