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* Anacortes blacksmith pounds out a piece of history
Paul Thorne doesn’t keep too many irons in the fire. He strikes while the iron is hot, and sometimes he has an ax to grind. Literally.
To a blacksmith such as Thorne, these sayings have real meaning.
An iron must be shaped when it reaches a specific temperature. If it gets too hot or cools off, it is ruined. Therefore, a smith never has too many irons in the fire and strikes a piece when it is hot. An ax must be ground and sharpened before it cools.
These were among the fascinating bits of ax lore Thorne shared with a camera crew that filmed him at his South Fidalgo Island studio last month forging an American colonial-style ax head for an episode of History Channel’s “Modern Marvels.” The episode, which is about the history of the ax, is scheduled to premiere Wednesday, May 7 — but check listings because the date is subject to change.
Producer Steve Durgin and cameraman Brian Miller of Actuality Productions of Woodland Hills, Calif., filmed Thorne as he went through the whole process of creating a colonial ax. The producers knew of him from an episode of Discovery Channel’s “Big Build” program three years ago, when Thorne was featured as the blacksmith for a Viking ship project.
During the filming, Durgin asked Thorne what he would say to someone who thinks blacksmiths just get metal hot and pound on it.
“That’s exactly what it is. It’s fire and banging,” Thorne said.
Even the word “smith” reflects this fact. “It means to smite,” Thorne said.
But learning to forge steel did involve a leap in technical understanding. Thorne explained that heat and hammering change iron into steel by adding one-tenth of 1 percent of carbon to it. An iron sits in the forge until it reaches more than 2,000˚F — hot enough to cause all the cells in your fingers to burst as the water inside turns to steam if you get them too close to the red-hot metal, he said.
When the metal is hot enough, the smith hits it repeatedly.
“I am using impact energy to mold metal,” Thorne said.
He knows a piece has turned to steel when a magnet won’t stick to it.
A good smith would take about an hour to make an ax blade, and the cost would be comparable to what we’d pay today for the cost of an hour of time in an auto shop.
Because making steel is such a time-consuming, costly endeavor, only the blades of colonial axes were turned to steel, not the whole ax head. Thorne said old European axes were thinner and well-suited to splitting wood, but colonial axes were serious wedge-shaped tools that allowed strapping young men to chop through the New World’s forests.
The metal had to be imported from Europe by ship and carried into the wilderness on horseback.
“It was very, very valuable. Certainly more valuable for survival than gold,” he said.
Although the process appears simple, Thorne said it is challenging to do.
“I’ve been a smith for 25 years and I’m hard pressed to make an ax,” he said.
Thorne studied art and earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial design at Western Washington University. He had a career in undersea engineering and design before starting Olympic Forge in Santa Barbara, Calif. He started Thorne Metals Studio after the family moved back to the Northwest in 1988. Often working with his father and three sons, he produces unique metal furnishings, architectural forgings and sculpture for public and private collections.
Teaching seems to come naturally to him. He offers classes at his studio and is a familiar sight at high school job fairs. He often draws crowds as he provides a running commentary about what he is doing at the Anacortes Arts Festival’s Working Artists Area.
Durgin said Thorne proved to be a good choice for the documentary.
“Paul certainly knows his stuff about smithing, and has the cleanest most orderly workshop I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Blacksmiths to demonstrate their skills
The public is invited to view blacksmithing in progress at the spring conference of the Northwest Blacksmith Association 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 26, at the Skagit County Fairgrounds at Virginia and Hazel in Mount Vernon. Admission is $5 per person or $10 per family and includes viewing of gallery, archive and auctions items and Saturday night auction attendance. The auction begins at 7 p.m.
The 600 or so members of the Northwest Blacksmith Association from Washington and Oregon pound hot iron into railings, chandeliers, decorative adornments and the most delicate flowers imaginable, considering those fine petals began as a cold steel bar.
Conference chairmen Clyde Caldwell, of Mount Vernon, and Dave Davelaar, of Anacortes, said that the NWBA wants to spread the knowledge that blacksmithing is not just horseshoeing, but that great art and practical creations come off the smith’s anvil.
The Skagit County Fairground’s office number is 336-9453.
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