A Week of Making Hair Forks

Metalwork is my favorite of all the handcrafts I do. It began when I was small, and there were two things that sparked it. The first, was my grandfather.

Both of my paternal grandparents were silversmiths during the Depression. They supported themselves and their parents with their work for years. Working in Silver City in CT, mainly silver plating, they were involved more in industrial silver work through that time.
As time moved on, my grandfather went to work for Pratt&Whitney. He began machining metal for air craft through WWII, and ended up working for them until he retired. His older brothers fought in all the wars, but he was not allowed to go because of the bloodline rules.

Anyways, his workbench in the basement fascinated me, but what hooked me was one day when he was out replacing a rotted board on a step out back. I was hovering, watching him pull up the old board, flip it over and put it on a brick, and tap the old nails out. I didn't speak much back then, but I watched...and he knew, so he would watch my expression and answer my questions.

He explained that so long as the metal nail was in one piece, it was still good. He showed me how he put it on the brick and straightened it, and then I followed him into the basement (hoping to get a glimpse of the brown cow under the stairs that made chocolate milk, but it was elusive). He turned on his grinding wheel and I watched him sharpen the tip of each nail, and then drop them into a coffee can. Then we went back out and the nails worked just like new.

Somehow he 'forgot' a can of bent nails outdoors under the porch, and a hammer. I was maybe 4 or so, so I figured no one knew what I was doing ;) and I spent weeks out there figuring out how to straighten those nails.

The second thing that hooked me, was finding a few ball bearings. They were so smooth and heavy, and so different in every way from the nails...I wanted to know how to transform the nails into those shiny smooth bearings...and that has become my favorite part of metalwork. Watching the transformation, from raw metal or wire, moving and shaping it, and then to polish it. It still feels like magic!

This, is what a week of making hair forks looks like...

Day 1 cutting the wire...

Day 2 is bending...

Day 3 until they are finished, I hammer...This type of hammering is called Chasing, where you actually move and shape the metal with the hammer...

Near the end of the week, I have to grind the ends to make them smooth. This is the prep stage for the final polishing...

I don't have photos of the polishing stages, but there are a few, and they take another 2 days minimum to finish...

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Thanks for reading...I hope you enjoyed :)