He has dedicated his life to metalwork, while I dedicated mine to woodwork.
We have now both become teachers (wait for it... I have another brother who is a teacher as well) and we try to pass our passion onto the younger generations. He was recently involved with helping on the build of a new Iron Age Forge for Ruskin Mill College. He is such a talented and knowledgeable metalworker - trained as a blacksmith and then did a 5 year Farrier apprenticeship - not for the feint hearted! But like most Farriers, the body can only take so many Shire horses sitting on you, race horses kicking you...
Interview with Garrick:
The Forge: Knife Making Craft Workshop, BBC Radio Gloucestershire
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| He used to have a forge next to the old SAS base in Hereford. I went to work there with him for the day. We got stopped by some guards, us 2 bearded hippies walking along with bags of tools having a smoke must have un-nerved those highly trained special forces - I mean who guards THEM? they don't really need guarding - god protect any nutter running in there waving a gun around. Anyway back to the point of this story...Have you ever tried forging? I though I was strong back then but could not last very long (especially with RSI of course) swinging a lump hammer against steel. Hours and hours of non-stop heavy hammering - rotating the irons in the fires so you don't stop and waste time - crazy dudes they are. Not for me. Teaching metalwork to 28 kids as they are all riveting or sawing steel bars is crazy enough for me thankyou, that is probably even more noisy, no wonder I got a headache every Friday last year, like I was pre-programmed. |
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| Can't find the great picture from the paper of him nailing on the horse shoe (did you make it Garrick?!) to finish off the workshop. I know he got his students to make the scroll bars. No electricity, up a hill, surrounded by woods - and the crazy thing? He does not even get to work in this workshop - got another one on another hill in the woods... |
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