WHITEFIELD, Maine — A new startup in Whitefield aims to revive a pillar of America’s agrarian past. The mobile community blacksmith shop called Mason’s Forge will be a place for people to forge tools and other items from iron and steel. It opened in June.
“I think everyone should have the opportunity, resources, and education to make their own metal objects and tools if they so wish,” said the founder who goes by the name Rocky Coastlines. The Bangor Daily News is withholding Coastline’s legal name at their request.
“Blacksmithing, like growing food and stewarding land, directly connects one’s physical body with the question of what it means to be human, and where we are in our species’ history,” said Coastlines, an amatuer blacksmith who moved to Maine a year ago and lives in a collective house in Whitefield with farmers and cheesemakers, who share expenses, food and household duties.
Spurred by an interest in all things DIY, Coastlines was gifted a series of tools that belong to a local hero. Whitefield’s Fire and Rescue Lt. David Mason, who passed away of lung cancer at the age of 26 in March, was also a farrier. Mason’s anvils, a forge and a leg vice are being used in the shop that Coastlines named after him.
Mason’s Forge is located in a former ice shack made of reclaimed lumber. The North Carolina native hopes that the “humble mobile blacksmith shop” will travel to help people make axes, build farm machinery, knives and hatchets.
“Everyone needs a good knife,” Coastlines, 25, said.
The goal is ”to have a space where anyone can access tools for blacksmithing and metalworking freely, as well as provide basic training on how to use them,” Coastlines said. “I’ve always been very passionate about rural and practical skills of all sorts. Blacksmithing has been a passion of mine for years, along with community.”
First-timers will be encouraged to start by making a hook or a nail. “We will draw it out together with scrap metal. I’ll show you the motions and we’d make it,” Coastlines said.
As a volunteer EMT, Coastlines says education and safety are important. But she is not limiting the experience to adults. “I want to make it accessible to anyone who wants to learn,” she said.
If parents are present, kids are welcome.
Right now Mason’s Forge is accepting donations and soliciting ideas on how the mobile smithery will develop. “I haven’t found or heard of any in Maine … What do people want to make? How can it serve people to learn skills that will help them in their day to day lives?
A grand opening is planned for early fall. For more information or to donate visit communityblacksmithing.com.
