Cup of Coffee

Photos from Christoph Deringer’s Integral class at NESM. Forging is all done from race and ball bearings. Check out the gallery at Christoph

Checking the bulat

Ric Furrer’s Crucible steel class at New England School of Metalwork I have been enjoying Ric’s class at NESM and will be posting images of the class on Flickr. Ric become a leading expert in small batch crucible steel making having done extensive research on the subject including travels to India as part of a team of leading scholars in the field. Check out Ric Furrer’s website for videos.

Just a quick update to let you know that I have started on a regime of prednisone and it is definitely helping. My white count while still low is stabilizing and I am starting to get some energy back.

This is good news and points to an auto immune problem still undiagnosed, but hopefully treatable.

Thank you for all your well wishes and good smoke.

Don

Hi,

I wanted to let you know that I have been in the hospital for the past week with a run away infection. It was brought under control, but there were some tense moments. The infection was the result of long term medical conditions and fatigue.

I am wobbly and weak at this time and am going to have to cut back on all activities until I regain some strenght.

I intend to use this space to post photos and comments and will continue to do so, just wanted to let you know that I am limited at this time.

Hope you all have a beautiful summer.

Don

We had a productive week at New England School of Metalwork at the first week of the ABS Bladesmithing Class. I posted a Gallery of pictures from the week. The second week is being taught by Burt Foster.

I have added pictures to this gallery from Burt’s class, chopping, bending and breaking OBOY

Damascus

We just finished a Damascus steel making class at New England School of Metalwork here in Auburn, Maine. We had an experienced group and cover a lot of ground in four days. I created a Flikr set Damascus 2010  with photos of the class. We had a chance to use the new hydraulic press donated by D. Kahn in this class.

It is a joy to work in a well maintained, well equipped shop. Hats off to Dereck Glaser for creating such a great space and environment. Work is going on now to add a bunkhouse for students and it should be ready by this summer.

I made a small slide show of my work and included some recent knives Slideshow

My Damascus class this weekend at New England School of Metalwork and that will be followed by our first ABS class Introduction to Bladesmithing that I will teach with Burt Foster. We are looking forward to developing our ABS program here.

Another class that is on the schedule is Furniture for Your Sword by Wally Hostetter. This is a class that is meant to take the students past blade work into tsuba, habaki and saya for the Japanese style swords. We are lucky to have Wally agree to come up for this class and I am looking forward to it. I don’t think a class like this is being offered anywhere.

I grew my goatee back to everyones relief.

Thanks for checking in.

New blade just finished. For more information go to Long Saex This blade is not for sale.

Merry Christmas all.

Don

I just finished a great Japanese sword class at New England School of Metalworking

Fall Sword Class November 2009

For class pictures go to my Flickr set Sword Class The swords were forged to shape and then finished with scrapers and files to get them ready for heat treating. Then they were clay coated and water quenched. It was an intense week, but a wonderful shared experience. The class was piped to an end by Steve Midkiff and he had folks coming out of buildings all over the neighborhood.

Jim Kelso just posted a wonderful tutorial on rust patina for wrought iron featuring his latest tsuba. Wonderful work and great information. Thank you Jim.

Back in September I was fortunate to photograph Maegan Crowley’s class The Formation of Form at NESM It was an exciting class with fresh ideas and an open creative approach. Maegan doesn’t have a website yet, but can be reached at her email Maegan Crowley (crowleymaegan@hotmail.com).

Jesus Hernandez has a new website with beautiful work and tutorials. It is worth a visit.

Celtic Art and Culture lots of graphics and information

Mick Maxen Damascus maker from England doesn’t have a website, but does have a page and contact information. He is doing some nice work in steel.

Thanks for visiting.

Don

All things seem to be going smoothly on the bladesmith’s forum. I was not contacted by tech support over the weekend, but am pretty sure the problems were system wide because I checked Invision’s homepage and The Carving Path and they were both experiencing the same difficulties.

There is a new link in the Tool Store for Larry Zoeller at Zoeller Forge. Larry has a great web site and is selling some useful supplies as well. I have been using Zweld as my favorite flux.

I posted a new gallery of images from Mark Aspery’s class at New England School of Metalworking. The class, Fundamentals of Blacksmithing was held August 2009 and covered various projects including making the tools to complete the projects.

Mark has published his second book on Blacksmithing with a third in the works. British trained, Mark’s books are fast becoming a must have resource for the craft. You can purchase them directly from Mark Aspery.

Mark Aspery