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Blacksmith wins UK title for sixth year in a row

BBC Simon Hall stands smiling at the camera while his right hand holds a poker into the blue and red flames of his forge.BBC
Simon Hall is the tenant blacksmith at the National Trust's Branscombe Forge

A blacksmith from Devon has been named the UK's live forging champion for the sixth year in a row.

Simon Hall, tenant blacksmith at the National Trust's Branscombe Forge, made a boot puller in an hour in the National Blacksmiths Competition at the Dorset County Show at the weekend.

He was named the forging champion after a summer featuring nine competitions at county shows across the country.

Mr Hall is a third-generation blacksmith who from the age of nine began working alongside his father on weekends, which he said gave him "free rein to play with fire".

Simon Hall is at work looking down at a poker which has a tip glowing white and orange with heat resting on an anvil. His right hand is bringing a hammer down onto it. Behind him is a furnace and the tools of his trade.
"As long as I'm having fun doing it, that's the main thing," Mr Hall said of his trade

Mr Hall said the competitions could prove challenging.

"We turn up with our own tools and materials and we have to make something specified to what the criteria says," he said.

"We have the added pressure of people watching you forging, which also adds to the trickery of it."

Speaking of his passion for the craft, he said: "It's always fun, a little more profit would be nice, but as long as I'm having fun doing it, that's the main thing."

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