Working at Brodnax Forge.

In the Christmas holidays I went around a few of the Bristol blacksmiths and introduced myself as a student of the craft. One blacksmith stood out among the rest in attitude and knowledge towards blacksmithing “Fred Brodnax”.

When bringing my microphone stand back to Bristol it took a large knock where two of its connections became slightly loose and needed some attention. As I have no equipment to be able to fix it I went to Fred for help and on the Wednesday I took the stand to his forge where we set about fixing it.    

We both agreed that the bottom half would need another rivet to give it extra support to hold the weight of the head. So we clamped it, made a mark where the new rivet should be and it took two of us to hold it in place while we drilled a new hole.

Before I came to the forge Fred had kindly pre-made a rivet for the stand so once we drilled the hole we knocked the rivet in straight away. We then set about knocking in all the other rivets so that it was tight and secure. In the end all the rivets were tight and shaped up nicely. I’m very happy with the result and very grateful to Fred for helping me. now and I can finally put on the finish coat.