When you grow up with something as the constant backdrop to your life, it’s easy to forget as an adult that not everyone else shares your instinctive knowledge of the subject. My dad is a blacksmith, ...

The news has been spread in many ways throughout the years, but perhaps Peter Thomson, the Lafayette pioneer blacksmith, had one of the more unusual ways of telling his community what was happening.

One of the biggest challenges facing the aspiring blacksmith is procuring the tools of the trade. And that means tackling the unenviable task of finding a decent anvil. Sure, one can buy an ASO — ...