A somber voice as if from the past guided blacksmithing student Paul Zimmerman Saturday in Willow Street.

"Heat that back up and whale on it!" the voice cried.

Zimmerman returned his quarter-inch steel bar to the fire. His ringing hammer blows sculpted tangerine-hued metal.

Good job, approved Dave Kauffman, the voice's owner.

Kauffman, in point of fact, is not from the past. Nor is he particularly somber, except when advising people how not to accidentally brand themselves.

But he's serious about keeping his iron art alive.

So are Matt Holliday and Frank Gillespie.

That was the point of the weekend workshop conducted by the trio at the Hans Herr House.

The blacksmiths arrived in the cool of the morning and set up four mobile forges, backyard cookout style.

Gillespie sparked flint against steel and blew a flame to life as the class gathered under a spreading black oak tree.

"That's the 18th-century way of doing it," Gillespie said.

"I thought you were bringing stuff to make s'mores," Holliday cracked.

The gray-yellow smoke coiling up from the forge "might add fiber," Kauffman hypothesized.

These smithies are comedians too.

It's natural to the trade, Kauffman noted. So is inducting novitiates with coal-fire stars in their eyes.

"There are no secrets" withheld from greenhorns, Kauffman added. Veterans "want to see this continue."

'Fleas of Hades'
Interest appears to be robust.

Saturday's hands-on session, the third fundraiser of its kind at the Hans Herr House, was sold out. Future classes are in the works.

Ten people paid $65 each to swing sturdy hammers for six hours.

The youngest student was 10-year-old Strasburg grade-schooler Caleb Gill, who was attending with his dad, Jeremy.

Dale LeFever and James Landis said they were hunting new hobbies.

Isaac Herr, an 18-year-old Willow Street resident, had already taken a course and had gotten hooked.

Washington Boro organic farmer Caitlin Brady said she had also dabbled in blacksmithing before.

"I want to set up a forge in the barn" to make crafts and household items, Brady said.

Holliday, the Mechanicsburg-based editor of Pennsylvania Magazine, said he has blacksmithed for fun since 1996. He led the workshop partly on idealistic grounds.

"So much of our lives today is virtual," he said. "When you're done with a video game, you have a high score."

When you're done with his intro course, you have a gorgeously wrought hook rack that could hold up a hat or a side of beef.

At a forge outside a replica 1785 blacksmith shop, Caleb pumped the bellows while Holliday showed how to make the hooks out of short lengths of steel bar by:

• Shaping one end of the shaft into a small bean-shaped oval.

• Hammering all four sides of the other end to taper and curl it.

• Curving the piece into a hook and adding a decorative twist.

"Never design something circular or square" because if it's a little off, it's easily detectable, Holliday advised his audience.

And, literally, don't sweat the process.

Despite the image conjured by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's iconic 1841 poem, blacksmiths need not be brawny.

Use your whole arm to swing, Holliday instructed.

Choke up on the 14-inch hammer handle.

Set the height of the forge so you don't have to lean over it.

"If it's work, you're not doing it right," said Kauffman, an electrician who with Holliday and Gillespie also teaches smithing at the Rough and Tumble Museum in Kinzers. "It's really more hammer control than strength."

Holliday heated, pounded and repeated.

"The nice thing about blacksmithing is if you mess up you can reheat," he said.

Unless you burn all the carbon out.

In that case, sparks fly off the metal, which blushes red and weakens.

"It looks like a kid's sparkler," Gillespie said. Blacksmiths of old called the fiery blips "the fleas of Hades."

Smithies use tongs to grip the pieces they're working on. Metal can be pounded flat atop the anvil, angled against an edge or bent around the "horn" on one end.

If your tongs overheat, Gillespie said, quench the tool's handles –– but not its fragile pivot joint–– in the "slack tub" of water sitting beside the forge.

Slack tubs are also useful for dousing burned human appendages, the blacksmiths noted.

In medieval times, according to Gillespie, people believed that the tubs contained all earthly essentials and habitually dunked their young children in them.

"It wasn't very effective," he remarked. "Most kids died by age 3 in those days."

Such lore "fascinated the daylights out of me," added Gillespie, an Ephrata retiree who started "backyard fooling around" with blacksmithing 30 years ago.

"I consider myself an advanced beginner," he said.

Modern blacksmiths stand in awe of their forebears' creations, Holliday added.

"There's a lot to the art we don't know."

Contact Sunday News staff writer Jon Rutter at jrutter@lnpnews.com.