How did I get here?
I have always made stuff with my hands. My childhood was spent taking things to bits, and making things out of the parts. Through school, the stuff I enjoyed most and ultimately succeeded at was the practical metalwork and woodwork under what they term as “Design and Technology” nowadays. I further developed these skills at University and then, for most of my adult life, space to tinker was always a limitation. That was until 2016 when I moved back into my childhood home in a little hamlet called Gate Foot. Finally I had a workshop space.
During one tinkering session, I ended up building a small forge in order to heat treat a blade for a knife project I was working on. On a whim, I shoved some metal in there to get it hot and bend it about and came out with my own hand-forged flint striker…. and a bit of a blacksmithing bug!
The little forge was replaced with a slightly bigger one and I began to bend more stuff about. I consumed books and YouTube videos and began to learn the traditional techniques that would latterly have been passed down, craftsmen to apprentice, for thousands of years.
Roll on Christmas 2019 and lots of my friends and family find themselves getting hand-forged trinkets as gifts, and the inevitable questions get asked; “are you selling these?”, “is this a new venture?”, etc. And I have to admit to myself I’m enjoying it a lot more than sitting and clicking at a screen – and the stuff isn’t coming out half bad. I resolve to try and spend a bit of time tinkering away and pushing it to see if it goes anywhere – while maintaining my freelance design job as regular income.
Then along came a little thing called COVID-19. My design work – for which my clients are mainly in the hospitality and events sectors, all but dries up. Strangely, while the world goes bananas, I have an opportunity to push the forge business ahead and see what happens…
…and it turned out that quite a lot of people wanted nice hand-forged things. The orders rolled in. Within a month I’m shipping products from my garage to the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and have an order book with 3-weeks’ wait. I’ve re-invested most of the profit at the point back into tools and equipment and so haven’t quite broken even – but I have been only working half a week whilst childcare for a 2-year old isn’t available due to the lockdown.
Three months later, lockdown is easing. Nursery is open. I can work nearly a full week… my order book is still full, I have a full workshop of tools, and I appear to have accidentally become a blacksmith…
Not many people can say they genuinely love what they do for a living. I consider myself fortunate that I can get up in the morning, light my fires and spend my days working on a craft as old as the hills which I still consider to be some kind of magic.
