Iron forged |
Written by straits-mongrel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Saturday, 26 December 2009 13:40 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I remember his clean nails when we first shook hands that afternoon. It was firm, not vise-like, nor do I recall being gripped by calluses. He spoke in tones which never rose above the decibel of the mellow traffic outside. All this in a man who worked over 45 years in the drama of fusing the elements – fire, metal, wood, water, earth.
Wong Fook Woon is a blacksmith. One of the few left around the country who actually still do it all by hand. In fact, the 60-year-old is said to be the only one left in the deep central region of the country. He makes knives and parangs, those kukri-shaped machetes that helped clear the land for agriculture.
Wong works in Batu Kikir, about 20 minutes east of Kuala Pilah, Negri Sembilan. His three children, now adults, have all gone on “with an education” and he's proud about that prospect. Today, it is him and his wife, Lai Wai Han, who keep the workplace going. He's at peace that someday, before too long, his practice too will follow the way of the other blacksmiths in the country.
“It's not a job anybody can do,” says Wong in Cantonese. “In the past, I've had young, able-bodied assistants to help in the workplace. The strain was too much. Some had nosebleeds because of the heat.” Heat comes from burning charcoal; reaching temperatures over 1,000 deg C, it is traditionally the best source of heat for blacksmithing. The fire is housed in a cement-rendered brick forge (sometimes referred to as a hearth) with a consistent stream of air driven by an electric centrifugal blower. This is a more recent convenience. Years ago, an assistant would drive air with leather bellows.
Within arm's reach are tongs, pliers, chisels, punches, and pokers. A half-body turn away sits the anvil, clamped and bolted onto a tree trunk as base. An assortment of hammers stand ready nearby.
There is a pragmatic beauty about the whole set up; the sort of feeling you get when you visit a veteran mechanic who's serious about his trade.
“All this was driven into me by my father,” Wong recalls, smiling. “He would pull my ears hard when I took the easy way out. I didn't see why we couldn't take short cuts, why must tools be kept in their place, why must there always be that much ready stock of charcoal. I do now.
“You want to forge something right, there are no short cuts.”
Wong was 13 when he started as an apprentice in his father's shop. Wong's father who arrived from China as a youth, learned the trade in the home-town itself. It was a niche to be filled. The Jempol district was fast developing as a rubber hub with Bahau as its centre. There was a huge demand for tapping knives to draw sap from the trees and machetes to keep the belukar from reclaiming cleared land.
That's where blacksmiths came in. Out of iron and steel, they made stuff; stuff that made other things happen. Anything ferrous – pots and pans, changkul, ladles, scissors, buckles – they made them. Historically, blacksmiths were a prized group of craftsmen who emerged from the Iron Age, specialising in shaping of the metal by beating, chiselling and punching it. (The root word for 'smith' is 'smite' which means 'to hit'. Black referred to the colour of iron, known then as black copper.) It is through the work of blacksmiths that we have the word 'forge'. I like that word; use it all the time. But it is only until one witnesses how metal is forged that a deeper appreciation emerges. Forge demands hard work. Forge submits a material through its limits, stresses it, coddles it and finally makes it useful.
For his knives, Wong prefers the steel stock used in the leaf spring suspension of heavy vehicles. These strips are cut to their predetermined sizes. In all, there are four standard sizes (coded 1 through 4 with size 1 the longest).
It's true you need good arms for this kind of work. But equally so, good eyes. A blacksmith studies the colour of glowing steel to know the correct time to work each process. When heated, steel starts glowing from red to orange, then yellow and finally white before melting. Yellow-orange is the ideal state for most forging, although finer shaping is best done when it's red.
An experienced blacksmith runs through the routine of heating, beating, and reheating working fastidiously from the hilt, which receives the handle, right up to the point. Wong takes about a half hour to forge the blade of a utility parang, starting from standard steel stock. In his prime he could make about a dozen a day. The body itself takes a beating while the steel is hammered and shaped. Four decades and millions of pounding on the anvil, the shocks absorbed in the Wong's wrists and elbows have started to announce their wear and tear. “During the high production periods, my joints would ache. And holding a glass of water would feel quite weightless after a day pounding with the hammer.”
But it was minor heart attack a few years ago which would slow him down. “I don't make many parangs these days. Only on special orders from old friends.”
These days, the bulk of Wong's work revolves around the maintenance and reconditioning of rubber tapping knives. In an area surrounded by Felda plantation schemes, this has kept him suitably occupied. His customers come from as far away as the neighbouring state of Pahang. Most rubber-tapping knives have a sharp bend at their tips. This ensures a consistent optimum depth when the blade cuts into the trees; too deep and it hurts the tree, too shallow and you don't draw enough sap. Wong repairs knives whose bent edges have broken off. This involves forging a new bend from the existing blade shaft and resharpening.
Working on utility tools keep the days busy and helped support the family. But in the marrow of every artisan is an artist. On quieter days, amidst the cooing of his merboks, Wong would work on his pet projects – ceremonial swords of his own design, where the steel is more intricately forged and the handle carved from buffalo horn with a brass collar. The sheath would typically be leather.
“Perhaps one a year. I don't have to rush these. I get to explore with the weight, balance, the correct lustre. I get to employ more tender beatings for the ornamentation, which are fewer when forging utility tools. It involves a larger repertoire of skills overall – different heat states, different turns of the wrists, different strokes.
“Keeps my mind sharp,” says Wong, as he holds a favourite blade with a handle of a dragon. His nails are dusted with iron ore by now, his skin moist from perspiration. By nightfall, when he sits by his dining table with his wife and maybe a friend or two, he would already be scrubbed clean again. His speech would be mild, his manner gentle - a persona that belies the stereotypical image of a burly, gruff man. And perhaps that's what forge is. It's about coming out tempered.
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