Strike while the iron's hot.

On Friday afternoon I had the opportunity to try my hand at blacksmithing while I was attending a museum conference at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown. Although I was an industrial arts student at SUNY Oswego many years ago, I never enrolled in metal shop so this was my first encounter with a forge. My first task was to make a nail. As simple as it might appear, there are techniques that have to be learned to make a nail. And it takes practice-lots of practice. I have since read that apprentices at Colonial Williamsburg aren't allowed to make nails until well into their internship. You start with a long square piece of iron stock. It has to be heated in the forge, pulling two or three times on the overhead bellows. Only experience makes it possible to know if the red-orange glow of the iron is right. Overheating the iron creates white sparks and the iron actually burns. (Not good!) Grasping the glowing iron with the tongs, which I found to be the most difficult part of the project, you have to bring it to the anvil and hammer it to draw the iron to a point. In the process, the nail will be ½ again as long as the original piece of iron. You only have to hammer on two sides, and this must be done quickly before the iron cools. In the winter the iron cools faster on the cold anvil. A couple of pulls on the bellows and you can hammer a bit more to create the point of the nail. Then heat it up again, and narrow down the shank of the nail until it fits through the gauge. Then heat the iron up again, and bring it to the anvil, and form a " shoulder " just below where the head will be. Heat it again, and put it on the anvil and score about a quarter of an inch above the shoulder. Put it in the heading tool and if you're lucky you haven't made it too small, or it will fall out and you have to start again. Twist off the nail. Put it quickly into the pritchet hole on the anvil and hammer the head. To create a " rosehead " nail, you form the head with three or four facets. As soon as the head is formed, you flip the …