Famed blacksmith Philip Simmons, whose wrought iron gates and other works grace gardens and entryways along the South Carolina coast and beyond U.S. borders, died at age 97, friends and funeral officials said Tuesday.
Read it all–and note the church affiliation, of which I was unaware.
He was an amazing craftsman! His beautiful works of art will be his lasting monument. May the gates of heaven open for him as his lovely gates open to receive the weary home.
This is one of the great crafts,one I tried to learn something of, when I was teachingin Henniker NH. I finally found a teacher, but he was already old, and he died shortly after I started my learning. He was not a master craftsman, but he was a solid one. He could weld in the heat without failures, and he could shoe a refractory draft horse with equal skill (and anyone who has tried to shoe a persnicketty one ton critter knows that trouble is its middle name.) He had another useful trick. Whenone of the local kids had a sty in his eye, mum sent him over to watch the blacksmith, who said, “Now don’t get too close to the fire,” whereupon the kid edged as close as he could and stared at the glowing steel. The upshot was that when he backed away, the sty had popped from the heat and drained. Very useful.
There is, in the roaring heat – for the air through the tuyere makes a considerable roar – the abrilliant fire, the white hot steel, the smell of the burning coke, the dancing sparks, the heavy, shock absorbing density of the hot iron as it absorbs the blow of the hammer.
Once, in a wishfulment piece of arrogance, I sought to make a sword such as the Japanese smiths still make. The results were comic, to put it as kindly as possible.
Such a lossto the craft world. The hinges he made were plain, solid, straightforward, and functional, as were his hasps. He plunged the hot steel in a big bucket of old crankcase oil. The intense heat burned the carbon into a dense coat, a handsome coat, hard, enduring and classy. Larry