Open as of May First 2007, Prospect Hill Forge in Waltham, Massachusetts is a place to learn and practice the art of blacksmithing. There will be semester-length courses, short courses, and single-session classes on specific topics.  Focus will be on tool use, process, and the creation of practical objects using traditional techniques. Offerings will vary from survey classes for rank beginners to monitored shop-time for advanced smiths.

The overall goal of Prospect Hill Forge is to awake in our students the awareness that iron and steel are mutable in the hands of the common man, and that the equipment necessary can be quite simple.

PHF will be offering day and evening classes in basic and intermediate blacksmithing and also offering supervised and monitored shop time for work on personal projects.

We've made up  an "I'm Interested" sheet  for expressing specific interest in classes Click this link and it should format an email to us with the form ready to be filled out.

Where we stand as of:

6/22/07:  A lot more scheduled classes
We had a long-term planning session and we've got  classes scheduled well into Christmas break. Late August is still very light on classes... we figure on putting in some number of specialty classes. We do requests, so if there's something in particular you want to do, talk to us.

Do check out the Marshmallow and Barbeque Fork class, coming up soon.

I've put up a bit about one of the cool things about smithing. 

There are a bunch of new pictures up on the Products page.

The new look is now propagated to all the pages.

6/14/07:  A new look.
So far it's only been applied to this page and the Calendar page. The rest are still the old black on white. Like it? Love it? Hate it? 

This Saturday is an Open Shop focusing on making tent stakes, you don't have to make tent stakes, but that's what we'll be ready to talk about. Check the description on the Calendar.

5/31/07:  The first Rudiments of Blacksmithing Class finished last night.
These guys worked their arms off making a modern-design candle stick and a long-handled cooking fork. The candlestick was a little ambitious in terms of how much metal needed to be moved, but a good bit of hammerskill was gained in the process. I need a lighter-duty project for classes that don't consist entirely of full-sized men. I have some ideas.

New Classes!
Check the calendar, we've added a Saturday of making camp cooking items on the 9th of June and as soon as the photo and text are done we'll be putting up a toilet-paper-holder class for Sunday the 10th. Yeah, I know, it sounds goofy, but check it out. It's actually a relatively cool piece.

5/21/07:  Thanks for dropping by the GOB.
Things were made, interest was stirred, things were learned, and a couple of people's items were fixed. 

It was indeed a Grand Opening Bash.

We don't have a count of how many actually came by, nor have we entered or even counted the new contacts we have. It felt like close to 100 came through in the four days.  Glancing at the sheets I'm guessing that about 50 people left contact info, if you are one of them, we'll be dropping you a note in the next day or so to make sure we read your writing correctly.  (ok, it's taking more than a few days - cw 5/31)

So, check the Calendar to see what classes are being offered when. 

We are still in the formative stage and very willing to listen to input, requests, suggestions, thoughts, wishes, whims... concerning content and timing of classes (morning, afternoon, evening, weekend). So feel free to drop us a note at classesATprospecthillforge. com and we'll see what we can do. For example, one GOB visitor is a smith with some experience but he's always had trouble with forge welding and asked if we might offer a class specifically on that. It will be a little while before that's ready. We've been asked to do a class on making the toilet paper holder we have in our bathroom. Yes, yes, pictures, description, it's coming.