Hamar , Norway.
Here You Will See What someone Can learn After Just 2 Years of quitting the "Norm", create your own work and go off grid. He pays 1000kr a month for rent, the only real cost he has to pay.
It was so nice just to move again. We took the train in the morning and left Oslo heading to Hamar where I'd swap trains to another place.
I was off to go see a friend who I met last year when he came visited the neighbor squat at the workshop. He now lives in a cabin since a while and helps out on a newly forming Permarculture farm 6 km away.
He also has at the farm, a blacksmiths workshop and has done a year at blacksmith school for a year and now just learns from blacksmiths on Pootube, and lets say this- He is a very motivated guy. He says its just ADHD but I call it energy and creativity!
His cabin, it was made by workers many moons ago who lived there and worked on the nearby farm next door.
Ill stay here for a few days I really needed to be reminded of what I really love to do- explore the world and learn self-sustainable knowledge, I haven't really seen anywhere apart from Oslo. There's some work that needs helping hands, fencing and some other bits to do and the air is fresh.
There is still a lot of snow on the ground and its minus 2 in the night, but its so peaceful here.. you hear nothing but wind in the far away trees. I had no idea of what kind of people my friend lives around but I was relieved when I realized that they were also freaks which was a pleasant surprise. Nothing worse than going to visit someone and they live with "normal" straight edge people. He came and picked me up from the train station and we drove back to his cabin. It was only midday , and he suggested we went to the farm because he had to let the chickens out at least. The farm is 6km away from his cabin and he has a vehicle form a friend to use for now. On the way there he said he had bought and old traditional 2 wheeled tractor. He described it but I couldn't picture it but anyway soon we got to the part where the van couldn't go further because it had no oil tank shield underneath and so we started to walk to his tractor that we would use to get the rest of the way to the farm.
This beauty can swap the trailer for different things like a plough for example!
Fresh Air! Tree's & Space!
We rocked up to the farm, parked the beast and went straight to the workshop. There's enough room for 2 people to work at the same time which is awesome. Two anvils, A Forge and 2 stations with a vice there and also his made a Self Burning Rocket-Burner which is a charcoal maker. Wanna see some pics of the Workshop?!
Yeh Yeh, beautiful as it was, we soon realized though that we didn't bring any supply's with us, I thought the farm was near but realized that with the workshop there, we would stay here for the whole day and evening. Before then doing anything we had to go back to the cabin to get supply's
Back on the beast up the track to the van, take the van back to the cabin, and start over again! Everything goes much better in any workshop if you can smoke a joint whilst creating!
Back at the workshop, take 2!
Lets have a tour firstly..
So many cool things that he has already made, and he is now very happy that he will soon make a whole axe, and not just the handle for an axe and it wont be long before he hopes to have an income from selling handmade axes.
I haven't got the first idea about it but he obviously does! He has made lots of knives for skinning and hunting, metal hooks that are designed to be banged into a solid wooden cabin wall, toilet roll holder in the compost toilet and recently he got a welding machine and learnt how to weld metals.
Here's a huge charcoal maker, designed using the rocket theory that self burns of of the gas from the heated wood before it turns to charcoal.
I had suggested before I came that we can melt silver and repour it and I had just seen one video on pootube of a guy heating silver and pouring it into a wooden template to make a bar. How hard could that be then , the guy used a blow torch and we had a blacksmith workshop to use. My friend hadn't thought about silver before as he is well away with everything else possible, but by the time we were finished he said to me "that was really fun!" I think he will soon fall sick with Stackitus
I thought I would only be making templates the first day,but we ended up doing multiple pours, trying different ideas for templates. I asked him if he had a pourer (I have no clue on the names neither did he of the equipment used, but he didn't have one- but he could make one! - Oh a Crusible!!! 20 mins later, voila there was a small Crucible that we could melt silver in.
Stages of its manisfestings..
Nuts welded on so we could hang it..
Then it was welded so it held water.
He laughed at the template I had spend ages on after showing me the Dremel Tool, when I'd used a chisel, saying that it would just engulf into flames - and of course it wood! Freedom is to experiment without fear in a way so these first 3 coins were the first sacrifice!
Whilst he was making the crusible, I started to bend the cheap coins and as they wouldn't fit in the proposed crucible thingy they so they had to be bent in half. Here's the first lot for the crucible.
The first wooden template
First Attempt.. Before you can pour you have to Melt!
First we tried this setup (left), thinking we could hang the silver holder into the burn chamber so it swung inside held by metal hooks through the welded on nuts (Below), and then to hang on the edge of the square chimney part so it hung inside
It was a fail. There wasn't enough heat concentrating onto the holder with the bent coins inside. We tossed the hot metal burn chamber (literally into a pile of snow..) And next the crusible got put on the coal embers in the middle of the fan.
Second Attempt..
Yep, that's hot alright, 3 coins so 60g, very melted inside
After the silver was boiling, I poured it into the wooden template.. Of course this was well gypsy and did burn the wood a lot and no video or pics of this as I was the cameraman!
My mate was starting to get it I think,because he was know also fully concentrating on the "melting silver idea". I had brought clay with me that I got from a hobby shop in Oslo, and then decided to try pouring (using the silver from the last pour) into wet clay, using the same piece of wood I layed a thin layer of clay inside it (which just left clay stuck to the silver). Heres what I made and left to dry, this will work and ill try this one first the next time I go visit.
Meanwhile..
behind me there was some forging going on, and another guy had passed by and ended up swinging a sledge hammer on the anvil. It was time to step it up a notch with the templates and before I knew what was going on he decided to forge a metal pouring mold! Oh yeh!
I had still only used 3 coins at this point, so now was time to do the rest - This is my first (well it was the 3rd, but ha no pictures, no evidence!) REAL Silver Pour!
The end result after we all had a go at pouring was this Below. The one that's stamped was payment to the blacksmith and poured by himself. He did admit that he would be using his payment for soldering in the future, but we talked about Copper also, and he will at some point be forging with this aswell.
The sun was setting and we were starving, and I was so exited to go see the local dumpsters and see what they through out just after closing time.. Sure enough there was 5 pork fillets, 3 racks of ribs, 6 cooked whole chickens still warm and a packet of beef minced meat.
Check out for part two, I'm hoping to be able to upload the videos of this all before part 2! Ive spent hours trying to upload some but its because im not on real internet , its on my phone. A price to pay of being on prepay. Ill try it again when im in the city.
The next day we drank beer, ate meat and then got productive.. Viking style! I made my own stamp for stamping metals also for the next time I visit.
There are many vids that were ment to be linked in with this post and I hope to edit them in when I go to the city next! Hope you enjoyed regardless 😲
