Forging a place of his own in Keystone

Keystone’s local blacksmith Matt Pohorelsky has been forging metal for 13 years.

While some people think that blacksmiths are actually blacksmithing, the technical term of what they do is called forging.

Forging is the act of moving the metal, supporting it with the anvil using different shapes of hammers to get different responses and change its shape.

Pohorelsky said a blacksmith is the legendary term for someone who does this type of work, one we may have heard via media or in stories.

“Technically my noun is blacksmith, my verb is to forge and the place where I do all my work is called my forge and then the fire is called my forge,” Pohorelsky said.

Most people likely  also don’t know what  Pohorelsky really does.

He is part artist, part entertainer, part crafter and part salesperson. 

Pohorelsky learned his craft from education and “older, wiser folks” than himself, groups that he sought out and traveled to.

“Those masters offered one-week classes. I took those classes,” Pohorelsky said. “I talked to the other smiths around and tried to sponge up as much information as I could.”

Pohorelsky did this for about five years.

He then went to a two-year program in Austin, Texas, and got an associates degree in architectural and ornamental iron working.

Through those different classes, and through trial and error, Pohorelsky learned about each metal’s melting point, and how each metal works at different heats and colors.

“It is learning how to manipulate those metals in the environment you’re in, whether it be a coal fire or a propane forge,” Pohorelsky said.

Matt chooses one forge  over the other depending on the melting point of the metal and what he is trying to accomplish with a harder metal versus a softer metal.

“I was taught by early blacksmiths that if you try to do the job with as few tools as possible you’ll be better off in the long run,” Pohorelsky said.

He uses one of his two forges and  the same hammers for steel, copper, bronze or iron. For smaller, localized heat he uses the coal fire because it has a very tight hot spot.

The propane torch is  a larger, controlled, one-temperature environment, which he uses for a long heat, like a fire poker with a twist.

Pohorelsky is always looking at the color of the metal he is working with. The environment he is in will change the color of the metal. He recognizes when to rotate his piece to give it even heat.

The outside skin of steel can get soft, and if he doesn’t give it enough time to absorb the heat to the inside and he begins to forge the metal too quickly that skin can slip around the interior core of the metal and cause structural weakness.

That might not be as important when making a decorative piece, but when making something like a bracket it is crucial.

“It’s hot. I see the color of the metal I need it to be which usually blacksmiths will say orange with the lights on,” Pohorelsky said. “And then all of a sudden there’s a kind of dull shadow inside. And that’s orange with the lights off. Your window is when the metal starts to become yellow and is orange and when the light turns off that’s when you stop hitting it. You’re looking for the metal to become either that bright orange or yellow color, you come out of the fire, you go over to your anvil and then it’s set right down onto your work surface.”

The anvil shape doesn’t change. It stays where it is. Depending on where you put the piece of metal and how hard you hit it, that determines what kind of response you get from the anvil.

“Are you using the flat  table, are you using the round horn or are you using the triangular-shaped edge?” Pohorelsky asked.

Then Pohorelsky hits it with a type of hammer which is determined ultimately by the shape he is trying to achieve.

Pohorelsky repeats that process, heating the metal, taking it to the anvil and hitting it.

The metal actually gets cold very quickly and on a cold day the anvil acts like a heat sink and the metal gets cold even faster.  The smaller the piece of metal  Pohorelsky works with the faster it cools, making trinkets especially hard to work on slowly.

A blacksmith will often talk in how long it takes him to make something not in time, not in hours or days,  but in the number of heats and  how many times he has to go into the fire and get the metal hot and get work done while it’s hot.

As you heat metal it  expands and then it cools and contracts and every time you do that little bits flake off. 

“We call it scale,” Pohorelsky said. “You’re losing weight in the metal every time that happens. So the fewer times you go into  the fire the fewer times you’re losing  that mass.” 

This is crucial when Pohorelsky makes something specific, like a three-pound hammer, but not as important as when he is making a dinner bell.

Everything Pohorelsky sells that is made of either steel, copper or bronze he makes on site, most likely a day or two before. Pohorelsky is a one-man show, and with his wife’s help as a sales analyst, he can determine what sells well and what he should make more of or what he shouldn’t waste time on. Some items are still hot from the  fire. 

Hearts are the best-selling items Pohorelsky makes.

“I don’t like making the same thing over and over with too much repetition. I very much have an artistic and creative soul and I want to feed that with something different or challenging,” Pohorelsky said.

He likes to create one-of -a-kind objects that get him to think outside the box and problem solve.

“When someone comes up to me and goes, ‘I want this thing, can you make it?’ That really excites me,” he said.

Pohorelsky has had people ask him to make all sorts of very specific items, like a beekeeper’s tool, or a tool for clearing the breach of a flintlock rifle.

“I had a guy come up with a camera aperture  and it wasn’t for the camera he was using,” he said. “I just charged him for my time to modify his current aperture so that it fit the camera he had.”

Pohorelsky works with hammers and tools he has crafted himself. 

“It all starts as raw stock,” he explains. “ I use a lot of new material for making things like dinner bells and making grill flippers and fire pokers.”

He uses recycled items like horseshoes to create doorknockers or home decor. He uses destroyed wrenches and turns them into knives. He turns new wrenches into jewelry, as evidenced by the bracelet he wears. He says that leaf springs make very good knives. 

“I’ll also reuse coil springs to make blunt-end tools,” he says.

Pohorelsky used to volunteer in museums and traveled to fairs and artisan shows, but he loves having a permanent space in Keystone. It is his third season forging in Keystone. He says it’s been wonderful.

He enjoys doing what he calls a living history talk to people that walk by. 

“Being in the shadow of Mount Rushmore there are so many things connected to that mountain that are directly related to blacksmiths and forging,” he said. “Every tool that carved that mountain was made by blacksmiths. Those were made by local families. Before that they were making tools for the gold miners.”

He encourages visitors to see the names of the carvers at Mount Rushmore and locate them in Keystone’s cemetery.  

“It’s kind of a neat thing,” Pohorelsky said.

His setup is from the 1800s, and he knows that by the time Mount Rushmore was being carved more industrial processes were in place.  

“The small things were still done in this type of fire,” Pohorelsky says.

He says he meets a variety of people at his location next to Rushmore Borglum Story at 332 Winter Street. You can easily identify his location in a 1940’s building. 

“It has a lot of character,” Pohorelsky said. “It looks like an old west blacksmith shop.”

Locals and visitors can visit Pohorelsky all summer long every day but Wednesday between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.