This week at IAStudios

Hello everyone,

This week at IAStudios, has been a bit more relaxed. Dan finished his ridiculous 5ft long tongs, Joe completed the booking system framework and Elliott has been making a bunch of window stay-hooks and pintles, and taught a knife making course. We still do not know what the college kids in the forge are up to.

It is my (Joe)’s absolute pleasure to announce that the new calendar based booking system is up and running. This should make booking course dates with us much more user friendly and easier to understand for everyone. I will be making some small adjustments here and there to improve the user experience and make everything prettier but the base framework and integrated calendar is now live. In doing this I have also made our courses more accessible and allowed for more booking options and dates to be available. In the coming week I shall be making some nice printable gift cards which will automatically be sent out upon the purchase of a gift voucher. I am also pleased to say that I did manage to refrain from throwing my laptop through the window. On the side of this important but admittedly much less interesting project, I have also made some more hooks to restock what was sold at the market the other week so that I am ready to go to the next market which should be in the coming week or two. I also finished a ring commission for a Norman period reenactor.

Joe, forging hooks.

Hooks! Ready to be coated.

A ring fit for a upper-middle ranking Norman

Elliott has returned to his primary love - windows. This week he has been making a set of replacement stay-hooks and pintles for the same leaded lights as pictured a week or two ago which he was fixing the latches on. He has also spent this Sunday teaching a 1 on 1 class with a lovely gentleman who wanted to make a specific style of knife - a Sloyd knife. A Sloyd knife is a specialised style of carving knife which the gentleman is intending to use for his limewood carving. It is always nice when someone makes a tool that they are going to use, it adds an extra something when you use a tool that you made yourself.

A sampling of Elliott’s window accessories

Student burning on the handle of his knife.

Elliott teaching a student how to forge a Sloyd knife

The Sloyd knife in it’s final form

Dan finished his order of unreasonably long tongs after a very arduous week, such long tongs are incredibly awkward to make. To celebrate he then made some regular sized tongs to remind himself that life is in fact worth living. At the weekend for a bit of fun he did a little bit of forge welding practice. Forge welding is when you fuse two pieces of steel together by getting them both very hot and then hammering them together so that the hot steel binds. This sounds like a simple process but is actually one of the most challenging blacksmithing processes to get the hang of. It is good to occasionally practice processes that you don’t use too often as a blacksmith as it is a bit of the case where if you don’t use the skill, you lose it.

Cheers to another week in the forge.

~IASTUDIOS

Dan, with a thousand yard stare after the week of exceptionally long tongs.