Metal, fire, and art … what’s not to like?

Cross-peen hammer forged by a smith in Austin, Texas.

After spending all summer living and welding in the war-torn hair dryer, otherwise known as Baghdad, it was nice to return home to Michigan. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to readjust to life in the States, to eating good food, to driving myself to work sans body armor, to sleeping in my own bed.

The three months gone wasn’t just difficult for me, but also for my wife Darla. Ninety days of worrying about my safety—and missing my beautiful face—surely took a toll. We needed some quality time together, so the decision was made to flee real life for a long weekend road trip to Memphis. My awesome friends at Dodge lent me a 485-HP Durango SRT for the trek. After months of riding in old buses and armored Land Cruisers, driving this hot rod was a shot of adrenaline.

We packed a lot into the weekend: three days in Memphis hanging out on Beale Street; making a gut-wrenching visit to the National Civil Rights Museum at the location where MLK Jr. died; and taking tours of a Gibson Guitar factory and the Stax Records museum. On our way back north, we spent a night in Louisville, staying at 21c, a contemporary museum/hotel (cool because the museum is open 24/7 to guests, so Darla got up at 3:45 a.m. hoping the art would come alive like in “Night at the Museum”) and checking out the Louisville Slugger factory and Jim Beam Distillery. I was hoping to a write a long road-trip piece for this space, but I just couldn’t make it happen in the time I have, at least not yet.

The National Civil Rights Museum in particular put a lot of things in context for me; it gave me a better understanding of why what’s happening right now in our country is so important. I try to stay away from politics, but I don’t think I should, or can, stay silent.

On a less heavy note, although literally a very heavy note, is a museum that I had somehow never even heard of prior to making our way down. The National Ornamental Metal Museum, or just Metal Museum, sits in Memphis, Tenn., on the banks of the Mississippi River. The view from the back of the property and across the water is of Arkansas.

We had no idea what to expect as we walked up to a handful of old buildings. A sign by a giant, very ornamental entrance gate said to grab tickets in the white building to the left. Inside were a few exhibits, a gift shop (more on that in a minute), and a girl behind a desk from whom we purchased tickets. She informed us that if we hurried up we could catch a demo in the blacksmithing shop, directly followed by a casting demo next to that building in the foundry, after which there was a third building of metal art curated by museum residents.

I said, “Wait ... you have a working blacksmith shop and foundry and art museum? Jackpot!”

The individuals we talked to each merit their own stories, and the plan is to make that happen down the road in both the “Still Building America” blog and this space.

Kevin Burge, the Metal Museum’s full-time repair and restoration guy, has been there 10 years. The shops on-site are working shops; they do anything from small repairs up to large architectural installations. Kevin gave us a quick run through of banging a small, decorative hook into existence. He brought the piece of square stock up to temp, worked it to get the desired design element, cooled it in a bucket of water, and repeated until the hook was done.

Somehow, I missed getting a photo of it, but the hook had a small, turned tip followed by a large bend turned the opposite way for the lower “J” part. The straight part was twisted, and at the top it was flattened with a mounting hole popped through. It’s incredible what you can make with fire, a hammer, and a piece of bar stock.

Gates to the Metal Museum.

I spent a few extra minutes talking to Kevin after his demo, so I missed the first part of the aluminum casting. A second-year apprentice, Sarah Dorau, was making an aluminum light switch cover. While putting the pattern into the first half of the square cope’s sand, she used a few leaves from the ground outside; the lines they left gave a neat look to the face of the cover. Then the top half was pressed on and a funnel shape was cut out of the dirt from the top so the molten aluminum could flow to the mold.

The kiln was running, hot, and turning aluminum ingots into liquid aluminum. Sarah geared up like Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker,” but instead of defusing a bomb she took a pair of very long tongs and plucked the crucible from the kiln, then poured it into her mold. The excess was dumped into what looked like a cooking pan and baby ingots were made for use later. When the metal cooled and the sand was removed, a neat light switch cover with a leaf design emerged.

Back in the building where we bought our tickets, we saw an exhibit of art donated for a yearly event to raise money for the museum. This crazy-awesome event, called “Repair Days,” draws metalworkers from around the world to camp on the ground and, well, repair metal stuff. The day before it starts people from Memphis bring their broken things to the museum, and by the time the weekend is over, they are fixed. In the time leading up to the weekend, the pieces in the exhibit are auctioned off. Repair Days takes place during the last weekend of the month every September, so while it was a little short notice for me this year, I plan on trying to participate in 2018.

Of course, we exited through the gift shop, where in place of the usual cheap junk was work by current and former museum residents and other artists. Among my purchases was a cross-peen hammer forged by a smith in Austin, Texas. If a gift shop has a hand-forged hammer for sale, you have to buy it. I don’t make the rules; I just play by them.

Even on our way out we met a very interesting girl. Stacey Green was ringing up our haul of awesome handmade stuff, and she and Darla started a conversation about the skull adorning the light switch plate I bought. Somehow the discussion turned to dinosaurs. Turns out Stacey also is an apprentice at the Metal Museum, and the supercool T.rex ring in the silent auction exhibit was her work.

Bottom line, if you like metal and fire and art, this is not a stop you want to miss. The Metal Museum alone is worth the trip to Memphis.

All images courtesy of Josh Welton, Brown Dog Welding.

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