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March 02, 2022 News + Opinion » Business
Published March 2, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. | Updated March 15, 2022 at 2:15 p.m.
Alder Hardt pulled a glowing yellow rod from his forge, laid it on an anvil and hammered a U-shaped bend into one end. When the steel rod was cool, Hardt reheated it, then clamped it in a vise. Working with a hammer and tongs, he wrapped the short leg of the U around the top of the rod, like a serpent coiled on a tree branch.
With each twist of the metal, bits of iron oxide flaked off, briefly creating a black and orange pattern resembling a corn snake's markings. This flaking process, called "scaling," is an inevitable part of the forging process and reduces the mass of the worked steel by about 1 percent, Hardt said.
After repeated cycles of heating, hammering and reshaping, Hardt added finishing touches to the fireplace poker: an S-shaped hook on one end and a decorative leaf on the other. Then he walked outside and plunged the hot steel into the snow with a sizzle. Back inside, he scrubbed the cool metal with a wire brush to remove the remaining iron oxide, then rubbed it down with preservative vegetable oil.
In the time it took Hardt to explain the whole process, the 16-year-old had forged two fireplace pokers, which he sells online at Alder Hardt Ironworks for $60 to $70 apiece. Not bad for 30 minutes of labor during February school break.
Hardt took up blacksmithing when he was 12. Since then, he's earned a reputation in the Northeast Kingdom as an accomplished metalworker with skills well beyond his years. A sophomore at Hazen Union High School in Hardwick, he built the website for his own successful home business.
Among the wares he sells online and at the Craftsbury Farmers Market are tools, hooks, hinges, candlestick holders, belt buckles and other handcrafted home accessories. Hardt also repairs broken farm equipment and produces custom metal pieces for homes and businesses.
During his free time, Hardt can invariably be found in the workshop he built himself on his family's property in Wolcott, where they moved last October. There, he works with a passion that burns as brightly as the carbon steel he molds.
"This is basically my life," he said. "This is what I want to do."
The son of a commercial forester, Hardt started working with tools and machinery early. "I was chopping kindling and sawing boards when I was 5 years old. I used a chain saw when I was 6," he said during a reporter's recent visit.
Hardt was 8 when he saw his first blacksmithing demonstration at Shelburne Museum. According to his mother, Katrina, the boy was so engrossed that the blacksmith made him an iron leaf key chain to take home.
When Hardt was 12, during a year of homeschooling, he built himself a crude forge in the ground using a pipe, bricks and a pile of coal. He made a pair of knives out of an old saw blade and overheated them in the forge until they melted.
Undeterred, Hardt found another piece of scrap metal, heated it and pounded it with a hammer against a vise. He was so fascinated by the process that, according to Katrina, he built a new forge out of an old wheelbarrow and a shop vacuum that he retrofitted to blow air like a blast furnace.
At 13, after a few lessons and instructional YouTube videos, Hardt landed a one-year apprenticeship with Hardwick blacksmith Lucian Avery, funded by the Vermont Folklife Center's Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.
At the time, Hardt didn't even own an anvil; he used a small section of railroad track.
Yet the teen arrived at the apprenticeship knowing many of the basics of blacksmithing, Avery recalled. Hardt just needed to broaden his experience and learn advanced skills.
"Alder was just super inspired to do it," Avery added. "He'd already had his hands dirty and jumped right into it."
Soon Hardt was doing what traditional blacksmiths have done for centuries: forging his own tools, including a pair of blocky, rough-hewn, Thor-esque hammers, which he still uses. He also crafted chisels, center punches, axes and tongs.
"You can buy a pair of tongs online for, like, 50 bucks," he said. "Or you can make them yourself in less than an hour."
That DIY ethos drives Hardt. Last summer, he built himself a blacksmithing shop — his second — that cost him practically nothing but sweat equity. For the structural beams, he cut and skidded logs on his family's property. For the walls and roof, he used salvaged sheet metal he found through Front Porch Forum. He did his own electrical wiring, his mother noted, and documented the process for a school project.
"He's been able to integrate his school assignments with his passion for blacksmithing," Katrina said.
Inside, the dirt-floor shop is airy, with a large American flag hanging in one corner and tools, belts, grinding wheels and safety gear on the walls. A gap between the walls and roof vents heat and exhaust.
In the past, Hardt said, he used coal to fire his forge. But, besides leaving him covered in soot, the coal heated unevenly and had to be raked constantly during forging.
So last year, Hardt built himself a propane forge. Though the gas costs more than coal, it heats up faster, burns cleaner and distributes heat better, allowing him to work with larger steel pieces. The homemade forge can hit 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit, he said, more than hot enough to melt carbon steel. Without a thermometer, Hardt gauges the temperature by the color of the flames.
His blower is an old hair dryer.
"I've always used a hair dryer in my forges," he explained. "It's kind of funny, but they work really well. I don't see a need to go buy a $50 forge blower."
Beside the forge stands Hardt's anvil, mounted on a large tree stump. Behind it in one corner sits a contraption that looks like something rusty pulled from a scrap heap. In fact, it's a power hammer — faster, more powerful and more accurate than its manual counterpart. A new power hammer costs $2,500 to $15,000, but Hardt cobbled this one together last summer out of salvaged parts, including some abandoned railroad track he dug up near his school.
His more ambitious projects include a 4-by-12-foot wrought-iron barn ladder that he built for Steve Fortmann, co-owner of Ghost Dog Dairy in Hardwick, who was Hardt's soccer coach in middle school. At several hundred pounds, it was Hardt's largest and most "architectural" piece, he said.
Fortmann was so pleased with the work, he commissioned Hardt to build wrought-iron railings, too — with a nautical theme, because he and his wife, Kathy, are Navy veterans.
Fortmann said he never doubted the teen's abilities. Once, he recalled, Hardt showed up at his house on a homemade snowmobile he'd built from a rider mower and a pair of skis.
Since then, Fortmann has hired Hardt four or five times to repair broken farm machinery, including an old rotary rake. Replacing it would have cost $20,000 or more.
"It's good to have someone who can do metal repair quickly, especially in the summer," Fortmann said. "He's a good example for other kids of what you can do at a young age ... instead of [playing] video games."
Hardt has improved the efficiency of other local businesses, too. Nina Livellara, who cofounded Local Donut in Woodbury with her husband, Nate Doyon, discovered Hardt's work at the farmers market. She ordered several items for her home. Hardt mentioned his interest in doing larger custom orders, piquing the doughnut makers' curiosity.
"Nate had been daydreaming about getting a large frying vessel for our bakery for two years," Livellara said. "Alder, being young and an entrepreneur and very dedicated to the craft, was up for the challenge."
The couple could have purchased an industrial fryer online for less and gotten it sooner, Livellara noted. But their business plan involves working with local food producers, artists and craftspeople to "keep the dollars in the Vermont economy."
Though Hardt had never built a doughnut fryer, he delivered the order a few weeks ago. Already, it has doubled the bakers' output.
"It's awesome ... We're really happy with his work," Livellara said.
As of later this month, Hardt will finally be able to deliver his products to his customers himself — assuming he passes his driver's test and gets a license.
Though he takes clear pride in his work, he hasn't let the attention or accolades go to his head.
"Most of the stuff I make, you could go on Amazon and get for, like, a 10th of the price," he said, "but it's not going to be nearly as cool."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Irons in the Fire"
Tags: Business, Alder Hardt Ironworks, Alder Hardt, blacksmith, blacksmithing
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