Now, the blacksmith's shop was where everybody-- it's kind of like Walmart.

Everybody had to go to the blacksmith shop.

Whether you needed a pair of shears or a horse shod, a knife, a hook, a branding iron.

[folksy music] [tractor rumbling] [insects chittering] [eagle screeches] [tractor rumbling] [train whistle blows] In this era of modern conveniences and disposable goods, it's nice to get back to our roots of making things by hand.

On this edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," we'll visit with Ed Willcock, who in his retirement, is keeping the fine art of blacksmithing alive.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Well, this is where I want to be today.

Ed Wilcock.

What's going on?

Nice to meet you, my friend.

Glad to meet you, Dale.

And we are at the Hidden Hollow Forge.

That's right.

We're rock-throwing distance from Aurora and really rock-throwing distance from Marionville.

And Crane.

And Crane.

It's kind of in the middle of it all.

And we are in a bona fide working blacksmith shop.

That's right.

Modern blacksmith shop.

A modern blacksmith shop.

And they promised me that you were going to teach me how to be a blacksmith in 30 minutes.

I'm going to do that.

You got your hands full.

I'm going to teach you to hit a hot piece of metal.

All right, let's do it.

Step right over there, Dale.

It'll be a safe place to be.

All right.

All right.

So, Ed, before you retired, you had-- like most of us, you had a working gig.

What did you used to do before you retired?

Well, probably better if I started at the beginning.

DALE MOORE: OK. Because I didn't do just one thing because of circumstances.

But when I got out of high school, one of my first jobs-- to get married, I had to make some money.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

So I went to work for a manufacturing plant here in Aurora.

And I got to work in a machine shop.

And I had a real interest with working with metal and everything, and I really liked that.

I did that for a while.

In the meantime, I was in the National Guard.

So that was ongoing.

But I manage the dairy farm for a couple of years.

Left that to go to work for Campbell 66.

[overlapping speech] Worked for them for about 10 years as a dock hand and a hustler.

And I served as a Teamster Union Steward.

And I left that and drove a delivery truck for Roadway Express.

Worked for Yellow Express.

Then I went to work for a chemical plant, a local plant down here.

We called it a chemical plant.

I was a chemical operator.

And I worked my way up to business production manager.

I stayed there about 17 years.

Then, I went to work with a friend of mine for a small loan company.

And I traveled around the country.

And I was a regional manager for them.

And that's when I started thinking about retiring and getting back to my basics, what I really liked, which was metalworking.

And I wanted to learn blacksmithing.

I'd been exposed to that as when I was young.

And so I started teaching myself everything I could.

Reading everything I could.

Watching whoever would let me watch him.

And that's what I was doing when I retired.

You sound like me.

I've done a little bit of everything.

One of these days, I'll figure out what I'm good at.

That's exactly right.

I said one time-- I had teacher in high school who was encouraging me.

But I said, I want to learn how to do everything.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

And so I've done of lot.

When most people retire, they'll get a fishing pole or something like that.

Your idea of retirement is kind of a blown-up deal here.

So did you envision this, like I'm going to do Hidden Hollow Forge and here's what it's going to look like?

Or how did you piece this together?

It kind of grew.

I started in my driveway and in my garage with an old anvil that I'd had at the farm.

A couple of them, actually, and some tools.

And then as I started selling stuff, especially after I built the shop-- I started selling stuff.

So as I sold it, I started buying my equipment, adding into the shop, so it's all been paid for like we used to do as it went along.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

Just one thing led to another.

One thing led to another.

I had an overall goal that I wanted to make normal, just average, everyday things for people that they could enjoy and afford and that they could pass on to their kids' future generations.

So I think I've done that.

The blacksmith was the center-- in many ways, the center part of the community.

That was it.

Yeah, the blacksmith shop was where everybody-- it's kind of like Walmart.

Everybody had to go to the blacksmith shop.

DALE MOORE: Right, exactly.

If you needed a pair of shears or horse shod, a knife, a hook, branding iron, fireplace stuff.

Yep, I'm not going to kid you.

It's hot in here.

But you'd expect in the middle of December in a blacksmith shop, it was hot, too.

That's right.

So that's part of what you do here.

If you don't like heat, don't be a blacksmith.

You better not be in this kitchen.

Cooking in this kitchen.

So you've amassed over the years a lot of different tools.

Obviously, we'll talk about them as we go along.

But what you make primarily-- and I like the way you said that, things that people can pass down.

We don't think much about heirlooms anymore, but you're actually making things that are made by hand, from scratch, that are made into a functional kind of a useful tool.

What are some of the things you make that you make available to people?

I make fireplace pokers, shovels, fireplace shovels.

Everything to do with a fireplace, I can make or have made it.

Cooking utensils, hot dog roasters, trammels, trivets-- DALE MOORE: You name it.

Kind of a lot.

I make so much.

I counted one time, I made over 400 different items.

Lots of hooks.

Different types of hooks.

You can hang on a board.

And where do you sell your products?

There's a place in Ozark, Missouri, called Keen Eye Antiques.

And they let me be in there with a booth.

And that's where I sell most of my stuff, besides right here out of the shop.

DALE MOORE: So now, when you started doing this for a hobby, did you have any idea it was going to wind up kind of being a business for you, too?

Not really.

I just-- I wanted it to.

And I was retired, so I don't really want to work all the time.

But it's gone better than I thought it would.

I tell you what, as I was looking at some of your pieces that you've made-- they're functional.

They're useful.

But really-- and you kind of mentioned it.

It's almost like it's an art.

It's a form of art, is what you're doing.

People tell me that, but I don't think of it.

I just think of it as-- the intrigue for me is changing it into something.

But yeah, people-- I mean, for somebody that doesn't do it every day, it's like it's fascinating.

It is a fascinating process.

Well, I understand that what we're going to make today is a fireplace poker.

We're going to make just a common, old average fireplace poker.

You've got the-- it's heating up.

Yeah, it looks a little different than it used to.

ED WILLCOCK: It's getting warm in here.

DALE MOORE: It's getting warm in here.

ED WILLCOCK: It's not coal, like we used to use.

This is more of a modern furnace.

But I'm in my shop is the inter mix of modern and old.

Yeah, I'm excited.

So I say, let's start making a fireplace poker.

All right, let's do it.

All right, let's do it.

[metal clanging] All right, Ed.

So what you're starting with is just a piece of iron.

It's a very basic piece of rod or iron that you get commercially.

Square mild steel.

That's what we work with today.

Now, your forge here is-- it's a little different looking than what you're used to see.

But while I'm looking inside there, and, man, it gets red hot.

ED WILLCOCK: It gets hot.

It actually doesn't get as hot as a coal forge would, but it gets hot enough.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

How about how hot does it get in there, just rough?

ED WILLCOCK: About 2,600, 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

DALE MOORE: Well, that melts something down.

Well, it won't quite melt.

You can weld with it.

It'll just start getting sticky we call it.

There's two sounds that I recognize from my childhood.

And one is you could always tell who was driving through town in the Frisco, because of the way they honked the horn and the way a blacksmith works that anvil.

And those are two very distinct to that individual that is kind of like making that steel sing.

Everybody's different, different in what they do.

But yeah, it sounds-- you can always hear that ring of the anvil.

Yeah, you sure can.

So from start to finish then, about how long does it take all in to really do a piece like you're doing today?

Like we're doing today?

About 30 minutes.

DALE MOORE: About 30 minutes, that's not bad.

A little longer or less.

It depends on how long it takes to heat, how much rest you get out of the heat.

Around 30 minutes to make a poker.

And so when you bring it out red hot, the way you are on the anvil there, what you're doing is, obviously, you're starting to form it into whatever the shape it is that you want.

That's right.

The first step, we're going to taper it down.

We're getting ready to make a ring on the end of the handle.

But yeah, we're tapering it down, what's called a-- I believe a parallel taper.

It's going to be straight.

We're going to keep the half inch spacing.

But then, we're going to bring it down to about a quarter of an inch all the way through here.

The thing about blacksmithing, you don't have to have a lot of tools, but the tools you have are pretty darned important.

That's right.

That's right.

DALE MOORE: You got a rack full here.

You don't have to-- I don't have to have every one of these.

But I use every one of them.

The more you have, especially tongs, the better you can hold the metal.

So I have tongs for the different things I do that can hold that particular-- it may be a quarter-inch piece of round or a quarter-inch piece or 1-and-1/2 flat bar.

It takes a different kind of tong to hold it.

And we're surrounded by tools.

You got them everywhere in here.

But you told me that you had the very first tool that you ever started to shop with.

And that was a pair of tongs from your granddad.

This-- well, this actually, this pair of tongs, I think-- I'm not absolutely sure.

It may have come from my great-great granddad.

DALE MOORE: Oh, wow.

I've got a few other of his tools.

But I'm not sure.

This was from my granddad's farm, who did a little.

But he picked up what he knew from his granddad and had a few of the tools left.

But I started with that.

That's the only pair I had.

That and a pair of vise grips.

And I managed to make enough things to sell and start either making or buying my other tools.

And it kind of got out of hand from here.

It got out of hand.

You sound like my wife.

[laughs] I bet I do.

She doesn't really care as long as I pay for it from what I sell.

Exactly.

Well, let's hammer some more iron.

All right.

Got it.

[metal clanging] DALE MOORE: And that's called a fish tail.

That's called a fish tail and a finale.

DALE MOORE: All right.

I got it just a little bit overdone, so we're going to open it up just a little bit.

There you go.

It looks like you've done that once or twice.

I've done it 10 times, I think.

[laughter] And then, she goes back in the fire.

Goes back in the fire.

All right.

For another heat.

[background chatter] Cool it off just a little bit, so I don't mess up our finale we put on there.

DALE MOORE: All right.

[metal clanging] I'll be darned.

[metal clanging] Then, we go the opposite way.

[metal clanging] Straighten it out.

DALE MOORE: Just like butter.

Just like butter.

While we've got it hot, we're going to tell somebody, hopefully, 50 years from now, that EW made that.

There you go.

Yes, sir.

A little tweak it.

[metal clanging] You can turn them out all day, but not two of them are alike.

No two are exactly alike.

Most people look at them, and they say, well, they all look the same to me, but I can tell the difference.

Oh, yeah.

I always see all the imperfections.

[laughs] But that being said, because I make them, I don't make them all in 1 jig or with machine.

Every one of them is a little different.

That's good.

And we're going to cool that down and work from the other end.

Now, why are you cooling that down for?

Because I'm going to handle it.

Got it.

I'm going to work this end now, and I got to be able to hold on to that.

Makes sense.

Well, that's a fascinating process to think that-- again, it always amazes me that nothing's new here.

This is the way it's been done forever.

And when you walk into a store and look at these kinds of things, you don't go through that process of thinking how it got there.

And that's got to be a satisfying thing that you do to go from nothing to something.

The reason-- that's the reason I like it, what I fell in love with when I was 10 years old.

Just wasn't able to do it, because the world gets on.

You got to make money.

But it's the fact that you can just take-- I've got something we'll look at in a little bit.

But you can just take a simple piece of metal and turn it into something totally different that's useful.

Now, there's a lot of guys out there that I consider artists.

Now, they can make something, make scrolls and tie it all together.

That's just not my thing.

But those guys are artists.

I just like to make something that you can use and that you can say, to your kids here, you take it.

DALE MOORE: And that's the fascinating part of this, because it is you see these in stores.

You go to Silver Dollar City or wherever.

But about everything that you see is a useful an item of one sort or another.

And for me, and for guys our age, it brings back a lot of memories of, hey, I used those hey hooks.

That's what I was-- When I was getting a penny a bale, I was using those.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

People don't-- Yeah, I remember how that used to work.

[metal clanging] All right, so this is-- what we're doing now is getting the hook in.

ED WILLCOCK: That's the hook in for prodding the wood.

DALE MOORE: For moving wood around.

[metal clanging] Knock off a few corners.

DALE MOORE: Yep.

Straighten it out a little.

Yeah, that'll move some wood around.

Yes, sir.

Just kind of eyeball it straight and keep on going.

Tweak it back out.

Yep.

Yep.

[metal clanging] And that's pretty much it.

That looks straight.

All right.

Well, sir, we've got both ends kind of done.

So what happens now is that pretty part in the middle.

That's the pretty part.

Right now, it's fully functioning.

You can do whatever you wanted with it as far as poking the log in your fireplace or your stove, but we're going to put a little bit of functionality to it.

And you don't do that on the anvil.

I'm sorry.

Decorative.

Decorative.

You're not going to do that on the anvil.

You put it on another piece of equipment and twist.

We're going to use our vise.

You said earlier about the anvil being key.

There's three.

Besides the small tools, the forge, the anvil, and the vise.

And the vise.

That's pretty much, you got to have.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah, I can see that.

Pretty much, you got to have it.

All right, well, two ends are done.

Middle is coming up.

This is getting exciting.

We're getting there.

We're going to put three twists on it.

And I've worked through my chill.

I had a chill, but that chill is gone.

You're warm enough now?

You sure?

You look a little bit like you're kind of shaky.

[laughter] [metal pounding] DALE MOORE: Oh!

[metal pounding] I'm going to quench it, guys.

DALE MOORE: OK. Well, Ed, talk to me about these very unique pieces that you have here.

Well, earlier we talked about just taking a common piece of metal and turning it into something totally different and useful.

This is what got me when I was 10 years old fascinated with blacksmithing.

So this is a piece of metal we started with.

It's just a quarter-inch piece, a 6 by 1 and 1/4.

I believe it is.

And this is about halfway through.

Same piece of metal, just working on it for a while.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

And then this is a finished product.

DALE MOORE: Well, now, to get it that long, do you hammer it out or do you stretch it?

ED WILLCOCK: It starts with this.

And as you hammer it out, you keep it all even.

DALE MOORE: Got it.

You want to thin it a little bit on-- taper it down, and then maybe on this part of it, you put a little dimple in it, and then flatten that like we did with the fishtail, that makes your spatula.

And then, this is all drawn down.

It's an inch and a quarter wide.

You need it 3/8 of an inch wide.

So all that metal just gets moved just like here.

That's what I've done is just move this part of the metal on down into a handle.

Now, you said you didn't think you was an artist.

That looks like art to me.

That's pretty good.

Pounding hot steel.

That looks good.

Thank you.

All right, I like that a lot.

DALE MOORE: All right, Ed, this is the last twist, eh?

This is it-- this puts this twist is the only one that's functional.

And it takes all the sharp corners off.

DALE MOORE: Got it.

ED WILLCOCK: Where it's a little bit more comfortable to hold.

Got it.

And the reason I watch this and take my time, it's easier to make a straight twist, then straighten it out afterwards.

DALE MOORE: That makes sense.

[metal thudding] ED WILLCOCK: That's the finished product.

DALE MOORE: Well, Ed, I got to tell you that considering where we started and where we wound up, I can't believe it's just been 30 minutes.

But, man, that-- you went from, yeah, from to that.

There's what we started with.

And that's pretty fantastic.

ED WILLCOCK: Thank you.

DALE MOORE: That's pretty fantastic.

Well, Ed Willcock, Hidden Hollow Forge, this has been an absolute thrill for me.

And I mean that.

I do.

Thanks for letting us invade your shop.

Well, thanks, Dale.

Anytime.

Anytime.

I appreciate it very much.

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

[folksy music] NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I'd like to thank my guest, Ed Willcock, for sharing his passion for handmade tool creation and for him keeping blacksmithing alive.

And I'll see you again real soon on another edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

[folksy music]