Wicks Forge

The Wicks have been in the metal trade since the early 1900s. My great-great-grandfather worked on the Statue of Liberty and my great-grandfather was a pioneer in the field of welding. He ran a welding shop and later a welding school during WWII where he and my grandfather trained welders in support of the war effort. After the War, the family moved to Connecticut where they continued in the metal business - running a manufacturing company called Wicks Products. Some years later I came along. I remember walking around my grandfather's garage where he still kept many of his tools from the old days. I felt like an archeologist who has no idea what artifacts he has just unearthed. Serendipity then stepped in. I was in Scotland completing a masters degree in environmental resource management and found a master blacksmith named Jim Whitson. Working under Jim, I learned from the rich Scottish tradition of metalworking. Returning to the United States, I found a that I now had the foundation of a trade but no longer had the workshop or equipment or equipment needed to practice. Fate is funny though, and returning to my grandfather's garage, I found that the tools my family had passed down for generations no longer were so mysterious in my eyes. Rather than some strange artifacts, each tool now held meaning and purpose. With this foundation, Wicks' forge was born in 2013.