Ivy's Tangle (Legend of the White Sword - Book 1)

Chapter 8 - Hammer and Tongs

I felt exhausted when my alarm sounded the next morning, and I considered hitting the snooze bar or turning it off. With Mr. Ryan away, I could enjoy my first sleep-in in a long while. On the other hand, the chance to watch real-life blacksmithing might not come again. That thought pushed me out of bed. I looked out the window at the yard and garden, but nothing appeared out of place, so I pulled on the clothes I'd left in a heap on the floor and headed to the smithy.

Ms. Mopat wouldn't put out breakfast for another hour, meaning that my rumbling stomach must wait. I had looked in the carriage house before, only finding two old flat-tired cars, covered in a thick layer of dust. I'd thought the building behind it was just a shack. From the outside, there was nothing fancy about the smithy.

The smithy's two wide doors, that had previously been padlocked, stood wide open. Mr. Smith had pushed them right back against the walls, and he was already at work inside, shovelling coal into the stone forge. A huge set of bellows hung suspended to one side of the forge, and an anvil, that must have weighed three hundred pounds, sat on an old stump between us. It was dim inside, even with the doors spread wide, but I could see tools hanging on the walls and half a wooden barrel next to the anvil. A heavy workbench with a leg vise ran down one side wall. Any more stuff and the place would have been crowded.

Mr. Smith saw me as he scooped up a last small shovelful of coal from a coal box on the wall opposite the bench.

"Good morning," he said.

He sounded more awake than me. I'd never understand morning people.

"Good morning."

"I'm surprised to see you this early. I liked to sleep-in when I was your age."

"I didn't want to miss anything."

"So you have a genuine interest then?" Mr. Smith gave me an appraising look.

"Yeah, I've read a few books and watched YouTube videos."

"Ah well, some of those are excellent, and the rest are junk!" Mr. Smith grinned. "I might as well show you how to do things right. We'll start by lighting the forge. You know what this black stuff is, don't you?"

"Coal?"

"Close. This is coke. Harder to come by these days, but cleaner. I have the bin filled every couple of years."

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"You can think of it as diet coal." Mr. Smith looked at my blank expression and shrugged.

"Bad joke I guess," he went on, pushing the black nuggets back from the centre of the forge. "Coke is coal with the impurities cooked out in a big oven. Pass me those pieces of wood."

I handed Mr. Smith two handfuls of kindling-sized wood from a galvanised pail next to the anvil. He arranged the sticks of wood in the little space he'd cleared. Then he pointed up at a long wooden handle attached to a rope and pulley.

"That works the bellows and blows air into the forge. After I light this, you pull that to fan the flames."

The handle moved smoothly downward, and a clever counterweight pulled it back up again. Within a minute, a fire was burning.

"It'll take a while to heat up," Mr. Smith said. "Will you do me a favour and fill the barrel with water?"

"Sure, is that the quenching tank?" I asked.

"So you have read up on the subject. That's the slack tub, and, for our purposes today, the quenching tank too. For finer work, the quenching tank would get oil."