From the President
The ANVIL’S RING • Summer 2001 •

Dear ABANA members,
It seems like only yesterday I was writing the letter for the last issue, but much has happened since my last letter.
The Board has accepted the invitation and hospitality of the North West Blacksmith Association and will hold the fall board meeting November 1-3 in Seattle, Washington. As one of the largest ABANA chapters and with their proximity to other fine chapters both in the US and Canada, the meeting promises to be filled with good member input and fresh ideas. The Board has a full plate for this meeting, and this will be reflected in the agenda that will be published before the meeting. Add your voice. If you cannot attend, send your comments and suggestions to the Central Office by mid-October.

By the time you read this letter, the Boy Scout metalworking merit badge will have been introduced at the National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia. My thanks to Drew Hagemann, ABANA member, for putting together a great educational program for the next generation of blacksmiths. Jack Andrews also generously helped with his illustration skills and other assistance. And ABANA is listed as a main contact for scouts interested in working on this merit badge. This merit badge fits neatly and tightly with the mission of ABANA: education. As Drew said in one of his messages to me, “I’m proud to be a blacksmith, and I love teaching what I know to others.” This sums up what ABANA should be about. Thanks again, Drew, and thanks to BSA for recognizing the potential of blacksmithing to prepare young men for adulthood. Contact your local Boy Scout Council for more information on the merit badge and how to become a merit badge counselor. These boys are part of the next generation of smiths, we need to start their education now.

The Board election ballot is included in this issue of The Anvil’s Ring. Please take the time to look over the slate of candidates and make your choices wisely with an eye for the future of ABANA and blacksmithing (and as of this writing I do not know who the candidates are). Look back at my first letter in the Winter 2000 issue of the AR for my comments on the kind of strong, engaged, dedicated and talented members I feel we need to help lead blacksmithing and ABANA into the next century, stronger and better than ever before.
In the near future you will receive proposed changes to the ABANA bylaws. The bylaws were last reviewed in 1996 and need to be updated to correct simple mistakes and omissions, make clarifications on wording and to bring the bylaws up to date with what ABANA is now and how ABANA is being run at the beginning of the new millennium. Again, when these changes arrive, please give them serious thought and return your ballot as soon as possible. Thanks again for participating in your organization.
On a sad note, Jane, the widow of Emmert Studebaker, passed away in March. On behalf of ABANA, I express my sympathies to their families and friends.
ABANA is reaching out to the British Artist Blacksmith Association and Hephaistos, two of the strongest blacksmithing organizations in Europe with an exchange of publications with Rob Edwards and Brian Gilbert, our editors. Expect more as this relationship grows in the coming years.
Planning for the 2002 ABANA conference in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, is well under way and promises to be a great one. Bill Fiorini and his committee are working very hard to organize a great conference, under the heading of “Forging Traditions, with demonstrators from all over the world. More on this in other places in this issue, issues to come, in the Hammer’s Blow, on the web site and in other ways. We will be asking for your help in the near future, when all the tasks are clearly defined. For some we will need help on the ground in LaCrosse; other things can be done from your home, both now and as conference time approaches. And it is not too early to start thinking about the 2004 and 2006 conferences. Send your interests to the Central Office in time for the fall Board meeting.

Sadly, the anvil-shoot controversy has come again to take up much time and effort of the board. On May 19th, the organizers of the Madison Conference, involving seven ABANA chapters, against the well-published and announced policy and operating procedures of ABANA, shot an anvil into the air. Thus, at the moment Tim Ryan lit the fuse, all seven chapters were removed from the rolls of ABANA. This removal was a culmination of over four years of discussions concerning this activity with those who refused to see the danger to ABANA if not to their own chapters in this activity, to no avail. This action was explicitly outlined in my last letter in The Anvil’s Ring, in my letters to the chapters, in press releases posted on the web site and in several letters and conversations with the organizers of the conference. The reasons are again firmly and clearly stated in this issue, and I refer you to the rebuttal to Patty Draper’s letter, written by ABANA Secretary Jerry Kagele, elsewhere in this issue.
Much animosity has been directed toward ABANA and personally toward the Board for our actions in protecting ABANA against this banned and uninsurable activity. Emotions have run high, rash statements have been made, misunderstandings magnified and taken advantage of, and strong personal words used. This is unfortunate. Any hard feelings about our actions in removing these chapters should be directed against the conference organizers, not ABANA. They all knew our position. Tim Ryan, having been on the Board for longer than this controversy has been alive, knew the Board’s position even as he defied it when he lit the fuse. Three days of excellent blacksmith demonstrations and education at the Madison Conference and the relationship of seven chapters with ABANA was ruined for a five-second display of defiance and “heritage.” To what end?

Let me again emphasize that the Board cannot defend any action that does not fulfill the function of ABANA as defined in the bylaws, “organized exclusively for educational purposes,” nor any that does not involve the usual and standard use of the tools of the trade and craft of blacksmithing. We can neither support nor tolerate an uninsurable action, one that misuses the central tool of the blacksmith, the anvil — with explosives — for entertainment
Anvil shooting is not what ABANA is about. We as a Board took the actions necessary to protect your organization against uninsurable activities not in keeping with the mission of ABANA. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing personal, not traditionalists versus artists, not north versus south versus west, nor any of the tired and unacceptable arguments that are so often used to divide us into competing camps for some unknown gain. I reject them all and call for this practice to end now.
This action has caused me great pain, both personally and as ABANA president. and consumed an enormous amount of my time, as it has with those members of the Board who care deeply about blacksmithing and ABANA. We all have lost much. Innocent people have been harmed and a pall has been cast over all of ABANA and blacksmithing in America because of an activity by a few members. The efforts and time that have been spent on this topic by the Board has been taken from the 2002 Conference, publication of The Anvil’s Ring and the Hammer’s Blow, revising the bylaws, the education efforts, the web site, developing a strategic plan for the future, library and video reorganization, grant writing, work time and our family life. This now ends; we must move on. ABANA has a mission to educate smiths and the general public about blacksmithing. The future of blacksmithing demands it.
We wish the affected chapters well and hold no ill feelings towards them. The individual ABANA memberships of those members in these chapters are unaffected. Let us all move forward in a positive manner for blacksmithing and for ABANA. Safe and productive forging.
Doug Learn

ABANA President