Controlled Hand Forging

Before introduction of the National Curriculum, ABANA developed a series of articles teaching the fundamentals of hand forging. They were published in our Hammer’s Blow Magazine in the years 2000 -2010. The Controlled Hand Forging Series is a valuable resource for everybody who wants to learn blacksmithing. It does not have the rigidity of the NC Program which is focused on learning towards certification. Nevertheless, every student, learning for the Curriculum or just for fun, can certainly gain a lot of insight and hone his/her skills working through these articles.

Get the fire going and have fun.

Preliminaries Safety, Ergonomics and Shop Layout
Lesson #1 Drawing Out
Lesson #2 Hot Punching
Lesson #3 & #4 Drawing a Round Taper & Bending
Lesson #5 & #6 Twisting & Drawing, Punching and Bending
Lesson #7 Upsetting
Lesson #8 Splitting
Lesson #9 Mortise and Tenon Joinery
Lesson #10 Forge Welding
Lesson # 11-1 Drawing Down – Part 1
Lesson # 11-2 Drawing Down – Part 2
Lesson #12 Forging A Shoulder
Lesson # 13 Cutting a Bar
Lesson # 14 Bending – Forging a 90-Degree Corner
Lesson # 15 Bending – Forging an Eye on the End of a Bar
Lesson # 16 Drawing Out – Forging a Ribbon Taper
Lesson # 17 Drawing Out – Forging a square bar into a round bar
Lesson # 18 Drawing Out – Using the peen
Lesson # 19 Cutting – Splitting the end of a bar
Lesson # 20 Forging a Fishtail
Lesson # 21 Forging a Square Punch and Drift
Lesson # 22-1 Forging Tongs – Part 1
Lesson # 22-2 Forging Tongs – Part 2
Lesson # 23 Drawing Out Round Stock to Square
Lesson # 24 Making a Round Drift
Lesson # 25 Forging Right-Angle Bends
Lesson # 26-1 Forging Two-Sided Shoulders – Part 1
Lesson # 26-2 Forging Two-Sided Shoulders – Part 2

Looking for all the Controlled Hand Forging articles in one place?

We’ve compiled the articles for you and renumbered the pages into a cohesive document, the Table of Contents links to each individual article, and there’s another list of each article title linked to the corresponding complete issue of Hammer’s Blow magazine.

Controlled Hand Forging Lessons: 1-26