24 foot silver fork keeps ancient art of ironmongery alive in southern Scotland
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Thornhill might be a small village but its newest attraction is huge.
Down a quiet side street leaning on the old headmaster's house is a gigantic fork. It is the latest creation by Nate Robinson.
He is a blacksmith who is taking the ancient craft to new places. He has a YouTube channel where he forges items in the wild countryside of the south of Scotland. He also has various dinosaur sculptures which populate the garden around his workshop.
Speaking about how he got into becoming a blacksmith Nate said: "I did kind of fall into it. One of my mates was putting on a demonstration and I wondered if I could come along for the last bit.
"He gave me a shot and then when I got home I nicked my mum's hairdryer and my dad's barbecue and started forging to their dismay. Now I haven’t been clean since and all of the door handles and light switches are dirty.
“I started off making little knives, rams heads and horse heads. These were good fun and good to learn the technical processes. You can carry on the skills into loads of different things."
Nate speaks about how he studied at university and there realised he wanted to make physical items and sculptures.
He said: "I went to uni and I studied architecture. I was sitting behind the computer for a lot of the time in a day and I thought that I needed to do something physical.
"So I picked up my hobby and started to do it a lot more passionately. I have been doing it for about four or five years now full time."
Nate’s enthusiasm for iron work isn’t just confined to the workshop. In his popular online video series he takes his craft into the wilderness.
He said: “We saw this guy taking a big piano around the place and he just started playing on mountain sides. It made me think I want to do that.
"We made this little forge and took it to a local reservoir. I really wanted to show people on YouTube the less known places of the countryside, especially around Galloway. I then thought I would forge something at each place."
Through his work and videos he has fans throughout the globe. His work has been shipped as far away as the USA and New Zealand.
He said: “The beautiful thing about steel is you just heat it up and then hit it. It just moves a different direction and you can totally manipulate it. It is about using your initiative to move it in different ways.
Nate also has a collection of dinosaurs he has made. He explains why he has made the prehistoric creatures.
He said: “I just loved dinosaurs as a kid and from then I thought I am going to make some dinosaurs. There are a lot of people making art things but when it comes to blacksmithing people think it is just making knives or swords. I wanted to get away from that."
One of his most famous designs is the 7.3 metre tall fork. It is called Nate's fork and has seen hundreds of visitors turn up to get a snap of his creation.
He said: "It is 300kg and 7.3 meters tall. It was kind of a joke because we had made a six foot spoon and were like let's make a six meter fork.
"We measured it out and thought it was going to be too small. We planned for it to be 7.5 meters but due to the bend in it its 7.3. We have had a few thousand people come here just to take a photo of it."
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