Monday, June 02, 2008

M.C. Hammer: Men Playing with Fire

I've often joked that I am an artist who likes to play car mechanic on weekends. I'm sure that somewhere else, not terribly far away, there is a mechanic who spends his days off painting. So, what do you do if you spend five days a week managing systems for military avionics?

Well, if you're my friend Mike Carl, you build a forge in your garage, and hammer out knives.


Mike, being a ham. I convinced him to put the cup down so it wouldn't look like he was drinking while playing with fire.


This is a homemade forge, using firebrick, a small blower, and a casing built from a section of a torched-off oxygen tank. The remaining tank makes a lovely bell sound.


One iron in the fire.


Hot.


Stop! Hammer Time! Mike says you don't have very long to work the metal once it's out of the fire — I'm sure that anvil absorbs a lot of heat — so you have to plan ahead, know what you plan to do, and, ahem, strike while the iron is hot.

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