Dec 19, 2016
Lee began blacksmithing in 1973 at the age of 12, when he began
his apprenticeship to Larry Mann. He has been a member of the
Artist-Blacksmiths Association of North America since 1974.
He is best known in the blacksmith community for his research and
knowledge of smelting or bloomery. He takes rocks that
contain iron ore and melts them into a bloom of iron, then he
forges the bloom into sculptures. In the episode, he talks
about the qualities and benefits of working with bloom iron, and
how it forge welds like a dream! He has been an ABANA member
since 1974 and he reminisces about the early conferences in those
days in our interview, this brings me to our sponsor for today’s
episode, ABANA.
The Artist Blacksmith Association of North America, AKA ABANA is
a non-profit organization that began in 1973 to perpetuate the
noble art of blacksmithing. ABANA encourages and facilitates
the training of blacksmiths and exposes the art of blacksmithing to
the public.
Head on over to the website, www.abana.org , where you can learn
about their membership benefits and sign up to be added to their
mailing list, which is the best way to learn about affiliate and
regional events and other blacksmithing announcements. Thank
you ABANA!
What We Talked About
- Lee has been blacksmithing for about 40 years, he started when
he was 12! After school, he would hang out with a couple of
blacksmiths in town, Larry Mann and Peter O’Shaunessy. During his
summers in college he worked and learned from Ken Barnes in
Maine.
- Lee has been a member of ABANA since 1974 and went to the early
ABANA conferences when the total attendee count would be 100
people. He remembers watching Francis Whitaker and Albert Paley
demonstrating efficient processes working with large stock.
- To keep him interested in his craft he took up smelting in
1998. His curiosity of how people got iron in pre-industrial times
led him to research the history of smelting.
- The first time he tried to smelt iron from iron ore, it took
him and his friend twelve times over a course of 9 months to be
successful. A few things they learned over those 9 months was how
to make good charcoal, how to make different kinds of furnaces and
air supply’s, and how to identify good iron ore from the
earth.
- Lee’s knowledge and expertise in smelting has offered
opportunities to travel around the world lecturing and teaching
about smelting. One of his trips took him to Sudan (UCL Qatar) to
study with colleagues from the University of London on how the
ancient civilization, the Kushites, made iron through
smelting. The archaeologists are researching and studying the
remains of a large iron production. Here’s the documentary
about the archaeology project, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPU8Uwa-jBQ
- Lee teaches one to two smelting classes a year in the US, you
can visit his website for the latest scheduled classes.
- Lee mentions a few online resources about the smelting craft:
- He has published many shop report articles about his smelting
findings on his website
- There is FB page called Iron Smelters of the World to see what
people are doing with it around the world.
- A smelting forum on the Bladesmith’s forum called Bloomers and
buttons.
- The Historical Metallurgy Society in England will soon publish
their back journals online
- A book called
American Iron 1607 – 1900 by Robert Gordan
Guest Links
A Big Thank You to today’s sponsor – ABANA,
www.abana.org
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