Joel the Smith

Today we drove to Galsjöbruk to meet up with our old friend Karin and a young man, Joel, who had offered to let us try our hand at working with iron.
I took very few pictures in the smithy because I was working at converting a bar of iron into a toasting fork. It was really fascinationg and I imagine I could easily get hooked. I discovered iron is so easy to work but so hard to work well!
My Blip shows some of Joel's work. They are mostly copies of historical tools, from the last 1500 years.
The unassuming dark lump of iron on the right is bog iron, created from many bucketfulls of iron rich sand, several cubic meters of wood, a furnace of clay and horse-dung, and many hours of work. All that effort to create this small piece of iron shows how valuable iron must have been.
Even the box is a copy, of a Viking tool chest lost a thousand years ago and found in 1936, the Mästermyr chest.
Many thanks Joel (and Karin)!
If you want to see Joel in action check out HarlingDarling's Blip, and Shellings' Blip shows his creation, a poker for the fire in his new home.