A.B.A.S.A. News

April 3rd 2016

COMING EVENTS

Even though the weather is cooling it is just warming up for us. We have a few events to cover and I hope everyone is appraised of what’s coming up in the next few months.

THE NEW FORGE

Our new forge at Penfield is progressing slowly and we should have a floor in the new building in the next few weeks. A ‘Little Giant’ power hammer is awaiting collection and will be a good addition to the forge. There is still a fair way to go with the outfitting of the building with lighting, power and extraction, but I’m sure we will get it done in good time.

BASIC COURSES

The Basic courses seem to be filling out pretty quickly once they are given a date. Many thanks due to John Fergus for giving up his valuable time to hold these courses. The students get a good grounding in the basics and have a bit of fun along the way.

THE BELLOWS NEWSLETTER

As most of you may know, I have  decided to finish publishing a three monthly newsletter and instead, hope to put the latest news straight onto this site. It was a lot of time and work to do the newsletter, with most of the topics out of date by the time it was all put together.

We are fortunate to receive newsletters from our colleagues interstate and overseas. I marvel at how they put together such fantastic newsletters as regular as clockwork. I have to admit, it is beyond my capabilities to match them.

THE WEBSITE

I hope you find the site useful. We are very fortunate to have a  talented member like Hugh French to develop this site. I have yet to see a blacksmiths site like this anywhere, and we are only in first gear. There are a lot of additions planned down the track, including eCommerce capability and room for members to run their own sections on the site. I hope to develop training material, reference material, as well as a library list of our books and DVD’s we have available.

I am hopeful we can have our members establish their own ‘Members Bio’ page. Chris Fuller has kicked off the trend and I hope we can coax a few more of you to show off your work and give a background in how you got into the  addictive craft of blacksmithing.

May 5th 2016

BASIC BLACKSMITH COURSE No.6

This course started on Sunday, March 20th and finished on Wednesday, April 27th. We had six on the course and John had Brian helping out most nights along with Chris C.

By all reports, the course went very well and a few of the troops even managed to forge out some poppy flowers as a learning exercise.

Here are a few shots of the students.

Paul fullering a flower petal.
Paul fullering a flower petal.
Trevor working on a poppy flower.
Trevor working on a poppy flower.
Lorenzo working on a new forging.
Lorenzo working on a new forging.
Richard, making arrow points.
Richard, making arrow points.
Greg. Not playing around with the small stuff.
Greg. Not playing around with the small stuff.
Treasurer, Brian Dreyer giving some tips to Greg.
Treasurer, Brian Dreyer giving some tips to Greg.
There were plenty of Poppy blanks to practice on.
There were plenty of Poppy blanks to practice on.
Tim, hard at it.
Tim, hard at it.

Well done to all involved in this course. We’d be happy to have them as members.

The next Basic course is due to start with an Introductory Day  on Sunday 22nd, May and has 5 students booked already.

 

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