Our youngest project lead and Owner, Aaron Beck, is a very good carpenter (and manager too). He carves duck decoys with great skill. But his passion – these days – is metal. Aaron loves blacksmithing. Last year he spent a week in Mississippi living in a backwoods trailer and learning from an accomplished blacksmith there.
This spring he came to us and said he had a great opportunity: a well-known blacksmith in Montana, Jeffrey Funk, had agreed to take him on for a three month internship. He asked if he could take a sabbatical. We said yes. He needed to finish a house he was working on by the end of June; then he could take off for three months.
Part of Aaron’s interest – and part of our interest in his interest – is the idea of setting up a blacksmith shop at SMCo to complement our woodwork and enhance our architecture. Might this happen? We don’t know, but it’s a topic of some consideration these days.