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Oregon man forges new direction with old tools

By CARISA CEGAVSKE, The News-Review
Published: September 10, 2017, 6:03am
4 Photos
Scott Wadsworth works on a project July 21 in his Roseburg, Ore., shop. Wadsworth has been fascinated by blacksmiths since he was 12 years old.
Scott Wadsworth works on a project July 21 in his Roseburg, Ore., shop. Wadsworth has been fascinated by blacksmiths since he was 12 years old. Michael Sullivan/The News-Review Photo Gallery

ROSEBURG, Ore. — Scott Wadsworth has been fascinated by blacksmiths since he was 12 years old, when he kept running across descriptions of them in the Western books he enjoyed.

He was camping the first time he experienced the joy of shaping metal. He put some nails in a campfire, and once they were hot, he started hammering them flat.

“I didn’t know what to do with them, but I kept doing it over and over,” he said.

Wadsworth went to Oregon State University, intending to study for an engineering degree, but dropped out to pursue a construction career.

Twelve years ago he received a gift from former Douglas County Commissioner Bill Vian. Vian gave him all his blacksmithing tools — tools he himself had received from Roseburg Forest Products founder Kenneth Ford in 1978.

The equipment is worthy of a museum, but Wadsworth has no intention of leaving it to collect dust.

“When Bill gave me these tools it really altered the course of my middle age,” he said.

Today, Wadsworth builds a wide variety of metal objects, from chandeliers to range hoods to swords.

His favorite creation to date is a set of gates patterned to look like dogwood. It’s the type of creation Wadsworth likes to call house jewelry.

The next step in his journey came when his son Nathan Wadsworth of Mesa, Ariz., suggested his dad put up some videos on YouTube. That seemed like a horrible idea, Wadsworth said. He couldn’t imagine that anyone would be interested.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

In January 2016, Nathan shot some video about a large, 70-year-old power hammer Wadsworth uses to smash iron.

“He uploaded it, and it got a few thousand views, and that was intriguing,” Wadsworth said.

After a few other videos, including one about a forge he designed and built, the two collaborated on a video in July 2016 about a blacksmith’s anvil. Over the weekend after it was posted, it received 100,000 views.

Wadsworth has several anvils, but one of them is his favorite. It’s a 448-pound anvil manufactured by Hay Budden Manufacturing Co. in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1909.

The anvil’s been well used over its 100-plus years, but it remains in top condition. Wadsworth can take a metal object, softened by heat from either his 2400-degree propane forge or his 3600-degree coal forge, set it on the anvil and start hammering until it takes the shape he has in mind.

It’s magic, he said, and it connects him to all of history.

“Everything civilization required emerged between the face of an anvil and the face of a hammer,” he said.

Wadsworth hopes to figure out how to make a living from his YouTube channel, called Essential Craftsman. .

Learning to be a blacksmith revolutionized his life, he said, and finding out how many people were interested in what he was learning revolutionized it again.

Wadsworth found this new purpose at the age of almost 60.

“It feels like a last-minute chance to do something significant, as long as I keep the emphasis on the craftsmanship and not on me,” he said.

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