Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 302; Roy Adams interview, part 1 of 5

Q:

ROY: Hi, my name is Roy Adams. R-o-y A-d-a-m-s.

Q:

ROY: I am an artist blacksmith.

Q:

ROY: I got started in blacksmithing mainly because my wife had actually bought me a forge at a garage sale. Uh, this happened at, uh, about two or three months of begging her for a forge, uh, and an anvil and hammers and all that good stuff after I had relived a childhood memory of me when I was real young going with my grandparents and my mom and dad to Carriage Hill Metro Park, uh, where they had a historical blacksmith there. And, so, uh, I was the annoying kid that talked to the smith for about, well, all day about four hours and, uh, never stopped asking questions. And, so of course, parents aren’t gonna let you play with fire and things as a five or six-year-old kid and so after that I went, um, got married and settled down and went up there for a date with... a date night with my wife and there you have it.

Q:

ROY: So, what I did before 2008 was I, uh,

RESTART

So, before I started blacksmithing in 2008 I was doing heating and air conditioning. So, I was doing mostly residential, uh, installs and I did some light commercial work, um, in that as my trade before.

Q:

ROY: So, so there was a transition period from, you know, 2007 into 2008, uh, you know, again looking to get a forge, there was... I didn’t have a place to put it so I had it actually under a mulberry tree, not quite a chestnut tree, sprawling chestnut tree, uh, so there was a time where I didn’t really have coal or tooling or anything like that but I had... I had the forge, I had the concepts, the want to do it, uh, and then when I started in 2008 doing the forging and the blacksmithing, um, again I was still working, I was still working full time at that point in time and then it didn’t come until much later that I actually did it as a profession, started as a... as an actual profession. And, when that... that kind of came about around a turn of events with a car wreck and a few other things. So, that transpired along the way.

Q:

ROY: So, I was on my way in to work one day, um, and this was... this was after I had tooken a class at Touch Stone Center for Crafts, uh, they’re out in Pennsylvania, they’re a crafts school. And, up until that point I had been smithing for about four years and I really didn’t have any formal education, just kinda watching DVD’s around the subject, reading books for about four years and then I got a scholarship to go, uh, which my wife was kindly enough to apply me for. Um, and so we got that... so I got the scholarship to go and, on my way, back home I felt a real strong calling on my heart that this what I should be doing for a living. This is... this is my thing, this is my stick in life. And, when I did that, uh, it wasn’t shortly after that that I got home I think it was about a month or two after that I was on my way in to work one day, it was rainy, um, there was a small car that decided to lock their brakes up in front of me getting onto a turn lane and, uh, I had a one ton work van loaded full of equipment, 1980’s vehicle, it just wouldn’t stop so I ended up rear ending the lady and, uh, that put my, uh, put a disk out in my back and so you can’t lug around big 240 pound furnaces much after that. So, it took me about six months of recovery from there and basically during that time I started my blacksmithing career with a few little ones on the way.

Q:

ROY: With a lot of time. Uh, somebody takes... somebody starts a shop with a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to start a shop. Uh, you have to start with your basics. You need fire, you need water, you need some way of blowing on that fire so some air flow there, uh, you need a supply of steel and, um, something to hit that steel upon. So, you know, that’s really the basics. There’s guys starting their shops, uh, with little ground forges. So, you can make a ground forge, uh, you don’t need all fancy tools and equipment to get it done, uh, to do a professional shop, um, it can take up to 30 to 60 thousand dollars’ worth of equipment to efficient, to be efficient at what you do and to be reasonable on prices. So, it’s a bit of a process of time because (THROAT CLEARING)... it’s a process of time because you don’t just jump right into it being good at it because it’s not something that everybody knows how to do and it looks a lot easier on camera or, you know, when you’re watching somebody else sweat and work away than it is to actually do it. And, so it takes not only time to acquire the skill set to do it, uh, but then again tools are sometimes hard to come by, you know, that would make you better at it.

Q:

ROY: So, to that transition period, um, where I had the accident and I started transitioning into doing it full time as a profession, we had already been running an eBay store where we were selling... we were basically buying and reselling and things like that, um, and then I had, uh, a good friend of mine taken... let me do some odd jobs that I could sit down doing, you know, painting, stuff he didn’t really need my help on but, like I said, he’s a good friend. Um, and at that time I kind of started leaning again was trying to get in to doing the smithing but I was basically limited on how long I could stand and things like that so I had to do something sitting down. So, the very first items I started selling, uh, were these little horseshoe nail hooks I would make and they were just made out of little tiny horseshoes, I had a little small forge, little propane forge, I’d heat ‘em up in. Um, and got pretty good at that and then as time progressed I started getting healed up and back to where I can stand for longer. I ended up started selling a lot more of those and, uh, it got up to a point where I sold about three to four hundred of ‘em a month. And, uh, and then that kinda... that got old and I kinda shifted into doing bigger and bigger work over that course of that next year or so after that... after about that six months of recovery work. And, during that time I also undertook another class at Touchstone Center for Crafts where I was awarded another scholarship to go to as well.