Joe Vachon worked a variety of jobs — from being a busboy in restaurants, to working in a burial-supplies warehouse, to assembling semi-truck engines — before discovering blacksmithing. He moved from Peoria, Ill., to Dorchester two years ago to join the staff at D Acres, an organic farm. The following is an edited interview.
It’s all about recycling. That’s the function of blacksmithing nowadays. You can’t compete with industry, of course. But you can make useful and beautiful things from its waste.
I don’t buy new steel, ever. I don’t think it’s necessary. I get what I need from scrap yards and builders. Like the rebar that goes in concrete foundations, there’s lots of cut-offs lying around they don’t use. Generally, it just goes in the Dumpster or gets buried.
I’ve made everything from fireplace tools and barbecue forks to doorknockers, knives, cheese-cutters and hairpins.
Different hooks and racks, stuff like that. I can take a rusty nail I found in the scrap yard and turn it into a bottle opener. This here is a railroad spike I was turning into a knife, but I got distracted and it turned into a glob.
The whole process is simple. The design for the bellows I use has been around since the 1750s. The flue system of my forge is made of 35-gallon drums with a cap made of old license plates. One of my anvils is shaped from a piece of railroad track. Like I said, I recycle.
And there’s no electricity involved. I burn bituminous coal. A $4 bucketful will last me two full days of working. That’s my only cost or consumption.
It’s an experiment mixing old-time skills with the science of today. It’s all about thinking beyond the industrial. It’s about re-learning to work with the land and use what you’ve got in your hands.
You’ve got to figure out the possibilities with a hammer and an anvil, and the relationship between the two. Part of it is knowing the limitations of your materials, and you only find those by screwing up.
People will try it for the first time and think, “This is crazy, how can you make anything like this?” But it’s like a sport. A basketball player doesn’t get good at shooting free-throws overnight.
If you think about it, 200 years ago, everything people needed was made by a blacksmith or some foundry work. The range of things you can make is incredible.
If anything, I get overwhelmed by the possibilities.