Ragnar F0rge

My Journey into blacksmithing began as a fourteen year old on a family trip to a historic village called This is The Place in Salt Lake City. During our exploration of the village we stopped at the blacksmith shop. The blacksmith, Brent Elder was making knives and playing with fire. I couldn't imagine anything better, so I asked Brent if I could be an apprentice. He agreed and I spent as much of the next two summers as I was able in the village blacksmith shop.

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During this time I also acquired my first anvil, a 200+ pound gear from a scrap yard. I also met up with the local chapter of the Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America (ABANA), the Bonneville Forge Council and got my first forge and blower from one of the members. I was able to set up a shop at my parents’ house and continued to practice and learn.

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In 2005 I attended a blacksmithing class at the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia. The most significant thing I got out of that class was a well radiused crosspeen hammer that I still use as my primary forging hammer.

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In 2009 I came full circle and was hired as a seasonal blacksmith back at This is The Place Park, it was here I met another of my great mentors in the craft, Brian Westover. That year at the park I also met the woman who would become my wife. I like to think that blacksmithing played some part in our courtship, as I taught her to make a few things in the shop, and gave her the first iron rose that I successfully made. Then in 2010 I spent a summer working at another living history farm in cache valley Utah. In 2011 I was back again at This is the place where I continued working seasonally until October of 2014

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In the fall of 2014 I was contacted by someone who was working on restoring a blacksmith shop that was built in 1895, they were looking for a blacksmith to sort through nearly a hundred years worth of tools and other items that had ended up in the shop, and determine what would be appropriate to display in the restored shop as actual blacksmith tools. Through the course of doing that I met the Man who owned the shop and he expressed interest in having the shop used again as a working blacksmith shop.

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Now I operate that historic blacksmith shop in Eden Utah.

There is at least in summary my journey as a blacksmith, from a boy just thrilled to be playing with fire and steel on occasion to a full time blacksmith working in a hundred and twenty year old shop.