Petefire Artist Blacksmith husband & wife forging experience day in Watford, Herts

A Petefire Blacksmith Forging Experience could be a memorable and enjoyable way to spend some time with a family member or friend.

Petefire Artist Blacksmith husband and wife forging experience day

Testing your strength, skill, dexterity and discipline against some hot metal might show a whole new side to your wife, husband, sibling, mother, father, daughter, son or good friend.

Peter will discuss what you’d like to do on a Blacksmith Forging Experience – he’ll be happy to put a bit more challenge into the day and will keep an eye on how participants are coping with all the aspects of the day.

Some alternatives to making a small knife might be a fire poker, decorative heart, flower, toasting fork, bottle opener or a bird feeder hook.

People take their forged items home with them.

All our Blacksmith Forging Experiences are now indoors at the Petefire Chiswell Green Forge – so we’re not affected by the weather!

We’ve had all kinds of two, three or four person forging experiences, here are some of our people combinations:

  • mothers and school age sons
  • husbands and wives
  • dads and sons (youngest son was aged 7, we have lots of teens and adult sons)
  • dads and son-in-laws
  • daughters and dads
  • bridegrooms and best men
  • mum, dad, daughter & son
  • dads, sons & son-in-laws
Just some of the hammers available for use on a Petefire Blacksmith Forging Experience in St Albans, Herts

Just some of the hammers available for use on a Petefire Blacksmith Forging Experience

School age sons and a mum

On a recent forging experience a mother came along with a 13 year old and 9 year old son. They were surprising fast and coordinated with sequential hammering, where two or more people hammer a piece of hot metal, standing in a circle around the anvil. It’s a very efficient way of getting the most out of a ‘heat’. Each second that the metal is out of the forge sees it cooling and becoming less able to be shaped.

A daughter booked a forging experience for herself and her dad. The daughter knew her dad would love it as he was a massive fan of Forged in Fire, the American tv series, he’d spent his working life as an engineer.

Who would you bring on a Forging Experience? Here’s a photo from a dad and daughter forging experience.

Book a Forging Experience just to watch, learn and talk.

Since an early age Peter has been absorbing all aspects of weapon making, sword, axe, bow and arrow history.

If discussing all aspects of metalworking while watching a knife (which you’d take home with you), being formed using heat, skill and strength sounds like a pretty good way to spend a few hours, book a voucher – or put in a gift request with your family to book a Petefire Blacksmith Forging Experience.

You can book to see the hot metal action and discuss metalworking.

Enjoyable – whatever age you are

An older couple booked a two day forging experience – with the intention of forging house numbers and a small knife. They spent a bit of the first day using the hammers, although the woman realised that swinging the hammers was hard for her to manage.

After discussion with Peter they chose to spend the rest of their forging experience watching the process and discussing and directing the development of the their house numbers and knife.

Although they only spent some of their time doing the physical activity, the couple still had a very enjoyable time and went away with much more knowledgeable about metalworking, its history and the blacksmithing process.

Who would you bring on a Petefire Forging Experience? Here’s a photo from a wife and husband forging experience.

Dad and son forge something different

A woman phone with a specific request for a forging experience. They’d bought a wooden trellis for their garden, but had cut it in half at the top to make it wide enough to fit in with their plans for the garden layout.

Her question was – could she book a forging experience for her husband to metalwork two horizontal bars, strong enough to hold the two sides of their trellis in position.

Peter was very happy to tailor the forging experience to be able to make the trellis bar, and made sure that there was metal that would do the job beforehand.

The dad had been an engineer and really enjoyed being a hands-on part of a different and ancient kind of engineering for a day – they also finished in time to get back for the start of the football!

Buy a voucher for one or more than one – it’ll be good either way

You can have a great one person forging experience, and all our people who come of their own have really enjoyed the day. People who come with one, two or more people also have an excellent time, as Peter will discuss all aspects of historic and modern blacksmithing and metalworking.

If you want to buy a voucher for more than one person, we’re pretty certain that everyone will have a really good day, with some excellent comradeship and maybe a bit of competition too.

You can buy your Blacksmith Forging Experience here.

Various blacksmith forged art along with art development drawings

We’re going to be part of Hertfordshire’s annual celebration of art – Herts Open Studios for the first time this year. We’ll be joining almost 70 other artists to showing our art during September.

For Petefire this means showing some of Peter’s decorative swords and axes, kitchen knives and hammers. We’ll also have sketches showing the development of many of Peter’s designs.

Petefire – Herts Open Studios

Bottle openers, cheese knives and heart pendants are some of the small forged items that will be offer for sale. People will also be happy to discuss commissions, if you’ve got ideas for large or small items.

 

Looking for a gift?

There will be blacksmith forged pendant, cheese knives, kitchen knives and bottle openers available to buy. Prices start from £10, we’ve got a credit card reader if you’ve not got cash.

Petefire Artist Blacksmith hot heart

 

Forging Saturdays

Peter won’t just be showing his work, he’ll also be forging on Saturdays between 2-4pm. That’s Saturday 8th, 15th 22nd and 29th.

 

 

Homebakes

Flapjacks, cakes, coffee and tea aren’t guaranteed – but we’ll be baking regular batches of homebakes. We’ll be collecting donations for the Watford homeless charity New Hope.

 

Paul’s blacksmith forging experience questions
Paul’s blacksmith forging experience day

Today I did a forging experience day with a lovely bloke called Paul.

He hadn’t actually decided on what he would be working on so I showed him the usual kind of cheese knife that we’d often make on a blacksmith forging experience day. I asked him how hands on he would like to be, his reply: ‘well I’d really like to get involved as much as possible’. So I said, ‘Why don’t we have a look at some of these other pieces of steel that we have here and we could actually work on something a bit larger than we normally do.’

He was very good and he achieved a lot, keeping up with turning the handle (which is the bellows and inducts air / oxygen regulating the heat of the forge). He was also active with the hammer and showed good dexterity. We actually managed to make a knife about 3 times the size than the smaller knives that we normally make – and in the same amount of time. It was very impressive, we often have a discussion about what we’re going to make on an experience day, this time we got straight into this so we didn’t actually work on any other bit of steel other that one for this project.

Lining up for a second experience day

It was very successful so now he’s been asking about what other type of projects we could do.

Projects around the house could include:

  • toilet roll holder
  • kitchen roll holder
  • fire poker
  • coat hook

I realise that not everyone will want to make a knife.

The knife making is very good as there’s a lot of different processing in it:

  • you’ve got the heat treatment
  • the forging
  • the filing
  • and the actual bringing everything together

I use recycled steel for the knives, it would be easy to forge other items too.

A very positive day – all in all and hopefully I’ll be seeing Paul again, where we’ll work on the next stage of blacksmith forging experience day. So here’s hoping and we’ll see that when it comes.

Peter

All our Blacksmith Forging Experiences are now indoors at the Petefire Chiswell Green Forge – so we’re not affected by the weather!

What would I make?

People have hand forged a small knife, alternatives might be a fire poker, decorative heart, flower, toasting fork, bottle opener or a bird feeder hook.

People take their forged items home with them.