By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
LeRoy Simmons bent over his forge and the flames lit up his face at his blacksmith shop, Dragon Ash Forge, in Mountainair on Aug. 23.
"I was fortunate that I found something at an early age that I could do," Simmons said.
He was 14 years old when he walked into a blacksmith shop and fell in love with the craft of shaping iron.
Simmons' Sunday school teacher, who was also his stepmother's nephew, showed him around his shop.
"He said, 'Well do you see anything you can do?' and I said, 'I don't see anything I can't do,' and he started laughing and that made me angry. I said, 'I'll make a deal with you. If you ever have to show me more than three times ... You might have to show me twice, but not three times.' He said he'd hire me. I think my stepmother had slipped him a $50 bill to take me on," Simmons joked about what he called the journeyman's job he learned as a young man.
On Aug. 23 at the Mountainair Sunflower Festival, he demonstrated some of his techniques to any interested people who wandered into his shop.
Simmons bent over his forge and dipped coal from a bucket into the flames. Temperatures in the forge can get up to 2,600 degrees, he said.
Simmons has bent over a hot forge shaping a lot of iron for the 20-plus years Dragon Ash Forge has been in existence.
One of his toughest jobs was a curved staircase with trees, hand-forged morning-glories and hand-forged sculptured scrolls with leaves that he built about six years ago for a customer in Albuquerque.
"It was an engineering challenge to build it," he said.
Because the building he operates out of is for sale, he has been forced to move his shop. Simmons isn't sure where he will relocate but he will keep blacksmithing.
"The only degree that I've got is what's in the forge," Simmons said.
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