
Shop Opening at Wrought Academy on Saturday, September 3rd
On August 12, 2016 by jaustinDate: September 3rd, 2016 (Saturday / 10am – 6pm) Location: Wrought Academy / 2440 Adeline Street / Oakland CA 94607 Free Event / All are Welcome! If you’re curious about the shop and the classes offered at Wrought Academy this is your chance to drop by and see what’s going on! We will be forging

Forging Tour: Norway & Sweden
On August 1, 2016 by jaustinThis year in May (2016) I got the opportunity to return to the Hjerleid Craft School in Dovre, Norway to teach a one week class on forging hammers in the Viking tradition. The year before I had taught Viking era axe forging – also at Hjerleid. Benjamin Kjellman-Chabin, the regular instructor of these students during their

Simple Viking Style Anvils
On March 17, 2016 by jaustinI’ve been trying my hand at larger forge welding projects and decided to make some simple anvils in a style common to the Viking Age. The anvils were presumably mortised into stumps fairly deeply to give them good support for hammer work. The main challenge in anvil forging is to weld a high carbon steel

Forging the Swedish Carpenter Axe
On February 26, 2016 by jaustinSince watching Mattias Helje forge a beautiful, traditional carpenter’s axe in Sweden in 2015 I have done several trials of forging this axe myself. At first I concentrated exclusively on the eye and socket – the hardest part of the axe to understand. Recently I began to forge and understand the axe as a whole.

During Summer: Axes & More
On September 11, 2015 by jaustinHere are a few pictures of axes I made in the last couple of months, as well as some pictures from the Sonoma Coast and an amazing sunset as seen at my shop in West Oakland. The customer for one of the axes requested that I overlay some silver runes onto the poll. It was