A B3RT Editorial Ledger · Issue No. 2
A working record of blacksmithing in the North Carolina High Country — the schools, the smiths, the fuel, the hammers, the knives that get carried home from a Hammer-In, and the fire-poker that has stood by every hearth in the coves since 1840.
Blacksmithing in the southern mountains is not a hobby. It is a continuing service — shoeing horses, building iron for the porch, making knives for the kitchen, and keeping the schools open.
Drive south out of Boone on Highway 105 toward Valle Crucis and the country opens. Past the Old Cranberry forge site at the head of the Watauga the road forks; you can still find slag heaps from the 1810s forge where Jacob Cook and his sons reduced local bog iron. The same ridges are still being worked on the same fuel and tools. What has changed is everything else: the schools that teach the trade, the demonstrations that bring the public to the forge, and the quiet commerce in knives, axes, and fire-pokers that keeps a half-dozen smiths in Avery County solvent.
Blacksmithing is working iron and steel at forge temperature, 1,800 to 2,300 °F depending on the alloy. The "black" is the iron-oxide scale on hot steel. Whitesmiths work cold metal and tin; bladesmiths work the steel that holds an edge; farriers shoe horses. The same smith often does all three in a week.
Hill country: long winters, short summers, hardwood ridges that produce excellent charcoal. Every hollow once had its own forge, fed by local coal measures and hardwood. Today the forges are fewer but larger, the schools are regional, the markets reach as far as the tourist trade will carry a hammer.
Five regional pillars that keep the trade alive — one folk school, one craft guild, one artisan center, one named smith whose students still teach, and a Piedmont tradition that is older than the mountains.
The Brasstown Folk School has taught blacksmithing since 1972, when the trade shop was rebuilt from a disassembled West Virginia country shop. The weeklong format — five days, one project, two students per anvil — has produced a generation of regional smiths. Curriculum: coal forge, hand hammer, no power hammer the first year.
The Guild has juried iron into its membership since the 1950s and runs the Allanstand Craft Shop at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Standards are conservative — a finished piece must function as advertised. Several High Country smiths hold Guild membership.
The AAC in Hindman, Kentucky runs the most sustained craft-residency program in the central mountains; its iron cohort has included High Country smiths since 2007. Residencies run six to twelve weeks and end in a public demonstration. A Bakersville extension hosts AAC fellows and cross-pollinates with Penland.
John D. Coggins is the working smith most associated with the contemporary High Country blade: a thin, full-tang carving knife with a forge-finished bolster and a curly-walnut or mountain-maple handle from boards cut in Watauga County. Coggins trained at the Folk School in the 1990s and at Haywood Community College. His students run shops in Banner Elk, Newland, and Sugar Grove. The Coggins-style blade is the most common knife on a Hammer-In table.
Piedmont blacksmithing is the parent tradition: the rolling country east of the Blue Ridge where Scottish-Irish and German smithing families produced hardware for wheat, wagon, and tobacco. High Country smiths were trained in Piedmont shops before settling in the mountains. Forge equipment, hammer types, and swage-block traditions are essentially Piedmont — adapted for steeper ground. The regional axe-head pattern is a direct import from the Salisbury and Statesville shops of the 1820s.
Two tools that decide what the smith can make. Both are old, both are heavy, and both come from a small number of surviving makers.
A working forge is a refractory-lined fire pot with forced air — traditionally a hand-cranked blower, now usually a centrifugal electric. The High Country shop runs either a coal forge or a gas forge. Coal is louder and smellier, rewarding the smith who reads the fuel. Gas is cleaner and has largely replaced coal in production knife shops. Brasstown and Haywood still teach coal first.
A modern anvil is a forged or cast steel body with a hardened face, a horn for shaping curves, a hardie hole, and a stepped base on a wooden block. The English pattern — face, horn, step, tail — is the world standard. American anvils from 1870–1930 (Hay-Budden, Columbia, Arm & Hammer, Peter Wright) command premium prices. A 100-lb Hay-Budden is the smallest practical anvil.
"Buy the heaviest anvil you can move by one person. Anything you cannot move by yourself will not be moved when it needs to be."
A swage block is a heavy cast-iron or steel block with shaped holes and slots: round, square, half-round, swage shapes. It is the second most expensive thing in a smith's shop, after the anvil. Set into the anvil's hardie hole, swage tools shape the work without marking the face. Every knife shop runs one; every axe shop uses one daily.
A blacksmith's hammer is not interchangeable. Each weight, each profile, each face shape is a different tool. The list below is the working kit of a High Country smith who does general ironwork and a steady run of forged knives.
A regional type with a documented history. The "Appalachian-made carving knife" is the High Country smith's calling card — and the easiest object to read for a non-smith who wants to know what is going on at the forge.
The contemporary Appalachian carving knife is a thin, full-tang fixed blade 3.5–4.5 inches long with a forge-finished bolster and a handle of regionally cut hardwood. Steel is a simple high-carbon alloy: 1084, 52100, or W2. Heat treat is forgiving — harden, temper to 58–60 Rc. Handle slabs are pinned with brass or mild steel.
"A good High Country blade is not pretty. It is honest. The forge marks are on the bolster because they were never polished off." — J.D. Coggins
A working knife from a regional maker is identifiable by four things: full tang, forged bolster, pins (not screws or epoxy), and handle wood cut within a day's drive of the forge. Curly walnut from a Watauga County tree is the High Country tradition.
Forging in public. The single best thing about the High Country craft economy is that you can stand next to a working forge and watch the iron move.
Blacksmith demonstrations in the southern mountains run May through October at fairs, schools, and historical sites. A working demo is a coal forge, an anvil, and a piece the smith can finish in twenty to forty minutes: a fireplace poker, a leaf, a small knife. The pace is deliberate. The smith narrates each step — "critical heat," "the weld," "the quench" — and answers questions between blows.
The best are at the Folk Art Center, Mountain Heritage Day, the Brasstown blacksmith week, and the Hammer-In at the Appalachian Artisan Center. At a Hammer-In, smiths forge side-by-side and the public walks among them.
Stand behind the anvil — scale off hot steel can travel eight feet. Keep small children at the rail. The iron cools whether you are watching or not.
Three working traditions that keep the regional smith solvent — horses, knives, and the public forge-in.
The farrier shoes horses. The High Country farrier serves trail-riding operations, private farms, and the show circuit. A farrier's truck is a mobile shop: gas forge, anvil stand, keg shoes, hoof stand. The work is unforgiving — a poorly nailed shoe can lame a horse. Apprenticeships run two to four years.
Modern bladesmithing focuses on edge tools: kitchen knives, hunting knives, axes, swords. The American Bladesmith Society (ABS), founded 1976, certifies smiths through tested performance — the master stamp requires a forged blade that passes a 90-degree bend and a 2x3-inch chop on seasoned white oak.
A Hammer-In is a regional forge-in: a single shop or marquee, multiple forges, multiple smiths working side-by-side over a weekend. The format dates to the early 1970s revivals and has been held at the Folk Art Center, Haywood Community College, and the Appalachian Artisan Center. A well-attended Hammer-In is the year's largest market for a regional smith.
A coal forge and a gas forge are not interchangeable tools. They produce different heats, different atmospheres, and different finishes. The High Country sits on top of historic coal measures and inside one of the densest hardwood belts in the East.
| Fuel | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pocahontas bituminous | Virginia mine coal, bagged | Standard knife-shop coal. Burns hot, clean, cokes well. |
| New River coal | WV/VA southern field | Higher sulfur. Forgiving of slack firing; the rural smith's coal. |
| Beehive coke | Specialty coalworks | Pre-burned coal with volatiles driven off. For forge welding. |
| Hardwood lump charcoal | Beech, oak, hickory | Burns cool and clean; ideal for high-carbon steel. |
| Briquettes (Kingsford) | Compressed sawdust | Acceptable for hobby work; too inconsistent for production. |
| Propane (gas forge) | Tank or utility line | Cleanest, most controllable. The production knife-shop default. |
Charcoal burning was a substantial mountain industry from the 1820s through the 1920s. Every hollow had a coal pit — a covered earth mound where hardwood was stacked, lit, and slowly burned under restricted air for four to six days. The trade collapsed with cheap coal in the 1930s but is coming back at craft scale: small kiln operators in Avery and Mitchell counties produce beech and oak lump charcoal.
Two regional objects that any working smith has made, and that almost every mountain household owns one of.
The High Country fire-poker is a five-foot round bar with a hook on one end and a flattened twist or forged leaf on the other. The smith's training piece — drawing out, twisting, upsetting, scrolling. A good poker is balanced at the grip: hang it from a finger and the head lies flat. The tradition is unbroken since the 1840s and is the day-one project at Brasstown.
A working poker is hardened only at the hook; the shank is left soft. Decorative pokers hardened all the way through snap within five years.
The regional Appalachian axe is a single-bit, 2–3 lb head with a bearded profile and a hung eye that takes a curved hickory handle. The pattern descends from the Hudson's Bay trade axe and the early 1820s American felling axes; the High Country version has a heavier cheek and longer bit than the New England model. Sheffield and Collins supplied most regional heads until the 1950s; contemporary smiths forge heads from 4140 and 5160 spring stock.
A regional axe-head sells for $80–$220. Hanging is its own skill. Hickory handles come from regional sawyers.
Blacksmithing in the High Country is not nostalgia. It is the working trade that built the houses and the bridges, and the trade that still builds the knives and shoes the horses.
It is easy to read a ledger like this and assume the trade is a museum piece. The benches around here disagree. The Folk School fills its weeks a year out. The Guild's iron juries are competitive. The Hammer-In draws smiths from four states. The farrier's truck is still a working trade; the knife shop is still a working trade; the demonstration is still a working tradition.
The fire-poker in the parlor belongs to a forge in the next county. The axe on the porch was hung by a smith you can drive to. The knife on the kitchen block was forged at a Hammer-In you watched. The High Country has always made what it uses.