Fall Forging with a Side Dish of Chanterelles

Fall is here with cooler weather, longer evenings and the smell of wood-smoke in the air each night in Carmel. At this time of year, working at the forge hammering out fireplace tools is particularly appropriate. There are so many wonderful things to be made in forged steel that I thought I would blog on about one of my favorites. Consider if you will, the simple and humble hand-forged hook and its infinite varieties of style.

One of my favorite designs is a hook by Alex Weygers in his book The Modern Blacksmith. Alex Weygers was a true Renaissance man who lived in Carmel Valley, CA during my younger years.

When I was about 8 years old my mother was acquainted with Alex Weygers' and his wife Marian, who was a printmaking artist in her own right. A visit to their home and fascinating hand-crafted studio was memorable and inspiring.

Another very special memory for me was a trip to the Little Sur River on one of the Weygers' outings. The point of that trip was to collect limestone cobbles for students to practice stone carving. Going out into the hills and finding your own stone to carve is like making your own brushes and oil paints. It is the pure craft.

In the true tradition of a master Alex Weygers taught his students not only the concepts and skills to sculpt in stone and wood. He also taught the skills of blacksmithing so his students could create their own carving tools from scrap steel.

His design style in metal was beautifully simple and functional. The Weygers' Style hook with its built in nail, was the first thing that I ever forged in steel. The process of making one of these seemingly simple hooks involved so many of the basic techniques of blacksmithing; creating one hook was like completing some sort of test.

Fireplace shovels were another tool where Weygers' design sense made a very pleasant departure from what we see every day. Rather than make the tool handles exclusively from steel, he chose something more original. His shovels were designed to be fitted with polished fruit-wood handles from limbs that he had collected in Corralitos, CA during pruning season.

Alex Weygers created Fine Art by carving local wood and stone with tools he made himself. To me this is the epitome of the true master/ teacher in the classic sense. He designed one very cool hook as well!

Here is our side dish....last week while hiking at Santa Lucia Preserve we found the first Chanterelles of the mushroom season bursting out of the dampened earth!

Posted by Alan