What a Great Start to Our Spring Demo Season: 14th Annual Fairfax Civil War Day

What a way to start a season!  We had a wonderful time at the 14th Annual Fairfax Civil War Day held at Historic Blenhein, an amazing house with such an interesting history.

We had a great day of teaching and blacksmithing, surrounded by the General and Mrs. Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, Colonel Mosby, and lots of engaged visitors.  There were wagon rides, kids' toys, educational talks, living history interpreters, wonderful music, and delicious food.  It was great fun.

Our friend, Vince, was able to join us for the day and we set up two anvils (along with the kids' anvil) so we always had something going on to show our guests.   

The guys were quite productive, working on various Civil War-appropriate campfire tripods and utensil sets.   

They even did a variation on the usual S-hooks on a utensil set for an interested visitor -- our youngest son was thrilled with this product because he's been making "sideways S-hooks" for quite some time, and now was vindicated that someone who does a lot of outdoor cooking would find them useful!  

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We even had canine visitors who were interested in what we were doing!  

It was such a fun day -- please be on the lookout for the 15th Annual Fairfax Civil War Day.  You won't want to miss it!  In addition, we'll be at Wye Mills, Maryland next Saturday for the Colonial Fair. Please come and see us!

  

Cherry Blossoms in the Breeze

Jeff in the Forge Preparing for the 14th Fairfax Civil War Day

Jeff likes to feature a project every demo season.  This past fall, he demonstrated leaf hooks.  The leaf hooks were great because Jeff’s version of these hooks showed many basic blacksmithing skills in a quickly-moving project so many people could see those techniques (i.e. taper, twist, punch, etc…) within a 15- 20 minute time frame.  The hooks were perfect.  

With our first demo coming up on April 26th at the 14th Fairfax Civil War Day at Historic Blenheim (I saw an advertisement for the event when I flipped through the Weekend section of the Washington Post the other day!), Jeff is thinking through what he’d like to feature this spring.  He was toying with the heart he made in February so he went out to the forge to try various methods of making them. 

He’d hoped to be able to fashion them around the horn of the anvil, but wasn’t pleased with how that worked.  So, you still have time to vote on various projects you’d like to see made!