Hello everyone!
It’s been an industrious time in the forge the first couple of weeks of September, we have had knife courses, welding courses, have-a-go courses, window repairs, work on the workshop, prototypes of new courses and more going on over the last couple of weeks!
Before I get into the individual breakdowns that I tend to do there has been one true group effort from everyone in the forge, and this has been to facilitate a dry run and prototyping of a throwing axe course. This course will be run in conjunction with our friends at The Viking Games. Customers/prospective vikings will come to our forge for 3 hours to forge their own throwing axe which they will then take up the road to the lovely people at The Viking Games to learn how to throw them and spend an hour having axe throwingy, vikingy, fun! Now we will need to do a dry run of this course to take photos and videos for social media. In light of this we need 4 willing participants, the more viking looking the better, to come along and try this course (for free) with the understanding that we can take a whole bunch of pictures for social media. If you would like to be considered for this, please do contact us. We are very excited about this course and hope to release it soon, and cannot wait to work closely with our friends up the road.
Forging the axes with The Viking Games
Throwing the axes at The Viking Games
Land handle first? no worries!
The first prototypes - we found the cord wrap was much nicer to throw.
Joe has been out to the Wilson art gallery and museum to measure up a bunch of works to make fixings to display the items for their next exhibition. He has also taught a lovely couple on the 4 hour have-a-go course. Naturally he has also been working away behind the scenes adding the most recent offerings from the forge onto the online shop, go and check them out!
Body armour in need of a stand
“Serpent Instrument” to attach to a wall
Beautiful helmet, with a foam cube for safety
4hr Have a go students working together on their pokers
Still working on their pokers, not every step can be a team effort!
The finished items and smiley faces! lovely couple to teach.
Simon has finished his Jellyfish sculpture/lamp/thing. This has a remote controlled light installed inside with a rechargeable battery and the light can be dimmed and change colour. It really is a cool looking piece. He now wants to make a bunch of little jellyfish babies to go along with the big mumma.
Jellyfish cool light
Jellyfish Warm light
Martha has recently buzzed off on holiday to Greece for a week or two, but has continued to keep the social media posts ticking over. Before she left we did get to have a miniature media day where she was able to get her camera out and catch some really cool shots which I am sure will be featuring prevalently on the social media before long, so get ready for those, some of the shots were phenomenal! - and only a couple of pairs of jeans were sacrificed in the making of them, so all in all I would say we are probably quids in!
Fun fact, hitting hot cast iron will create an explosion of sparkler like sparks. 1 Pair of jeans were ruined in the making of this shot. Sorry Elliott.
Forge welding or making the jump to hyperspace?
Slightly long exposure
Dan has been making tongs and going out to sites to price up some railing jobs. Alongside this he has also started work on installing a downstairs toilet in the forge to make the workshop more accessibility friendly and more convenient for customers. Naturally as the headman he has also been keeping an eye on all of us pesky minions which I am sure definitely isn’t stressful whatsoever…
Elliott has been working on a plethora of windows - his favourite. He has has to make a swage tool recently to forge a specific stock shape for some windows that he needs to work on. He has also been instrumental on working on the prototype plans for the axe throwing course.
We are very busy bees as you can see, lets keep the ball rolling!
Cheers and see you on the next Blog
~ The IAStudios team