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Charlie Carpenter stokes the fire in his forge Feb. 25 before demonstrating how he creates and shapes knives at his home workshop.
Mark Hemmer fits a horseshoe to the hoof of a horse Feb. 23 at Quarter Line Dressage in Chesterfield. Hemmer uses a mobile forge shape and fit pre-made shoes onto horses’ hooves.
Mark Hemmer picks up a hot horse shoe that he had just hammered into shape on his anvil Feb. 23 at Quarter Line Dressage in Chesterfield.
Charlie Carpenter holds one of his finished knives Feb. 25 at his home workshop.
Pat McCarty, owner of Washington Forge, handles hot metal in his workshop. His recent creations include coffee scoops, iridescent leaves, a letter opener and a whimsical fish.
Charlie Carpenter stokes the fire in his forge Feb. 25 before demonstrating how he creates and shapes knives at his home workshop.
Mark Hemmer fits a horseshoe to the hoof of a horse Feb. 23 at Quarter Line Dressage in Chesterfield. Hemmer uses a mobile forge shape and fit pre-made shoes onto horses’ hooves.
Mark Hemmer picks up a hot horse shoe that he had just hammered into shape on his anvil Feb. 23 at Quarter Line Dressage in Chesterfield.
Charlie Carpenter holds one of his finished knives Feb. 25 at his home workshop.
Pat McCarty, owner of Washington Forge, handles hot metal in his workshop. His recent creations include coffee scoops, iridescent leaves, a letter opener and a whimsical fish.
In 2018, Charlie Carpenter, founder and owner of Big River Forge in Dittmer, Missouri, appeared as a contestant on “Forged in Fire,” the History Channel’s reality show that pits highly skilled bladesmiths against one another as they re-create iconic bladed weapons from the past, using a blacksmith’s typical arsenal — a hammer, an anvil and a forge.
“Forged in Fire” sought Carpenter for the show after discovering him online. From the start, Carpenter wasn’t interested. He thought the series was “cheesy,” he says, with its strict time constraints and other arbitrary parameters that bear little resemblance to the forging of swords and knives in the real world.
Long story short, Carpenter eventually conceded and agreed to be on the show. But it didn’t go well. He was eliminated in the first round.
“I just knew I was going to get there and they were going to throw me a dead chicken, a roll of duct tape and a bobby pin and say, ‘Make a knife out of that!’” Carpenter said recently, chuckling. “That’s just what I expected, and that’s just about what I got.”
Despite his misgivings, Carpenter concedes there has been silver lining to the show.
“Honestly, as much as I didn’t like it, ‘Forged in Fire’ has rekindled interest in blade smithing, which has spilled over into blacksmithing in general,” he said.
Other blacksmiths, such as Pat McCarty, say the show has created a virtual craze for the craft.
“Ever since ‘Forged in Fire’ came on everybody wants to jump in and be a blacksmith,” he said. McCarty lives in Washington and owns Washington Forge.
Likewise, local farrier and blacksmith Mark Hemmer says the series has led to a scarcity of anvils, and, in turn, driven up their price. “The cost of anvils has gone sky high because people are just searching and searching for them,” Hemmer said.
“Forged in Fired” aside, for years, numerous organizations have kept the art of blacksmithing alive. Across the country there have long been independently run blacksmithing schools and experienced blacksmiths offering informal classes. In Illinois, SIU Carbondale offers a Master of Fine Arts blacksmith program.
Local and national nonprofits, too, have long promoted the art. There’s the Artist Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA) and its affiliates, including the Blacksmith Association of Missouri (BAM). Throughout the year, BAM hosts a variety of events for its members, including bi-monthly meetings, hands-on workshops and demonstrations led by seasoned blacksmiths.
Founded in 1983, BAM’s membership has grown from 12 members to nearly 575 today. The majority are hobbyists, but a small percentage earn a living as professional blacksmiths, according to Santo Giuffrida, BAM’s president.
By and large, BAM’s members are men, but women belong to the association, as well, and BAM would welcome more, says Giuffrida.
According to McCarty, a member of BAM, “Blacksmithing is not a male-dominated craft at all. Anybody can do it, and it really doesn’t take a lot of strength. It all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, but the metal is heated and it’s soft, so it’s easy to shape, no matter what your physical size.”
Blacksmithing these days captivates the interest of a wide variety of people. Hemmer, also a member of BAM, observes, “It’s kind of funny, at a blacksmithing conference, you can tell there are the artist blacksmiths, who are wearing Birkenstocks, and there are a couple of guys that wear leather kilts. And then there are the farmers in bib overalls.”
The items made by blacksmiths today are at least as varied as the smiths themselves.
By day, Carpenter works as vice president for a commercial cleaning company in St. Louis. Back home in Dittmer, he spends countless hours in his workshop, creating custom knives that fetch anywhere from $450 for a hunting knife with a mono-steel blade to as much as $2,000 for a Damascus knife made from multiple layers of steel that are hand-forged and hammered to create intricate, wavy patterns in the blade.
Carpenter has earned the designation of Journeyman Smith from the American Bladesmith Society (ABS), but he began specializing in knives only after he learned the basics of general blacksmithing — and he still dabbles in that today.
Among his latest creations: a triangular, hand-forged dinner bell, along with a divot tool for golfers and one-of-a-kind guitar picks — both items made from Damascus steel.
As for McCarty, many of his pieces are utilitarian, decorative or, frequently, both: coffee scoops, pot racks, a whimsical fish, iridescent leaves, a letter opener with a decorative marble held in place by a delicate tendril of steel.
Given the choice, McCarty prefers working with used materials. “I like to recycle things,” he says. Using an old scrap of metal with “pits and cracks and dents” allows his work to “pop and jump and give it that ‘wow’ factor,” he says. One of McCarty’s creations is a feather, forged from the iron of an old bed frame, then mounted to wood he salvaged from an icehouse that shuttered years ago in Moselle.
Meanwhile, Hemmer, who is semi-retired now, has spent much of his life working as a certified journeyman farrier (CJF), traveling from stable to stable, shoeing horses’ hooves. (Up until several years ago, he regularly shod the horses at Grant’s Farm.)
These days, Hemmer says, he “hardly ever” makes a horseshoe by hand, primarily because the variety and quality of pre-made shoes today makes it unnecessary in most instances. Still, Hemmer regularly uses his blacksmithing skills in the process of hot-shoeing a horse, which involves heating a pre-made shoe in his forge, shaping and modifying it on the anvil, then burning it onto the horse’s hoof — all with the aim of creating a perfect fit.
Hemmer lives in St. Louis County, his property nestled between Eureka and Pacific. At home, he can be found in his workshop, hand-forging the tools of his trade — tongs, hammers, punches and drifts. Often, he makes one tool in the service of making yet another. “You make a tool to make a tool to make a tool,” Hemmer says.
The work of a blacksmith comes with its share of challenges.
There are the daily hazards of the job — cuts and burns, for starters. “You can’t even imagine,” Carpenter says. “Everything in the shop will burn you — it’s mad.”
And there’s the noise — the intense pounding of the blacksmith’s power hammer and the insistent blast of the propane-gas forge, “roaring like a lion,” as McCarty says.
For Hemmer, the unpredictability of any given horse keeps him on his toes. “I’ve been kicked, I’ve been thrown to the ground. I get bit more than anything,” he said.
Beyond the physical hazards of the job, earning a steady income as a blacksmith can be a challenge, as well. Oftentimes, it’s “feast or famine,” McCarty says.
As a farrier, Hemmer sympathizes with artisan blacksmiths like McCarty and Carpenter. “It’s hard for the average blacksmith to make money because people don’t want to pay. People don’t realize that’s handmade.
“It’s hard for an artisan to make a living,” he said.
Hemmer says that farriers like himself have an easier time making money because, relatively speaking, they are in such high demand.
“I could easily name 50 full-time farriers in the St. Louis metropolitan area. There are just a lot, a lot of horses, and all horses need their feet taken care of,” he said.
When all is said and done, the work of a blacksmith — the bladesmith and farrier included — has its share of lasting rewards.
On a wall in his shop, Hemmer displays a prized collection of hand-forged horseshoes given to him by farriers from all over the world — Japan, England and beyond. He has hammers and other tools that mean a lot to him, as well.
In the community of blacksmiths, it’s not uncommon for friends to give one another the tools they have made. Each one bears the touchmark of the maker — their initials, a logo or both. Hemmer has given away countless tools, marked “MH”, and he has received many in turn.
For Carpenter, the meaningfulness of his work and the prospect of his own mortality have led him back to the anvil again and again.
“Creating something that is going to be a piece of history is really important to me,” he said. “Two, three, four generations from now maybe someone will tell a story about how grandma bought this custom knife for grandpa for their anniversary. My name will be on that knife, and, all of a sudden, I’m part of other people’s history too.”
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