CUT BANK — Blacksmithing is an old art form, and here in Cut Bank, the tradition continues as Don McIlvain of Grimmet Forge keeps the fire going.
McIlvain: "My love for blacksmithing came through my love of history. And back when I was eight years old, it was 1976. Our country celebrated the bicentennial. And all over the country, there was historical reenactments in wagon trains and everything. And I remember in our elementary school, there was a wagon train to come out in front of our school, and all those kids went out to watch it go by. And I just had such a love for history that that grew. And during high school and then my older years, I started getting involved in historical reenactments. And as I gotten involved in historical reenactments, there's a lot of things I needed, a lot of different things that they don't make anymore that only the blacksmith would make. And so I got myself an old rivet forge and began to hand forge things. Some of them didn't look very good, but they were so I could use them. And so that began to grow. And I began to make all sorts of different things around the house. And for my reenactment."
McIlvain: "When I got back to the United States, I was like, I knew I needed some more training. So I went down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and trained under Frank Turley, who is the grandfather of the modern day blacksmiths. And in the late 1960s, early seventies, blacksmithing was just pretty much dead. And it was just everything was being made in factories. There was no need for the village blacksmith anymore. He was gone. He was just a dinosaur. Frank Turley really tried to revive the trade and he was a farrier. And then he found an old blacksmith, Victor Vera, to teach him. And so he began to learn more and more about making hardware, different things, and and forging and blacksmithing."
Click here to visit the Grimmet Forge website.
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