Jan Rybczynski began his two years as a Penland Core Fellow with a bang… or many many bangs, in fact. Many tools were made in the spring iron concentration, and Jan was the student who made the most. Over the next two years, he has exciting plans to use them!
Instructor Anna Koplik had this to say:
Jan’s collection of tools is exciting and rewarding to me because it shows his love for tools as the final goal. Often tools are simply seen as a means to an end, something to get you on your way to make your “actual work”. For myself and for many of my students, including Jan, tools can be simultaneously a means to an end and a beautiful piece in and of itself. One class assignment was to make at least one finished pair of tongs, and Jan made nineteen pairs. Another assignment was to make one top tool and one hammer, and Jan made seven top tools and six hammers. Seeing his passion, appreciation, and excitement for toolmaking was beautiful and rewarding to be a part of.
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Please enjoy our interview with Penland Core Fellow Jan Rybczynski:
How many tools did you make?!
I made a ton! The exact number is a little unclear – it might be better calculated in pounds.
Why does one need so many tools? Can you list them and what they do?
Tools are amazing and in some ways I feel like you can never have enough! In the field of blacksmithing, tools are essential – not only are they required to work and hold hot steel, but are often made of steel themselves. For me that’s part of the beauty of forging. Making my own tools is an integral part of the process: a necessary endeavor along the way that is tailor-fit to the way I work, the things I am noticing, and the situations I find myself in. I find it to be a wonderful call and response that really forces me to think creatively and be resourceful in the shop.
When it comes down to it, everything I made can be categorized into three families: blacksmithing (forging) tools, green-wood splitting tools, and a wide variety of utensils.
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Forging tools:
- Hammers – there are many different shapes and sizes that do different things but all are used to move hot metal over the anvil.
- Tongs – Bolt jaw, box jaw, punch holders, pickup, letter stamp, and scrolling tongs. They are all used to either pick up and hold hot steel or a tool to work the hot metal!
- Punches – Used to punch holes while the steel is hot, they come in a variety of shapes and sizes and are made to your specifications in any situation!
- Drifts – used to open up small holes to a bigger size. Drifts come in all shapes and sizes and differ pretty vastly depending on what you’re using them for.
- Handled Top Tools – These are tools that look like hammers but aren’t swung, they are instead struck with a hammer doing work on the workpiece, again these come in all shapes and sizes including punches, fullers, set hammers, hot chisels, etc. (you can never have enough!)
- Bolsters – in the case of making hammers, this is a chunk of steel that rests on the anvil over the hardy hole which is used to maintain the shape of the cheeks (metal surrounding where the handle engages with the head) as you are drifting the eye.
Green-wood splitting tools:
- Splitting Maul: Similar to a sledge hammer in weight, but has one edge shaped to a point and is used to split firewood.
- Froe: a leverage based tool used for splitting green-wood blanks down their length.
- Wedges: used for starting and splitting big logs!
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Utensils:
Tiny Spoons, barbecue forks, garden trowels, bottle openers, hooks, and the list goes on – all of these were made in pursuit of building my skills at the forge!
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What are some of your plans for these new tools?
I hope to use them all to make my work moving forward! Spring concentration really rekindled my love for working with steel and I intend to work towards building a blacksmithing setup for myself, which the forging tools will be essential in. As for the green-wood tools, I’m really excited to use them and see if they work in the way I intend them to (and excited to make tweaks if they don’t). Last year I graduated from RISD’s furniture design department where I studied green woodworking and black ash basketry for my thesis. The splitting tools I made will be incredibly useful in my explorations moving forward! As for the utensils, well, I’m excited to welcome them into my life and others – I really want them to be used!
What is your background working in iron?
I have a lot of experience working in iron. I did a lot of fabrication and welding with my Grandfather when I was a kid, then at the end of high school I learned to blacksmith from a farrier in Colorado Springs and learned how to cast iron with Hans Wolfe. Those opportunities led me to a blacksmithing internship with Jodie Bliss out of Bliss Studio and Gallery in Monument, Colorado and she hooked me up with Carley Ferrera in Providence, Rhode Island who started Iron Mountain Forge. For Carley I did a lot of production welding and fabrication and started to apprentice/teach blacksmithing lessons during my freshman year of art school. After that first year I got into fabricating some of my own work in steel and worked for a summer with sculptor Robert Bellows in Boulder, Colorado. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to work with a lot of different metals in a lot of different ways and I feel very lucky to be able to say that.
How was your first Penland workshop as a core fellow?
It was amazing! Anna and Sean are an unstoppable force in the studio and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to work with them — my love for metal has definitely been rekindled, and I’m excited to continue studying the art of blacksmithing!
What are some of the workshops you are excited about taking this upcoming summer?
Starting off the summer, I’m in a twined basketry class which I’m very excited for, and I’m also really looking forward to Andrew Meers’s Damascus steel class, and Norwood Viviano’s kiln casting class in the glass studio. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to study such a wide array of crafts this summer!
We are thrilled to spend the next few years with Jan as he completes his Penland Core Fellowship. Find more of his work HERE.
