Edmonton blacksmith carves out new business with knife-forging classes
Using a hammer, forge and vat of canola oil, Will Steed is teaching Edmontonians how to forge handcrafted blades of carbon steel.
Steed, the owner of The DIY Workshop Ltd., is hosting regular forging classes for beginners at his workshop in south Edmonton. Clients can pay for drop-in classes or buy memberships to get instruction on everything from woodworking to welding.
Turning a hunk of metal into the perfect blade requires lots of heat and plenty of practice, Steed said
"We start with high-carbon steel, just a piece of flat bar, and it's rough-forged in our forge which requires lots of arm strength," Steed said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.
It takes at least five hours to hammer the steel by hand into the desired shape as the raw metal softens and turns the colour of straw under the raging heat.
"You're going to do that by heating up, putting on the anvil and hitting it hard with the hammer," said Steed, 47.
Once the hammering is complete, the raw steel is put under a grinder until the rough edges are gone.
"Then we do a quenching," said Steed, who has been operating his skills workshop business for about a year.
"We don't use water. We use Alberta canola oil. Quenching it in water will cool it too fast and it will make it too brittle. If you drop it, it will shatter like glass."
Blades are tempered repeatedly in an oven before being sharpened with a stone. Later, each blade gets a hand-carved handle.
Whether it's a kitchen knife or a hunting blade, the process remains virtually unchanged, Steed said.
"We get some really, really nice knives that are made. Some really beautiful pieces," he said.
A millwright by trade, Steed said he honed his forging skills on the "University of YouTube."
"I'm no blacksmith," he said. "But there was just so much interest.
"I had done a little bit of it in the past so I decided to do a little bit more research on it and develop a program and it seems to have taken off."
Steed said all of his forging workshops until the end of February are sold out. He's hoping their ongoing success will allow him to eventually quit his day job and focus on the workshop business full-time.
Even if the final product isn't always perfect, he's had plenty of satisfied customers. There is a special satisfaction to making something by hand, he said.
"We're talking novices coming in and they're just happy that they're actually getting something that resembles a knife ... and that's what we tell people, this is your first project.
"It's not going to be perfect."
