While many people are talking about the Mother of Dragons – Daenerys Targaryen from HBO’s Game of Thrones, a blacksmith in Lacombe could be called the forger of dragons.
Brian Herrick, a blacksmith and welder, along with a colleague recently completed a hand-forged 6-foot dragon sculpture for a cilent who wanted the sculpture to hold the sign of his gate.
Herrick said they started with a silhouette and went from there.
“As we got more into it, it ended up being quite big,” he said.
The project took more than 10 days to complete with shaping the legs taking about six days and putting on the scales about 280 hours.
“The head, arms, feet and tail are all hand-forged,” said Herrick. “That is the old fashioned method of heating up the metal and then pounding and shaping it to what you want it to look like. For the head and arms, I worked along with a professional blacksmith that I know who works out on Vancouver Island.”
Herrick originally found time to blacksmith during his time in agriculture, the seasonal nature of which gave him time to work in a shop throughout the winters.
“Since the ag business is seasonal, we would have a workshop in the winter where we would do all sorts of industrial stuff,” he said.
“We always liked to work on things a bit different. I’m retired from the agricultural business, but I got into blacksmithing and I started my own little business.”
He added about the dragon, “I have never done anything like that and I thought it would be a challenge. We didn’t really have an idea what we were going to do when we started.”