The Question

The favorite question I get from folks is still; "why do you make swords?"
And, after many years, I still don't have any "set" answer to that one, since I'm not sure I really know why myself. It just kinda happened.

It's gotten a lot more interesting to answer the last few years though. Now it's not just the swords, now I can say, "yeah, and sometimes from DIRT...". And then I can go into the whole discussion about smelting and who did what what way in antiquity, how fire has been made a tool and all the wonderous things we've done with it. Like this computer, for example. It's roots are in fire too. Like the electricity in the wires, the car you drive, the cell phone. They all have common ancestry in fire.

So that points to one of the "answers". Deep down, every smith, potter, and glass-worker I know have a bit of pyromaniac inside. There is something special about harnessing something as primal as fire and making it perform useful work for us. There's a real feeling of power that comes from that.

There's a historical interest that's definately part of it for me also. I particularly like items from Western Europe, during the so-called "dark-age", and the "Viking age". I've concentrated a lot of my re-creation work in that area pretty regularly over the last 15 years, and more. That's where my ancestry tracks to, so it's like I'm exploring my heritage to an extent. And also, simply as a craftsman, it's interesting in the extreme to explore how things must have been made in those times, what tools were used, what techniques were developed. AND how culture ties into it as well.

Then there is a really base-level attraction, especially when the re-creation work takes you to smelting and refining ore to useful material, steel. Steel from dirt. Especially when it's using original technology, building a smelter from mud essentially, making charcoal, the hours and hours of running the thing... it's a MASSIVE amount of work at times. But to see it through, to go through all the labour and time, at at the end, to have a useful tool in your hand, well, wow... I'm not sure how to explain the total kick that is. It's truly what the saying "sword from the stone" was really referring too.

Those are some of the reasons I make swords, a few of many I can think of. But in the end, I still can't really say for sure, what it is particularly. Maybe it's more accurate to say that these are some of the things I *enjoy* about making swords. But I still can't say *why*. I guess I just have to.

That'll just have to do.