Blacksmith Forging A Fire Poker

So here we have what I call a Ribbon Poker. It's a product designed by me that I have been selling via my website for many years. I designed it as a stand alone poker, different to my two full ranges of fire tools, as a way to incorporate a free formed ribbon handle in an attempt to break away from the standardisation that I find with most of my products. The irony is that over the years I have made so many of them that even the ribbon handle has become a part of my muscle memory, and they all come out looking incredibly similar to one another.

In any case, it is a great example of a few different traditional blacksmithing techniques, including a branch fire weld (or forge weld, for all you americans) which is probably the easiest fire weld to acheive, and great for begginers, tapering both long and short, power hammer work, and free formed manipulation using the localised heat of an oxy-propane torch.

I hope you find it interesting, I have chosen to show the entirety of the free formed handle section process to give you an idea of both the time it takes, and the use of local heat manipulation that you need to learn in order to perfect a fairly organic looking result.