Metallurgy Day at St. Albans School (With Costumes for Halloween!)

We had a fantastic demo at St. Albans School on Halloween.  We've been working with the Upper School to link their history curriculum with blacksmithing and other related topics.   This is the 3rd year we've presented at the school and it just gets better and better.  We present at many places, but this is the ONLY demo where we hear student-written "Odes to Metallurgy" and discuss Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in great detail, as well as the iron-related deforestation of Europe and the East Coast of the United States.  In addition, this is our only demo in which the students (and some teachers!) are allowed to actually forge with Jeff.  

 

 

 

 This year, our presentation fell on Halloween and the students had "free dress" so we enjoyed their costumes -- it has to be the first time Jeff has taught to gorillas, bananas, clowns, and Hamlet!

 In addition, the school arranged for apple-cider pressing, a peat fire, and folk music:

As the school website said so well, "Students were able to have a full sensory experience with the smell of burning coal, the taste of fresh-pressed cider, the sounds of folk music and the hammer on the anvil, and the feel of what it took to make even the simplest nail. The boys enjoyed the opportunity shape various metal tools fresh off the hot coals."  We are looking forward to returning next year!

Happy Halloween!

Lest you think we might not have celebrated, here's a photo from an all-day teaching demo at St. Albans School.  I will post more about this demo later. We had a fantastic time.

 It was our third year of working closely with the school to tie blacksmithing into their curriculum, and it just gets better and better.  This year, we added some silliness, as the high school boys were given a "free dress" day and many had dressed up for Halloween.   Some teachers dressed up as well.  In this photo, Jeff was teaching John Campbell (one of our friends who is also a teacher at the school) how to make a nail.   I have to say, we've never had a demo before with Hamlet!

Demo at St. Albans

What a way to end our fall demo season!  We enjoyed a lovely day at St. Albans in D.C., where several teachers at the school had designed their early fall curriculum around something related to blacksmithing, (i.e. Adam Smith, the importance of metal and forging to world civilizations, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the industrialization of Europe, etc…) and asked us to teach and demonstrate to those various topics.  

We have met thousands and thousands of interesting people while demo’ing for four+ years, but we’ve never had a demo start with student-written odes to metallurgy!  

In addition, all the students and teachers got the opportunity to make (and take!) a colonial-style nail.  

It was just the sort of demo that Jeff and I love to do, and we are very thankful for the opportunity to work with St. Albans.  Also, we’d like to thank the members of the football team and other student athletes for helping us load our equipment afterwards!