Grim weather today. Wind, rain and hail. It went so dark this morning it seemed that night was falling. Just right for staying in doors and stoking up the fire, so I headed down to the Weald & Downland Museum to spend some time with John and Nick in the forge. They were having an away day from the Old Kiln forge at the Tilford rural life museum and doing a day at the Weald & Down instead.
My aim was to make a couple of new bowlhooks with John and Nick's help. And thanks to Vicky the Range Rover I've just come into some rather beefy coil springs to use for the material - they even broke off at the right length to get started.
John got to work straightening out the length of spring steel for me.
I thought I'd managed to hide at the back and work the bellows but suddenly I found myself wielding the hammer very inexpertly.
and trying to get just the shape I was after for the hook end.
We had a slight technical hitch. After leaving the new hooks at the edge of the fire to cool slowly they should have been soft enough to file the new bevels onto them, but something went awry and the hooks using the range rover spring steel were still too hard to file! I managed to get one done by heating it to a very dull cherry and filing it hot, but the other one remained too hard to file. Very strange. At the same time I repaired a couple of broken hooks. So it's back to bowls now.
Many thanks to John and Nick for allowing me to interrupt their day in the forge, as always I learnt a lot and I can't wait to try the new hook out.
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