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The Voice: Hey, Kevin.
What are you doing on a hot day in June in Phoenix?
Kevin Caron: It's not hot.
No, no, we always build fires out here in the middle of June.
This is my forge. It's a coal fire forge, just like the blacksmiths still use on some occasions.
I was making an ocotillo out of railroad spikes and, you know, in the past, made up sticks like this
out of railroad spikes and then I bend them with the oxygen-acetylene torch.
Well, this time I thought, let's fire the forge up and see if that goes any quicker and easier than burning up, you know,
$200 worth of oxygen and acetylene to try to bend these.
And, of course, we picked a day that was going to be 106 to come out here and light the forge.
But that's OK. It's fun anyways.
So, this is just a little fire pot out of cast iron down here in the middle.
A blower; electric blower, to keep the air flowing through it.
And every now and again you've got to feed a little coal to it.
You've got to water it down a little. My coal is sitting in this bucket here with all the black water in it.
And we do that to soak the coal. It'll soak up a little bit of water, and that makes it burn just a little bit slower.
I also add a little water to the fire right there, pour a little on either side of it, just to help concentrate the heat inside
and soak the coal a little bit; make it slow down a little. I don't want to just burn it up just as fast as it possibly can.
Then you have to just keep an eye on the spikes and when they're about ready to bend,
you pull them out of the fire, you come over to the anvil right here (see, I've got it bolted down to the concrete so it'll stay in one place).
This is a hardy. Don't ask me why. I have no idea why they call it hardies.
It just goes in the square hole with a square peg. (Stay).
And then I've got this little fork on here so I can bend things in.
Come on.
So it's like butter. No resistance there at all.
I'm sure if we were inside you would see that it is just glowing a nice, bright cherry red.
I think this does actually work a little better,
as far as getting the spikes hot to be able to bend them.
So now that I'm getting down towards the ends of this string, that end is probably at, you know, eight, nine hundred degrees.
These are not asbestos gloves.
Hang on.
So now we break out the tongs.
And these are what you use to be able to go ahead and grab that hot metal on either end.
And then you can sit there and work it and bend it and play with it. And, you know, you can work in the fire with them.
Keeps you from burning your fingers.
If the wind would settle down, I could stay on one side of the fire. But it likes to chase me.
It's just like a campfire.
Well, let me pay attention to what we're doing here. See you later.
(Text on screen): See a Finished Ocotillo at www.KevinCaron.com/art_detail/ocotillos.html
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