After sitting down and evaluating my goals for the future (taking a year off before going to college gives you a lot of time to do this :p ), I've decided that I want to learn to make armor and/or swords. Are there any particular colleges that offer good metal programs, or other recommendations that people may have?

Greetings,

I would very much like to learn to do this as well as a profession too. I should direct you toward these threads, they may be of help!

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72981

Use the links that are given in the second post. Good luck and if you need any advice don't hesitate to ask. I am hoping to make this a future profession too, so we should definately learn from eachother.

Have a good day! Cheers!

Barrett Michael Hiebert

Good idea! Making armor is FUN!!! There are useful articles on this site, as well as on others:

http://www.armourarchive.org/

http://wwww.arador.com/

http://www.anvilfire.com/

I once heard a blacksmith say that your first project as a beginner is a scrap pile! That's fine, scraps come in handy, or can be turned into orc armor. From my own hobby experience, making some sorts of armor is easier than making decent blades, but at some point they start to require some very different tools and abilities. Let your mood swings have as much vote as your wallet.

And have fun!

Matthew

Well, if you want to learn my best suggestion is to listen to Yoda: "Do or do not, there is no try."

I've got a (more than) full time job and a family (with a 2yr old), so my time is pretty limited. But, even so, I decided that blacksmithing was something I was serious about because there is absolutely no feeling in the world like when you are at your forge, feeling the heat on your face and listening to the song of your hammer on the steel. I'm a raw green beginner but one day, I just bit the bullet, started putting a shop together, reading books, etc. I did take one class at the Brookfield Craft Center (a weekend course in beginner blacksmithing) that was alot of fun. You should look for local craft centers and check www.anvilfire.com and www.abana.org for classes in your area.

Be forewarned...blacksmithing is not nearly as easy as it looks. But, if you stick with it and love doing it, you'll get better. At this point, I don't ever come away from my forge without having learned something new...and that's just a terrific feeling.

Anyway, my point is-you can spend months or years trying to figure out what tools you need, where to go to school, what books to read, etc. Just get a few things together and give it a try. You will come away from your first forging session with a ton of questions that you can look up answers to. I recommend you start off with a weekend beginner course, that way you don't spend a lot of time and money setting up a shop if you change your mind and decide you don't enjoy the art. Plus, you'll learn basic stuff that can keep you from getting seriously hurt or frustrated. Money well spent, imho.

Good advice so far.

If you can spend time with an experienced smith when you're starting, so much the better.

A couple of things that might be worth bearing in mind about smithing: there are at least six ways to get any given result. None of them are necessarily wrong, but some of them aren't quite as useful as others.

Get a solid grounding in the basics first. People often tell me how they'd love to make a sword or a knife, and my stock response is "you don't get on a skateboard before you can walk". It is possible to make a sword or knife like thing first off, but you'll get far more satisfying results once you know how metal moves under the hammer.

... and forget any dreams of a career as a hand model.

As for reading, I thoroughly recommend Alex Bealer's very comprehensive book on blacksmithing, which has been reprinted recently.
For bladesmithing, you could do a lot worse than "The Complete Bladesmith" by Jim Hrisoulas (sp?)

Cheers

Tim Harris.

Thanks for your responses everyone! I already own a copy of The Complete Bladesmith; it's a great read even if you don't know how to actually do any of the techniques being described. I have no experience actually forging anything, but I am currently thinking the best thing for me to do would be to go to the Maine College of Art (a local art college) and taking metalsmithing there, as well as some metal sculpture, casting, and welding courses. From there though I'm not sure what to do because armor and sword making aren't exactly common courses. However they offer the option to design your own major (I checked and one of the recent ones was Metal Furniture, so armor isn't that great a leap :p ) to achieve this, and then perhaps an internship somewhere for my third or fourth year to actually get direct experience/instruction in my topic of interest. Does this sound feasible? Are there colleges that have particularly great metalworking programs that anyone knows of?

Hi Addison,

For what its worth if this is a field that you really have a passion for, go for it and follow that passion and be driven by it. There are many ways to go in the industry and we each have our own path and final destination. Soak up evrything you can, even if the book is basic, you will learn to filter out what doesn't work for you. It may take a long time and you won't get rich and famous, but just stick by why you want to do it in the first place. Passion.

I hope this was helpful,

John