Forging a new chapter
Blacksmith who created custom work for decades ready to set down his hammer
The smell of heat filled the forge and clung to throats like soot on a chimney.
Ward Brinegar maneuvered the blowtorch like a paint brush, carefully applying the fire within the marked spot on a piece of iron. The flames licked the metal until it glowed like sunset. Satisfied with the amount of heat that had seeped into his piece, Brinegar waltzed to his anvil and began hammering the iron until it wilted.
As the glow faded and the rhythmic beat of clashing metal stopped, the iron finally bent to Brinegar’s imagination.
Brinegar owns Harmony Forge, located off N.M. 14 just south of Santa Fe. For 42 years, the blacksmith has created custom work, including the noted iron rabbits in La Fonda on the Plaza and more gates than he could possibly count at homes around town.
Yet on April 1, Brinegar is permanently hanging up his apron and selling his forge.
“My body is wearing out,” said Brinegar, who is 65. “I’m excited. I’m ready to be retired and turn the page into the next chapter.”
After Brinegar sells his house and forge, he is buying a fifth-wheel camper and living on the road for a while. He said he has plenty of destinations in mind, starting with Acadia National Park in Maine.
He had his retirement in sight four years ago after the blacksmith’s acupuncturist told Brinegar an injury he sustained smithing showed he was not as strong as he once was and his body was starting to give out. In August, Brinegar stopped taking custom jobs in order to clear his plate by April.
Even with the strain smithing put on his body, Brinegar said he has no regrets of following the ancient craft and devoting his life to metal.
“I’m bringing iron to life here,” he said. “I’m going to miss the permanence of iron. I like to say I’m in the business of making family heirlooms.”
Brinegar, who was born in Las Cruces and grew up in Albuquerque, did not know he was destined for a life of black hands and safety
glasses until he was 23.
He had always been fascinated by the living history blacksmith in the Kit Carson Museum as he shuttled kids through during the eight summers he worked at the Philmont Scout Ranch as a high school and college student. By his third year at New Mexico State University, he had tried majors as different as wildlife science and elementary education.
Finally, his fascination with smithing drew him to consider dropping out of college. An English professor at NMSU convinced him to get a degree, any degree, so he finished as an American literature graduate.
“I can write a good letter,” he said with a smile.
He turned the page to his lifelong career at Frank Turley’s Blacksmithing School in Santa Fe. For six weeks, he joked, he learned just enough to hit the hammer the right side up and not get killed.
Still fresh from classes, he moved to Nebraska to work as a live-history blacksmith in the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. He spent 14 years with the museum demonstrating his craft. But in 1989, Brinegar felt nostalgic for home and came to Santa Fe to open Harmony Forge, named after his personal viewpoint.
“It’s just the way I like to live — to be in harmony,” he said.
As he floats between forges, anvil and clamps, Brinegar seems light on his feet. Maybe that’s no accident.
“I’ll always be a dancer,” Brinegar said.
At age 46, he took a dance class with his daughter in order for her to get physical education credit at school. While the classes covered a variety of styles, he found a passion for country dancing.
Though Brinegar had a daily stretch routine and saw an acupuncturist to help relieve his body from the strains of smithing, he found dancing countered the stiffness of his job and offered him something else.
“It gave me a sense of myself I never had before,” he said. “It made me believe I was graceful.” Turns out, he was good at it. “He’s really worked hard on his dancing,” said Belinda Jentzen, Brinegar’s dance partner for 10 years.
Jentzen met Brinegar because they were both members of an Albuquerque dance club, and she asked him if he would be interested in competing. In 2006, Brinegar and Jentzen took their dancing shoes to the United Country Western Dance Council World Championships. They competed in the Silver Advanced category, for people 50 to 59, and at the skill level below professional. They won their division three years in a row.
“Everything he does reflects very much the same way when he dances,” Jentzen said. “His lines were always beautiful. When you’re dancing, you’re designing the body.”
Brinegar gave up dance competitions six years ago, but for the past three years he has been teaching classes at Santa Fe Community College. He said teaching offered him the chance to pay forward the patience people had shown him along his journey.
He brought the mentoring mentality to smithing, as well. Tom Sabo has been Brinegar’s assistant for the past four years. Raised in a family of artists and with a past in welding, Sabo said he had always been around metalworking, but Brinegar raised his sights.
“He set another bar for me,” Sabo said. “I’ve never seen any other work like his.”
Sabo said he gained a lot of knowledge by witnessing Brinegar’s eye for detail and meticulous attitude toward his work.
“He’s one of the most talented craftsmen I’ve ever worked with,” Sabo said. “He’s so well-practiced, it’s amazing to see.”
While Brinegar is selling off the last of his ironwork along with the tools of his trade, he is not giving up on creating. He now plans to focus his art on copper as he creates elaborate embossed pieces of landscapes and designs.
“I’m not going to miss creating because I’m just transitioning to a different medium,” he said. “I’m not leaving something behind; I’m going toward something.”
Soon, Brinegar’s tools will have new masters. Soon, he will no longer bear the black smudges on his fingers like badges of his profession. Soon, the only forging he will do is ahead to new paths.
Yet, the tiny blocks of his name stamped into iron will remain.