Here is my report about my first blacksmithing conference, held May 4-6, 2007 at the Enumclaw, WA (about an hour south of Seattle). The fairgrounds where the event was spread out offered a large covered hall, which housed the registration & gifts-sales, gallery, museum, library, live & silent auctions’ displays, and snack area. This heated area was also used for the dinner on Saturday evening:

Pretty good attendance, I thought — although some folks told me it was smaller than usual, likely due to having another conference in CA scheduled the previous weekend. So it was too much for some, although others appeared to enjoy an extended travel. These are all hearty and good folks, and I had a great time. What used to be known as midnight madness was turned down a big notch or three, from what I heard, but I still had fun past midnight on both Friday and Saturday nights!! In fact, I was part of the winning lottery for the 9am tong-making workshop the next morning. They picked the names at 8am… well I was sleeping, and apparently that happens, since a friend got picked later on when spots opened up for the fly press workshop.

There was some super metalwork, both being donated for the auctions and in the gallery/museum. I missed the highlight piece, a set of really archaic blacksmithing tools which are surprisingly familiar. Here are a few samples for you to enjoy for now — I’ll put more into a gallery soon. Here are some gallery pieces:

There were also some amazing works donated for the auctions (both silent and live, but the best works were up for the live auction). Here are some auction pieces:

Even more fine examples could be found in the NWBA Archive… here are a few:

Some great tools and art were shown during demos as well as happenstance sharing — imagine that, at a conference! Here’s ’round and about the open arena, power hammer work area, for demos and pre-midnight madness:

MM hint:

I failed to get forging on Friday night, in great part for having slept about 2 hours over 2 days, driving 5 hours, being overwhelmed by all the cool art, etc… so Saturday I hit it hard (after getting it hot!), and went to town on both power hammers with a big bar.

When I finally got home Sunday evening, I was exhausted, but amazed to see everything I had accumulated. Here is the better part of my take, stacked on my anvil back at home… the twist and the big tapered round with the ball on the end were the pieces I forged there, and I splurged on 2 pairs of Off Center Forge’s gooseneck tongs. A bunch of my goodies came from some kind soul who priced his goodies very nicely, and just had a tin can out. Well I loaded up with $15 from him and it was the best deal of the whole affair — thank you, mystery smith!!

Also present: a monkey wrench, bar-tongs, hammer, jackhammer dies, some tool steel, and misc hardy & fuller… missing from this collection was, most important, a spanking new propane burner from Art Anderson. I got the kit, including the Fisher regulator — well worth it, that thing kicks out so much heat I’ve got to learn to throttle it back Makes me very happy, I can get into forge welding now, even on the propane.

NWBA website’s information about it