Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant FY20
The North Dakota Council on the Arts has a Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program that “is designed to honor and encourage the preservation of North Dakota’s diverse living traditions by providing grants that allow master traditional artists to pass their skills and knowledge to apprentices on a one-to-one basis over an extended period of time.” We were encouraged to apply for this program to help us continue to study under the master blacksmith Doug Swenson of Goose Prairie Forge and were lucky enough to be funded from July 2019-April 2020.
Work Schedule
The general outline of the work we intend to do and the things we intend to learn includes the following:
- Topic: Shop safety; Technique: drawing down; Project: hammer
- Technique: twisting, bending over anvil edges; Project: hammer
- Topic: Basic metallurgy; Technique: forging tool steel; Project: hammer, chisel
- Technique: hardening tool steel; Project: hammer, chisel
- Technique: hammer technique; Project: spearhead
- Project: spearhead
- Technique: shouldering; Project: shears
- Technique: grinding, sharpening edge tools; Project: shears
- Technique: hot punching, riveting; Project: shears
- Project: building the forge
- Project: building the forge
- Project: building and using the forge
- Project: candleholder
- Project: candleholder
- Project: fire striker
- Project: fire striker, sheep bell
- Project: sheep bell
- Technique: fire welding; Project: iron chain
- Project: iron chain
- Project: iron chain
- Project: cooking utensils
- Project: cooking utensils
- Project: axe
- Project: axe
- Project: axe
- Project: axe
Project List
- Viking Age forge ✓
- Fire striker ✓
- Candleholder ✓
- Iron chain ✓
- Chisel ✓
- Cooking utensils ✓
- Shears ✓
- Hammer ⊙
- Axe ⊙
- Spearhead ⓧ
- Sheep bell ⓧ
That’s a lot of projects and a lot of hammering! The biggest challenge, however, will be squeezing it into everyone’s busy schedules.