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Junk metal is blacksmith's gold
By Dan'l Sisson
Sunday, February 18, 2007: The Ohio River Valley Artists
Guild kicked off its 2007 "Art Smart" Free Lecture series
on Sunday Afternoon, February 18, at Shawn Henderson's
blacksmith shop at Tollesboro.
About a dozen people braved frigid temperatures and
winter-slick roads to visit Henderson's shop on Route 57
for a metalworking lecture that culminated in a start-to-
finish demonstration of forging a pair of grill forks.
Henderson, who operates his own homemade forge, made
his first horseshoe at age 12 and has since become well
know regionally as a premier farrier as well as a master of
ironwork art.
What other people think of as junk metal, Henderson says,
is blacksmith's gold. Every piece of scrap has a future,
either as a functional piece or decorative metal item.
As Henderson worked the iron, the shop was filled with
the echoes of his hammer: banging on the worked piece
than taps on the anvil -- "bang . . . tink . . . tink . . . bang …
tink . .. tink…" That's the blacksmith's legendary rhythm, he
said, of "The Devil Wants Some Shoes".
Henderson can be reached at 606-798-2416
Visit the Ohio River Valley Artist Guild website at http:
//www.orvag.org/ The next meeting of the ORVAG will be at
6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, at 504 Duke of York in Old
Washington, Mason County.
By Dan'l Sisson
Sunday, February 18, 2007: The Ohio River Valley Artists
Guild kicked off its 2007 "Art Smart" Free Lecture series
on Sunday Afternoon, February 18, at Shawn Henderson's
blacksmith shop at Tollesboro.
About a dozen people braved frigid temperatures and
winter-slick roads to visit Henderson's shop on Route 57
for a metalworking lecture that culminated in a start-to-
finish demonstration of forging a pair of grill forks.
Henderson, who operates his own homemade forge, made
his first horseshoe at age 12 and has since become well
know regionally as a premier farrier as well as a master of
ironwork art.
What other people think of as junk metal, Henderson says,
is blacksmith's gold. Every piece of scrap has a future,
either as a functional piece or decorative metal item.
As Henderson worked the iron, the shop was filled with
the echoes of his hammer: banging on the worked piece
than taps on the anvil -- "bang . . . tink . . . tink . . . bang …
tink . .. tink…" That's the blacksmith's legendary rhythm, he
said, of "The Devil Wants Some Shoes".
Henderson can be reached at 606-798-2416
Visit the Ohio River Valley Artist Guild website at http:
//www.orvag.org/ The next meeting of the ORVAG will be at
6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, at 504 Duke of York in Old
Washington, Mason County.
| Tollesboro blacksmith Shawn Henderson, above, explains how to take a plain piece of metal and forge it into a grill fork, below. |