On November 18th, 2001 NJBA had a meet at Peters Valley Craft Center. We had a turn out of about 15 people. The meets demonstration was provided by, Maegan Crowley, the resident smith at Peters Valley. We started with a tour of the Centers teaching Blacksmith shop area, discussing up coming plans for the shop. We then proceeded to Maegans shop where she showed various items in the shop that were either completed or in progress.
The demonstration started with Maegan making three dimensional shapes by forging a thin plate through a cut out area in a steel plate. She had various shapes in the shop and for the demonstration she used a plate with two different size hexagons. She makes a striking tool from the cut out piece of the plate, which she uses to start and define the shape she is making in the form. She then uses a striking tool that is the same shape but has a hollow three dimensional shape dished up to push the metal down into the form. After that she defines and textures the piece with various shaped striking tolls and hammers. The geometric shapes formed by these are interesting and have a lot of possibilities the technique may be applied to various projects. After lunch and iron in the hat we continued the demonstration in the teaching shop using a gas forge and the power hammer to form a two legged shape out of pipe and a larger diameter piece of tubing to form a three legged sculpture. We would like to thank Maegan for her time and efforts involved in setting this up and demonstrating. The meet was informative and successful and hopefully Peters Valley invites us back again in the future.
