The specialties in the blacksmith trade – choose your path

Metal worker is not one trade, but a collection of classic metal trades under the same education. When you choose a speciality, you also choose which techniques, materials and products you will work with for the rest of your career. Some specialities are close to craftsmanship, others to fine mechanics or construction. Here is an overview to help you find your direction.

The gunsmith works in brass and bronze with fittings, lamps, fixtures and building parts and combines turning, filing, assembly and chasing. The specialism coppersmith (fitting) focuses particularly on fittings — the mechanical brass parts in taps, valves and lamps — and lies closer to precision engineering. Choose the coppersmith trade if you like combining machine work with decorative handiwork in brass.

The coppersmith works primarily in copper and shapes it through driving folding and soldering into vessels church inventory roofs and driven items. The specialty ranges from art crafts to building conservation where copper roofing of roofs spires and domes is an important work area. Choose coppersmith if you like shaping plate into three-dimensional items and working both in the workshop and on buildings.

The metal printer forms round, seamless workpieces by pressing a rotating metal plate over a mandrel. The speciality is machine-oriented and is about mastering the spinning lathe, mandrels and pressing tools to produce bowls, lamp shades, instrument dials and pressure vessels. Choose metal printer if you are drawn to forming metal in rotation and see a flat plate become a shape in minutes.

The iron and metal grinder is a specialist in finishing – the path from rough surface to mirror-bright or satin finish through gradual grinding and polishing. The engraver cuts text, ornaments and motifs in metal, by hand with a punch or with a pantograph and laser. Both specialties require precision and patience and lead to very different workplaces, from the factory's finishing departments to the exclusive engraver's workshop.

“Choose the specialty you could stand at the bench with all day — that is where you become skilled.”