‘I made that’: Hampton blacksmith helps cultivate customers’ creativity

With the most popular month for weddings approaching, future wives are taking great care in selecting their ideal rings.

Their future husbands, not so much.

“It’s not that special to them,” Hampton resident and entrepreneur Craig Cowan said. “But their bride always says, ‘Hey, you’ve got to walk down the aisle in something other than a rubber band.’ So they go to select something that they’re vaguely interested in.”

Then they discover the Barefoot Forge.

At his blacksmithing shop on Harts Run Road, Cowan — he does wear sandals — offers Make Your Own Ring workshops as a one-of-a-kind alternative to men simply pulling out credit cards at jewelry stores.

“And that’s the difference between them just not caring and having something that’s actually special to them,” Cowan said.

The full-day, 10- to 14-hour ring-making sessions represent just one facet of his operation, which provides opportunities to pursue what likely is unexplored creative territory.

“In some cases,” he said, “this is the first time these people, these adults, have ever made anything tangible where they can say, ‘I made that.’”

They begin with the basics of blacksmithing by making their own bottle openers or, especially if couples take the class together, “date night” metal roses. The Barefoot Forge also has the only four-hour Intro to Welding course in the region partners with History’s “Forged In Fire” contestant Andy Alm for an introductory knife-making class “that sells out in four hours every month,” according to Cowan.

Intermediate and advanced blacksmiths can progress to learning the metallurgy, material selection, preparation and processes that go into the making of Damascus steel, by which two dissimilar metals are combined to produce distinctive patterning. And Cowan provides a distinctive simile:

“Think of it like a lasagna. A lasagna is a straight stack of layers. Now, our goal is to make a lasagna that doesn’t have any straight layers in it.

“So after we make our lasagna, you and I get together and we hit the lasagna with a sledgehammer. And after we hit it with a sledgehammer a bunch of times, it’s going to affect the lasagna.”

With a quick wit and no-holds-barred delivery, Cowan makes for an entertaining host at the Barefoot Forge, regaling guests with stories of how he started blacksmithing while attending Hampton High School, how he used to captain a multimillion-dollar yacht and later a duck-tour amphibious vehicle, and how he’s willing and able to get old Volkswagen vans back up and running.

Some folks travel great distances to work with him, including a couple from Manitoba, Canada, who decided to take an approximately 2,700-mile road trip to Hampton and back.

“They drove seven days to get here, seven days here and six days back. I tried to teach them about airplanes, and they just weren’t into it,” he said. “That’s my farthest drive. I’ve had people from Australia, France, New Zealand, everywhere. But that’s the one that stands out as crazy.”

On behalf of visitors to the Pittsburgh area from afar, Cowan enjoys making suggestions about what to see and do beyond the Barefoot Forge, leading to plenty of positive feedback.

“When I read a review from someone who came here from out of town, and they tell how great of an experience it was – how great a destination it was and how I assisted them in making it a better vacation – that’s really special to me,” he said.

The sentiment is similar for his Make Your Own Ring participants.

“My goal on that is to be as hands-off as possible,” he said. “So when you’re making your ring, I’m making a ring alongside of you, just to demonstrate. I don’t want to touch your ring. I want you to be able to say, I did that.”

For more information, visit www.thebarefootforge.com.