The Rác family and the blacksmiths.
I am going to ask you something.
Talk to me a little bit louder.
Because my ears are not dirty, but worn out.
From that hammer anvil.
Over there, in my home village, Bolešov, there were no smiths at all.
There was one man, who was working for Railways, as a railway smith, yes.
So, as a boy, I used to go there sometimes,
to sniff to that smithy smoke.
Or to that smoke coming from that charcoal.
But somehow I didn´t like that craft, because I wasn´t built out for it.
I was a bit tiny.
And I see how the smiths are always a robust men.
There was one more smith in our village.
As a boy, I used to pull his leather bags.
Because in that times, there were no electric fire, nor the power hammers, of course.
Our workshops are now equipped with a modern technologies.
CO2, welding machines and so on.
In those times, as we say, everything was done manually.
Well, and when that smith, called Klement Černej,
When he was welding, I was always hiding behind those leather bags.
I was a little bit afraid of those sparks.
Well, but when it snorted on me from time to time, I got used to it,
that I didn´t mind anymore.
Well and so I sniffed to the craft even more.
And finally, you can see, what a smith I am, what a monster.
The destiny or whatever it was, made me study for a smith.
I´ve studied here, in Bohatá, what is a city district of Hurbanovo.
The blacksmith, the shoeing smith.
When I finished my studies, I came to Dubnica
and I started to work in a factory.
In that times it was called The Machine Plants Dubnica, Metallurgical Plants,
The Plants of Kliment Jefremovič Vorošilov.
Dubnica, that Škoda factory in Dubnica have had a couple of those names.
So from the smithery,
from the manual forging and the shoeing,
I switched to the engine forging.
The big engine forging.
In that time, the smitheries were built in factory in Dubnica.
I was in Vítkovice for training, also in Plzeň.
Well, and when we came back, after...
I´ve been in Vítkovice for eight months, in Plzeň for nine months.
When I came back to Dubnica from Plzeň,
the smitheries in Dubnice were starting to operate.
The big smithery, the drop one and the free smithery.
But then, as a boy, I joined the military service.
And after the military service, when I came back,
I started to work in Dubnica, as a tool smith.
For the whole smithery
I was doing it until I retired on pension.
So, I worked in that factory in Dubnica since 1957...
As I am retired now...
For fifteen years and I am 75 years old.
So I worked there until I was 55 years of age.
Including three years I was in Libya, because I had a trainees.
I was teaching the apprentice smiths.
Then I went to Libya for three years,
because I was teaching also the Arabs.
And I was in Libya also as an expert in forging.
Well and when I came back from Libya,
we have had the category one.
We had the opportunity to retire at the age of 55.
Well, and I went to early retirement for one year.
At the age of fifty four.
And I am retired at home, since then.
Well and I forge with my grandson, with my son, with my granddaughter.
And this smithery is helping us a little bit.
The son, he is doing it professionally.
He is doing it for living.
And I help them, sometimes, when it´s necessary.
Good.
My father is a bricklayer and my mother was a housewife.
We´ve been six kids.
So she had a lot to do as well, my mum, I mean.
Also the father, of course.
Well, I, when I got married, I´ve got five sons.
The oldest one is a medicine man, an otorhinolaryngologist.
Then there is Paľko, right here , he isthe father of my granddaughter.
Then Ľubo, Marián and Martin.
Martin is the youngest, he is an engineer
and now he is a mayor of Bolešov.
So, we are a well-ordered family, I would say.
I would also said, we are quite well-educated family, yes.
And I can say, we are almost the pride of our village.
I didn´t want to have a smith in our family.
Because we were talking a lot about how hard the blacksmith work is.
Somehow, I didn´t want to make their live too easy.
But they had such a knowledge,
to study more and to go to school.
And so they could become something more than just an ordinary smith.
Well, I don´t want to derogate this my craft,
but why should my son be a smith,
if he can do any other profession.
At our family the education was at the first place.
And I didn´t make it easy for them, at all.
We´ve built the house, this, that, lot of things around.
And even he told me, I have the school leaving examination soon, I have to study,
yes, I said, you will go to study, but first, we have to finish this.
Well and of course, the sun is not shining at night,
but you can turn on the light
and study under the artificial lighting.
I forced them to work,
but the priority was always the studying, the school.
And now you can ask my granddaughter.
Tell something.
I am doing the different craft.
In school, I focus specifically on glass.
The production of a stained glass.
Well and because my family has a artistic smithery business,
I got to it thanks to my dad.
Well, and now I combine these two materials together, the metal and the glass.
Simply, we do something forged, some art plastics
and then I add there the glass, the stained glass, to that plastic.
I´ve studied the glass.
The glass production.
Well, and the smithery is more like a hobby.
We´ve got it in the family, I saw how to do it and I am doing it so.
- Can I? - Sure.
She was always in the workshop, I had to send her out many times.
You are a pretty girl, I said,
you polish your nails, take the nail file and do your nails.
Not to smoke yourself here and stink by the fire and by the smoke.
Let be it.
Grandpa dissuades me from smithery like this,
but my dad encouraged me.
If you like it, he said, work on it.
As a little girl, I used to go to the workshop with my dad and I helped him forge.
The blacksmith components, hitting with a hammer and so.
Then I do my own production.
Some candlesticks, some decorations, the horseshoes, and these kind of things.
Well and it remains until now, we all are involved in it.
I´ve had a trainees in Dubnica
and those trainees in the third year of studying wasn´t able to forge with a power hammer
as good as she, in the times when she didn´t know yet, if the metal grows under the tree or on the tree.
You know, what I mean.
So easy.
By the way, these scratches of the hammer, do you know what it will be?
It´s going to be something enormous.
Yes.
I am very close to the humor.
And I take whole my life with such a humor.
Many things cannot really disturb me.
And I think, it´s one of my good features.
But they play to the rhythm.
With a good music, you have to work like a deaf-blind.
When there is a lively music on, I can rip an anvil.
We also do the T-shirts.
Dad didn´t want to have all the smiths in the family.
Everyone should have some different craft.
We are four siblings.
The brother was educated as an artistic blacksmith.
And he is such a craftsman,
that many times I would throw my hat off to the ground.
To him.
He is such a skilled boy.
Unbend.
The smithery is a hard work.
But this craft is worth it, it really is an amazing thing.
When you can shape that iron and that final product, you make out of it.
Whether it is a railing, a fencing, some artistic forged plastic, a wood holder.
It is absolutely amazing thing.
You´ve got a raw material,
it is just some square, an unworked piece.
And the final result is just amazing.
It is really beautiful, what you can make out of that iron.
Today, the manual artistic forging
is replaced by the drop forging.
Today, there´s no problem to make a number of a fence tips or something.
- Because of a drop forging, it drops there two times. - And it´s done.
It cuts off the feather, dust, under the press
and the product is done and it´s this pretty.
So this drop forging is replacing the manual forging.
When people want to make their fences,
they don´t care if the tip is forged or... - Just bought.
...done manually.
- They care... - Everybody cares about the price, now.
- The price. - Yes.
- And then, they mind the price.
This is how it works,
one asks ten smiths for their price offer.
Or even no smiths, but someone who works with it
and they choose the cheapest version.
So, everybody cares about the prices, at a first place.
And they don´t care about the quality.
And they´re wondering what wrong about it.
Today, all these elements, the half-finished products are easy to buy.
- Now, you can buy these archs, you can buy this. - From Poland.
Everything...
I would say, today, the fence can be made even by the barber.
A welder, whatever welder.
Yes, he buys this kind of a welding machine and he sticks it together somehow in the basement.
I don´t say, he weld it, but he sticks it.
So this...
- This craft is being replaced by this kind of a basement craftsmen. - The foremen.
- The craftsmen.. - Yes.
We want our every single piece to go through the forge,
so it can be forged, it processes in the heat, to make that metal alive.
Because it is heat treated.
It looks much better at the final product, it even revive the product.
The granddaughter said everything.
We also have to speed the work up,
to make that fence part be ready as soon as possible
with using as little material as possible.
To make some little money out of it.
So we could buy that beer and bread.
We are focused mainly on the forged fences, the security bars, the railings.
Some interior forging, sometimes the plastics.
Well and you can see our products all over Slovakia.
Especially around here, near our village.
But we had some work also in Bratislava.
Then in Polomka, in Slovenský Grob, in Chorvátsky Grob and so.
If the customer asks for it, we are able to realize the job everywhere.
Even abroad.
We had an excursion from Vodňany in our workshop.
The full bus of people.
Well, I was doing a spokesman for them there.
And our products were displayed there.
And one man asked me:
"Well, and what if you make something wrong?"
And I´ve told him, we never make anything wrong.
It either will be a shovel or a pickaxe.
You say big beer and big kofola and you´ll give them these tickets.
That´good.
I should´ve prolonged it there.
We keep the beer regime with Borka.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
You are the best smith ever.
I´ve got a little grandson, who comes to the workshop
and he sits by me, the closest to the fire.
The mayor´s son.
He will go to the first class now.
Well but...
If he liked it or so,
I wouldn´t mind him being the blacksmith.
But I feel, or I think,
that there are much easier ways to make money than smithery.
Because it´s not good, if the sweat is dripping from your chin and your nose.
It´s much better if there is just a pencil in your hands or so.
This is made of a material 12 050.
And some of these tools are from a material 19 191.
This is a steel that is used for a woodworking tools.
It is quite demanding for forging and so.
But when some tool is made out of this,
for example, with this ax you can sharpen the pencil.
There is a different if it´s forged with a machine under the power hammer,
to punch holes, I mean, to make these holes,
and to make it manually, let´s say on the hammer anvil.
This was made straight on the hammer anvil.
All of these tools have been made here.
Well and this is such a hatchet, that can chop even the nails.
But it also depends on how it is hardened.
And who have hardened it.
This is a carpenter´s ax.
For a carpenter.
This is for pulling the nails out
and it should have a tool for pulling out the nails here.
Let my granddaughter speak now.
So, I will tell you something about this prototype.
It is a candlestick, it´s forged.
This all is made from only one piece, from a flat bar 30 x 5 mm.
And as you can see, everywhere are a grooves,
because every single piece was heated in the fire.
And the hammer have made those grooves.
Then we shaped these,
we chopped these two legs, squeezed.
It was forged into the candle.
And this piece that remained, it was squeezed here to make there this tip.
Where the candle can be stuck.
And that´s why we are making these pieces, to make there feel the smithery craft
and that every piece was heated in the fire
and manually hammered.
Whether there are candlesticks, some decorations,
for example this bottle opener.
Then the plastics.
And whatever you can imagine can be made from the iron.
The tables, the chairs, the hangers.
And grandpa is probably the best expert in making these hatchets and axes.
He is probably the only smith in Slovakia who is able to do this.
This thing.
We still have a lot to learn.
And nothing is welded with an arc or a flame.
Everything is either riveted or bonded and so on.
As you can see at this candlestick,
someone would weld this to the candle.
No way.
That´s not an artistic work.
Good.
OK.
Our class alchy said...
And what?
I will never forget that quote.
Don´t kill the bees, because the bees are useful.
Because they are producing the honey and the mead is made out of honey.
Every craft is hard.
But if you do it with love
and you sniff to that craft, you they say,
nothing is hard.
Nothing is hard.
And I am not a kind of a person,
who use to say that it cannot be done,
but I think how it can be done.
I always think how it can be done, right?
Well, maybe I am physically not that big or robust.
But...
These young ones are not throwing me away, yet,
that I am too old man.
So every craft, which is done with a love, is not hard.
Well and what else would you like to know about me?
The program is fulfilled.
OK, I thank you.
Young man, come, take it off of me,
because I´ll take it away with me.
Transcription: Zdeněk Kovář Corrections: Vojtech Sloboda Translation: Erika Godlová