Hampus Nilsson
Born in 2003
The journey for me in blacksmithing began in 2016 when I was 13 years old.
From an early age I had an interest in art, I started turning wood with a lathe my father bought from a relative when I was around 10 years old. I developed in turning and woodworking but felt that I had grown tired of it and I wanted to do something else.
One day when I was at our neighbor's farm to get som lumber because he had a sawmill, I saw that a coal forge was hiding in a corner. Whereupon I asked if it was a coal forge and immediately asked if I could borrow it, he answered yes and I went straight home to the farm with it and restored it.
Then I called a local scrap yard who was kind enough to donate two pieces of railroad tracks to me that we could start hammer on.
It was during the winter and it was cold, but I had to learn to forge stubbornly, my twin brother Casper came out and it did not take long for him to become interested as well. He saw in the winter darkness how the fire crackled and sparkled, the iron became more crooked with each hammer blow but it was so fascinating.
After a while I saw that the blacksmiths on the internet used some other fuel, that was when the hunt for coal began.
After a lot of time & effort, I got in touch with Vinslövs hembygdsförening where we got to buy a box of coal. It was Lars Persson, he saw two young boys who wanted to learn the blacksmith's craft, so he asked if we wanted to come to their blacksmith's evening when a group of older gentlemen gathered and forged in the smithy.
When we entered the smithy we were so warmly welcomed by everyone in the group, we would just watch but they insisted that we would try and forge that evening. During the education, we learned how to make skewers. I felt so proud forging, that we had created something together with Lars. I will never forget that and from there on I knew what I wanted to do.
The years went by and we gathered tools and knowledge at a fast pace.
Now, five years later, we have a fully equipped smithy on the farm where there are not many limits to what we can make in our smithy.
“My interest is to forge woodworking tools such as axes, chisels and other old tools. But also art forging such as candlesticks, roses and other utility forging”.
“But I am also a machine operator and drive machines such as tractors, loaders, excavators, etc”.
So I also have a part in the agriculture and construction part….
