Over the summer, with Elijah doing a lot of the hard work while I stayed at the forge, we really made a lot of progress on the shop. The shop build has been a slowly progressing project since an intern and I started it back at the beginning of 2019- the year I went full time as a blacksmith. It has been slow, because it has been really hard to take time away from paying work to work on the shop- and cashflow wasn’t quite enough to hire all of the work done. But slow and steady wins the race, I’ve heard! This shop is not intended to be a forever building, but just a workable space until the business outgrows it- hence the light post-frame construction. It really is serving it’s purpose well, and will be even better the more we can finish it.

One of the main things we got done this year was finishing the siding on the two long walls of the shop, which involved putting up the last siding boards, installing the battens over the cracks between the main boards, installing “bird blocks” between the rafter tails, and installing the galvanized metal skirting on the lower portion of the walls. This last step was something I always planned to do as a compromise- a way to protect my wood siding from rot without going with all metal siding. Of course, the metal siding will also rot eventually, but it will be easy to replace. First, Elijah had cut the bottom portion of the wood siding off, then dig a small trench along the bottom of the wall to put the bottom end of the metal down in. After that, it was simply a matter of cutting the metal to fit, screwing it on, and backfilling the trench.

It sure is looking sharp! Best of all, with both long sides done, and the ends of the shop getting close, the wind can no longer howl through the shop- making things extra smoky and freezing us in cold weather. Hard to believe I worked through four winters in this shop with the wind blowing through it. Our goal for the rest of this year is to finish the siding on the ends of the shop, get the last two windows in (in the front wall), and get doors put in the east end of the shop where there are none yet. The doors are going to be the biggest hurdle yet, but then the shop will really be closed up against the weather. After the last doors and windows are in, then we will turn to installing the wood block flooring. That’s going to be the last big hurdle on the build.