Rams head poker

A few months ago I was watching Ade Edmundson on 'The Dales'. Required viewing for me as a newcomer to the Yorkshire Dales. He visited a Blacksmiths and throughout the episode the editor cut back to the creation of a lovely fire poker with a rams head handle. I commented at the time to Judith that 'its lovely, what craftsmanship, isn't it good that such skills still exist' or something along those lines. Now Judith is a canny lass and filed this away up top. For my birthday this year I got a small carrier bag with a picture of said poker and a promise to have a similar one made by our very own Blacksmith at his smithy here in Settle.

This is a local sheep (ok its a ewe, not a ram, but they have similar horns) You can see the way the horns curl out and away from the head, making a circle round the ears, Its a breed called Dalesbred. Our neighbour Joan who wont mind me telling you is in her 80's, prefers these sheep to all others as apparently you can wrestle these beggars by their headgear, whereas a Texel sheep has no horns and so is a lot harder to handle.

So, yesterday morning we arrived at the forge and David Clements was waiting for us . He's a lovely bloke and very very accommodating with his explanations from everything from how the forge works through the history of blacksmithing to what was going on with the poker he was creating for me . No question too stupid it seemed.

This is the forge, the heart of the smithy, Its at a slight angle to the room walls. In times gone by this was to accommodate a set of bellows, hand operated to blow air into the coke fire, increasing the temperature and allowing the metal to be worked .Today, in a nod towards mechanisation, there is an electric blower doing this job, which can be adjusted to allow the fire to become hotter or cooler, depending on need.

 

The forge room itself is a thing of beauty, its festooned with a million bits and pieces hanging from the rafters. There are many metalworking machines: presses, drills, welders and one beast of a piece, an automatic hammer.

This is David firing up the Forge for us. He usually wears a leather apron. You don't wear wellies in the smithy, in case hot bits of metal find their way down there. Imagine. He tells a very funny story told to him by the previous blacksmith about an unwelcome visitor who got some red hot metal down his open necked shirt. It travelled all the way down his clothing until it fell out his trouser bottoms. He didn't come back.

 

So this is the beginning. Its a 1/4 inch rod of iron produced in Orgreave (remember the miners strike, yes that Orgreave) I wanted a poker about 2ft long, so he cut it to about 18 inches. the pointy end is drawn out by about 6 inches.

 

The handle end was heated up to red hot and split down the middle for about 4 inches using a hammer and cold chisel. This would become the horns later.

 

Below the split the rod was flattened and bent and folded in over itself to form the head proper. This was done at a much higher temperature to weld the iron to itself. This is the best way to join metal to metal. If you were to then saw this in half , you would not see a join. Problem with this is, the horn spikes were in danger of getting too hot and burning off, so they had to be cooled at regular intervals.

 

So, once the head and horns had been formed, the detail could be added. the horns were drawn out and twisted and the facial features added.

The shaft was beaten using the beast of the automatic hammer and the pointy end drawn out and beaten into a spike.

 

The whole thing took about 2 hours, David even made us tea.

 

 

 

Here's an awful picture of me holding my birthday present. I'm almost wishing for some cold weather so I can use this in anger. We had my initials and the year stamped on the shaft for good measure.

 

Its funny, we have walked past the smithy many times and wondered if it was still working. Question answered. David has many commissions and is a true artist in metal. We learned that he is responsible for the iron gates to the friends meeting house here in Settle which look like they may have been wrought in the forges of middle earth. Judith tracked David down from there, he has no website. He's also done some work for a friend of his in St Lucia (nice gig!) where he cast some iguanas in bronze to decorate the stairway he also created.

 

Settle never fails to amaze me. local arts and crafts are thriving. We have a cobbler who will make me a pair of walking boots for about £100, guaranteed not to leak. Then there are the farming brothers who produce 'Blue pig bacon' .

I just hope our venture into the hostelry business stack up against these artists in metal, leather and Pig!