Contemporary Blacksmithing

A beginner's guide to blacksmithing, featuring easy and accessible projects for making beautiful and practical items like keyrings, coat hooks, plant hangers, and more. Interested in blacksmithing but unsure how to start? In this comprehensive how-to book, you'll work through 14 simple step-by-step projects, choose design variations, and make your own changes. You, too, can learn to think like a blacksmith! The projects in the book focus on making simple, effective, well-designed, and, above all, usable household items-things that can be used by the maker with several options on how to customize to their own needs and design preferences. In these pages, you'll learn about: . essential tools for your beginning blacksmith shop; . 14 blacksmithing projects for your home-hooks, key rings, bottle openers, hand tools, and more; . important safety information; . the basics of metallurgy; and . an ergonomic understanding of how to swing a hammer to shape metal effectively regardless of your size or strength. Expert blacksmith, welder, and teacher Joy Fire presents accessible projects for beginners of every type, encouraging diversity and equity in the field of blacksmithing and enabling readers to gain the ability to forge on their own and begin to create their own work. The projects serve as a starting point, offering design varieties and introducing multiple possibilities for making interesting and usable items. They are meant to act as a foundation you can build on to become the kind of blacksmith you want to be. AUTHOR: Joy Fire is a professional blacksmith and highly sought after, with a master of fine art from Claremont Graduate University. She sits on the Governance Committee for the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths and is based in Santa Ana, California. 200 colour photographs