CanIRON 9 - View by Robertson

(stolen from my friend David Robertson of Hammer & Tongs Studio)

Highlights From Caniron 9 Blacksmith Conference, Trois Rivieres, Quebec June 29 to 30 2013

I took a break June 28th to 30 th for Caniron 9 in Trois Rivieres Quebec.
Caniron is the Canadian national blacksmithing conference that happens every second year. It moves from west to east province to province.  This was the first time that Quebec has hosted it and they did a very good job.

See www.caniron.ca for a list of the demonstrators this year.

I was able to video some of the highlights for me. There was a good cross section of demonstrations from historic rifle barrel making to locksmithing. Knife making to copper smithing and smelting. It was held at the Parks Canada historic site Les Forges du St. Maurice. The site itself was fascinating as it was the first commercial iron production smelter in Canada.

In the video I was not able to capture all that went on but a few things I found interesting. It will give you a taste of what was happening over the weekend.

Direct Link to the video on Youtube:

http://youtu.be/k3pijZyf4jI

David eventually took a different approach to communications over the internet from mine. We both were early into internet based communications, starting with 'bulletin boards' back in the early 1990's. By the mid 1990's we both had established our first web sites. This made us some of the very first artisan blacksmiths to have an internet presence, with my own www.warehamforge.ca and David's www.artistblacksmith.com .
Into the mid 2000 decade, I chose to start this blog as a means to present less formal information (and ramblings).
David chose a different route. He established a 'membership' system, which allowed people slight discounts on purchases and to be included in (roughly) monthly e-mail articles. (The piece above is an example of one such mailing.)
If you have *not* signed up for 'Artist Blacksmith dot com ' I would highly recommend it!


My own view of CanIRON 9 is a bit more limited. I was one of the feature demonstrators, so was occupied with working with conference members both days (and hardly saw much of any of the other demonstrations!). Watch for some images in a post to come!