Forge-in at Bushfire Forge May 6th 7th 8th 2016

[owen bush 292]

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the 2016 Bushfire Forge

'Forge - In'.

 

It will be held on the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th of May 2016.

 

There will be 3 days of demonstrations, lectures and forging with frolics in the evening.

 

Demonstrations and Lectures by:-

 

Jesus Hernandez USA

Lee Sauder USA

Dr Fabrice Cognot France

Josh Burrell UK

Rod Hughes UK

Will Catchaside UK

Paul Mortimer UK

 

There will also be a smelt and chances to have a go at forging and using the school facilities. I now have 5 hammers running and may well have a 6^th on the go by then.

 

These are friendly international events. They are a great way to meet some of the worlds best Bladesmiths and tap into a wealth of information that you would be hard pushed to find elsewhere on the planet !

 

Forge-In price : £130

 

(this includes attendance to the 3 day forge-in and food on the Saturday night. Accommodation and your daily food is not included but there is a limited amount of crash space. For details about accommodation please contact us on the email below.

I run the forge in on a non profit basis and all the money you pay (and then some) goes to the costs of running the event.)

 

For more info please email or to reserve a place please email us at :

 

forge-in-2016@owenbush.co.uk

Edited December 3, 2015 by owen bush

[Jesus Hernandez 34]

Looking forward to my first visit to London while enjoying the company of like-minded folks and sharing my experiences in the process of making hamon look pretty.

[Justin Mercier 65]

Ooh, this looks really interesting, I will have to see what my work schedule and the costs of plane tickets from east coast USA are running around that time of the year. I've never actually been outside of the airport in London area =(

[owen bush 292]

It would be great to have you here Justin, I think we ended up with people from 17 countries last time.........

[Justin Mercier 65]

I'll look into making it happen, then I can make a trip to the Victoria and Albert museum and the Wallace collection, both of which I've never visited before too =)

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

Don't forget the Museum of London! I have a scheduling conflict or I'd be all over this. A hammer-in at Owen's is not to be missed!

[J.Arthur Loose 163]

Ooof, $1300 tickets. I'll keep checking though...

[Martin Troy 0]

I'm pretty sure you can count on me being there.

[Justin Mercier 65]

Ooof, $1300 tickets. I'll keep checking though...

 

Far enough out right now that tickets are still around peak price, definitely keep checking as the best time to buy tickets tends to be between 60 and 90 days before the trip, which would be in the feb to march timeframe.

[John Page 95]

Ooof, $1300 tickets. I'll keep checking though...

 

My concern too Hopefully it will dip down again, this sounds like a great time!

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk 256]

Booked and paid

[Justin Mercier 65]

plane tickets are coming down a lot, hoping to still be able to make it, but I'm going to have to try to do it on the cheap. Might not be able to stay longer and visit the museums.

[owen bush 292]

I have some titles for some of the forge in demos and lectures....... less than 2 months away !

Lee Sauder
Talk "bloomery smelting in Sudan"
Demo :- forging the sword fuller (with hammer and anvil)

Jesus Hernandez- USA
Talk “Reverse engineering the Vehmaa sword pattern welding dilemma.”
Demo :- Clay coating and differential hardening of a blade.


Jeremy Hodgkinson – UK
The iron industry in the Weald from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages

Rod Hughes – UK

Talk “Making Wax patterns for blade components and how to convert them into historic and modern lost wax moulds”
Demo :- Bronze casting


Paul Mortimer - UK
Talk "Aspects of swords in England during the 5th to 7th centuries."

Dr Fabrice Cognot - Vive la France
Talk “The evolution of the axe as a weapon in medieval times”

[Justin Mercier 65]

So i'm still trying to make it to this event, but i'm not going to be able to take off a whole week from work and get to see the sites. Plane tickets from the USA are at their lowest iv'e seen right about now, but are creeping up already. I've been talking with a friend who used to live in london (lives in florida now, go figure) and he thinks I should be able to get to Bushfire Forge on public transport fairly easily from the airport (assuming that the East Wickham Farm address is the forge address) Owen, i sent you an email to inquire about the limited crash-space. Does anyone else who has gone to an event in london know about getting in and out of the airport?

 

I'm looking at 2 different flights right now, the first being the redeye from boston to london on thursday night, landing in London at 9am, and then having to book it across to the other side of london and miss the first half of friday, the other being the same flight but wed night landing thursday morning instead. Either flight would then have a return flight back leaving at 1 in the afternoon on Monday. My friend was concerned with traffic on the M25 from one side to the other and suggested if I have an afternoon flight on monday to get a room near the airport sunday night after the event in order to not miss my flight time.

 

Is anyone else from these forums going and have any flights nearish the same times and want to split cab / room / whatever?

 

As much as I'd love to make a longer trip out of it and see the museums in the area, it looks like if I am going to make it, it will be just for the weekend really. I'm trying to finalize this quickly so that I can get the friday and monday off work (and maybe the thursday prior to the event too)

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

You can easily get from either airport (Heathrow or Gatwick) to Welling, Kent on the trains in about an hour. It's a ten-minute slog through delightful neighborhoods to Owen's place from the train station, don't expect a taxi to be around.

 

Edited to add: That one-hour time is optimistic and assumes you make all the connections in a timely manner. From Heathrow to Earl's Court station is about 30-35 minutes, switch lines to arrive at Charing Cross or Embankment station (add 15 minutes), catch train to Welling at Charing Cross and add another 30-40 minutes. Trains leave Charing Cross for Welling every twenty minutes or so. Or change at Hammersmith for Embankment...

 

From Gatwick, the Gatwick Express gets you to Victoria Station in 20 minutes. Trains leave Victoria for Welling every 35 to 40 minutes, takes 35-40 minutes.

 

This all assumes you get your tickets/card in a timely manner at whichever airport station. And that you've memorized the Tube map so you know which line goes where, you don't get your luggage caught in a turnstile (happened to me once, embarrassing to say the least).

 

So: Optimally, 1.5 hours from tarmac to Owen's, can take up to three hours. This is trains and feet only, if you opt for bus or taxi all bets are off.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Alan Longmire

[Justin Mercier 65]

Damn =( I'm not going to make it. Cant get thursday or the following monday off work now Too many others out that I need to cover for. Someone make sure to tell me at ashokan this fall what Lee demoed with fullers and what Jesus talked about with his Vehmma sword!

[owen bush 292]

Thats a damned shame, Ill tell ya for sure.

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

PICTURES! We want pictures and stories!

[Luke Barran 0]

Here are my photos from this years event, I shall leave the stories to others.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156891450275710.1073741840.797230709&type=1&l=70b9b5d6ee

Edited May 9, 2016 by Luke Barran

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk 256]

More photo's available here (I've set the privacy to public, so I hope you can all see it):

 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1047473311998673.1073741848.100002080420998&type=1&l=82ba31bc82

 

It was another great event organized by Owen. I arrived on Friday morning just in time for the first lecture. There was a great selection of lectures, demos and lots of time to play around in the forge. I was much impressed by the amount of skill shown again, particularly by Josh Burrell. I also actually quite liked that not all of the demos gave the perfect result. It shows that we are all facing challenges, but despite that great things are achievable. Great lecture about early medieval swords by Paul Mortimer, by which I learned a lot more then I knew before. I spend a good amount of hours in the forge, practicing on making torsion billets. Which was a great workout, as I practically haven't forged anything in recent years. I hoped to be able to make enough torsion billets for a sword. But I was a bit short on material to start with (no preparation, I just chucked a few pieces in my bag just before leaving), and when I helped extinguishing a bag of charcoal that caught fire I burned through my bar. Still though, I have two torsion billets to make a nice longsax, so I'm very pleased with that. On Saturday night after a bottle of Viking blood was passed around, things got a bit silly, with a jazz performance involving bits of a collapsed chair and a steel bowl. After the event, I had to go through the madness of UK public transport to get the ferry: practically all trains were cancelled, so it's a bit of a miracle I even manage to reach the ferry on time (only just!), by a combination of diverted trains, subways, busses, lots of running and a final race with a taxi. Quite an exhausting but great weekend.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Jeroen Zuiderwijk

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

Alas, not being on FB it won't let me see them. Sorry about the train strike, I bet that made for a huge mess. I also bet the jazz improve was worth the price of admission.

[Luke Barran 0]

HI Alan, can you confirm if my link works for you as the link generated is meant to work even for people without FB accounts.

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

Luke, I can see the first ten or so, but then it asks for a login to see 25 more.

[Luke Barran 0]

Seems to be a phone/tablet thing? On a computer you should see all 36 thumbnails. On a mobile devise it doesn't show them all and if you click to see the remaining ones it asks you to log in(strange as it's not meant to do this). However you can still scroll through all the photos. Just open the first one and by tapping on the photo it should bring up arrows on either side that when tapped on the right arrow it will take you to the next photo.

[Alan Longmire 3,682]

Thanks, I shall try that. FB is banned at work, I will try it at home.