The Harty Locomotive Works Story

How does a blacksmith in the middle of nowhere build a global business? The forge is the craft, but the phone is the storefront.

Jessica sits down with Ethan Harty, a first-generation blacksmith who started at 11, dropped out of high school at 16, and now ships work around the world from rural Alberta. He breaks down Damascus steel, the 800-pound jobs and the steam locomotive he’s restoring on camera, and the one idea behind it all: social media is his “accessible storefront,” and the way to win on it is to provide value, not to sell.

In This Episode

•     Becoming a first-generation blacksmith at 11, and dropping out at 16 to go all in

•     Why social media is his “accessible storefront,” with a direct link between videos and orders

•     The principle that beats marketing: provide value, don’t be pushy about selling

•     Damascus steel, 800-pound forging jobs, and restoring a steam locomotive on YouTube

•     What Rural Unrecognized means: being rural and recognized at the same time

Connect with Ethan Harty

•     Website: ethanhartyblacksmith.com

•     YouTube: youtube.com/@EthanHarty

•     Instagram: @_ethanharty

•     Facebook: Ethan Harty Blacksmith

Learn More

Flagstaff County: www.flagstaff.ab.ca

Host, Jessica Janzen: jessicajanzen.ca

Credits

Host: Jessica Janzen  |  Produced & Edited by: jcefilms.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Rural Unrecognized, a podcast where we shine a light on the stories, the struggles, and the successes of small business owners in rural communities. In each episode, we sit down with entrepreneurs to talk about where they started, what they've learned, and what it really takes to build something from the ground up. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome back to another episode of Rural Unrecognized. I'm here with a social media slowly. This is one of the most wild businesses. Because I didn't, I thought it was like a lost art. So, Ethan, you started this wasn't passed down from like, you know, your dad and his dad and your grandfather. You said, I mean, maybe you could root it back to the 1920s. But you're a blacksmith. Blacksmith or blacksmith.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

Yeah. Blacksmith.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

A blacksmith. You started tinkering around when you were younger. What got you started in saying, oh, I'm going to become a blacksmith? Like, I want to hear that story. Because this is not your typical common, like in school, hey, I'm going to become a blacksmith when I grow up. It's like a lost art.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

Yeah. Yeah. I actually started because I was interested in steam engines and I liked just old machines. I like big old machines. So that got me into spending summers with this fellow who restored steam engines and he was a gunsmith. So he did, like for an eight, 10-year-old kid, that was like the epitome of everything I could ever want. And um, this guy was in southern Saskatchewan, and I used to go spend weeks at a time with him in the summer, and he was doing these projects, and he would need to do some blacksmithing and metalworking to make parts and to restore these steam engines. That's where I was exposed to blacksmithing. And I think I went home when I was about 11 and started tinkering around. We had an anvil in the uh farm shop at home that I started banging around on some metal on. I made Christmas presents for my family that year. So that's where it started. And that's why it started when I was 11, because I hung out with people who were restoring steam engines. They did some blacksmithing, some kind of crude stuff, and that's where I saw it. And hitting hot metal, making fire, making lots of noise, that's the again, it's the epitome of everything that uh 11-year-old kids want to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

It's like being creative and all that. So now, I mean, let's fast forward. You have made this your career and you make a living and a livelihood from this. How did you get from being an 11-year-old kid to like making Christmas gifts to now having a thriving business, a following on social media, and you're sending product around the world?

SPEAKER_04 2:37

So those two things are really connected is the social media side and the business side. Wouldn't have one without the other. And so that started because I just as something that uh kids did at the at the time, and I guess still do now, is just post things on social media. So at the time it was YouTube where I started, and I just would take videos of me making things in the shop, not with the intention of getting a lot of attention, but it was actually because I was part of um blacksmithing forums and groups on the internet, trying to learn. Like it you could ask people questions and stuff. And so I would film myself making something and then I put it on YouTube in order to share it with these people to get their advice. And then, but it just kept going. And uh I think when I was 12 or so, I tried to make a hammer for the first time. Okay, I make a lot of hammers now, so this is where I'll trace it back to. Tried to make a hammer, posted a video about it, and then got an order or someone contacted me from the States. I think they had to phone my mom because that was how they got a hold of me.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah. Hi, is Ethan there? Well, he's 12, so uh let me see if he's available. I love this.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Yeah, and they wanted me to make them a hammer, which was crazy. But I did, and so that was that was a big deal for me. And around that time I'd also been making uh little knickk-knacks like bottle openers and selling them at craft fairs for Christmas time or spring craft fairs or whatever. So that's how I got my start in making money, and then I would buy a little bit more equipment or a little bit more expensive equipment than I could, you know, make make more, and then it just kind of spiraled from there, posted more so uh seriously on social media, and I learned the the fellow who I learned most of my blacksmithing from, or I should say was more formative, probably, was a fellow named Alex Steele. He's a super good blacksmith from England. He was posting stuff on social media. I liked his stuff a lot, and he I went and took a class from him when I was 13. And then a few years after that, he started getting into YouTube and doing it a lot. I think, and now he he is a YouTuber blacksmith. He has maybe three million subscribers or something like that. And I remember him telling me a number of years ago that YouTube is so powerful uh as a advertising, as a way to have a business for someone like me that Ethan, you really shouldn't put a lot of effort into this. And I didn't heed his advice at the time, but I've started in the past few years doing that, and I wish I would have capitalized on that earlier.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Right before we sat down, I was asking you like who runs your social media? Because as a small business owner, you're running all these areas of the business. So accounting, finance, marketing, shipping, and then creating, and now like there's a piece of it of this social media aspect. And again, hindsight's 2020, maybe you could have started earlier. How do you manage though? Because being a small business owner, um, you're not outsourcing, maybe you are outsourcing stuff, but how do you navigate all the demands of running your business?

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Yeah. Okay, well, I have an awesome wife. Okay, so she does a lot. She does a lot of all the accounting stuff and balancing the books. Um, she comes with a lot of ideas, which is very handy too. And then um the so like the social media stuff, say take YouTube videos. I have a really simple program for that. I it's actually not very fancy. Uh I I have one iPhone and I film with it and I edit all my videos on it at the moment. And I have used proper cameras in the past, and once in a while, if there's a special some special project going on, I'll get someone to come out and film it and edit it even. Uh but that's a that's a rarity. So it kind of it just gets integr integrated into the workflow. The only trouble being that filming in the blacksmith shop does take away from the productivity somewhat. So um it's uh it's almost a discipline to make myself do that. Because to set up a camera, to move angles down, even something super simple like an iPhone where I have no yeah, it's just a tripod in that phone, you know, super simple. But to move it around and to instead of just being the most efficient with my work can be a little difficult. Because blacksmithing, when you take the piece of steel out of the fire, you gotta work with it. You gotta strike while the iron's hot. Literally. Literally. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so it feels like there's not much time for fooling around, but I just just fit it in there.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Do you find that knowing that social media has grown your business because people aren't just driving by your business and being like, oh, we're gonna go into the blacksmith shop today? Obviously, knowing that that's such a driver and putting your, you know, you live, you know, rurally, like no one might not even know of the town. Do you find that that's a driver for you of making sure that you continue to show up on social media because you know that that's what's driving your business?

SPEAKER_04 7:25

Yes, a hundred percent. And in fact, at this point, there's a direct correlation between the videos that I post and the quality of videos that I post and the amount of orders that I get for the things that I make. And then of course there's some ad revenue that comes for the videos, but they they it it has to be there. The social media, just like you said, because I'm not uh I don't have like a commercial storefront in an accessible place, the the social media is the accessible storefront.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Which makes it incredible. What are some of the things that you are making most often or most popular that you're seeing are your highest, you know, ticket items or your biggest, like your number one items that people are requesting for?

SPEAKER_04 8:08

So it's been hammers for many years. So it's funny that the story I mentioned about the first hammer. Well, actually, that was the thing that got me most into the stream of blacksmithing that I'm in, which is tool making. There are just like other trades, there are different streams of blacksmithing. There are farriers, people who shoe horses, right? Knife makers, and then uh tool makers is a is a smaller portion of the blacksmith world, but uh it was where I started in because I liked a particular style of hammer called a rounding hammer that I wanted to learn how to make. And so now I've been making those for um quite a while, and probably it's hard to pin down how many hammers I've made before. I'm sure it's around 2,000 at this point or something like that. Yeah. And I sell them like one by one through my website if people want to buy them. And then I also do commercial tool making, say for uh uh a business or a person who wants a whole bunch of hammers made to their specifications for their brand. And they're they're not like store-bought hammers, they they're usually um they have some sort of uh unique design, and I try to make them to a high quality and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

What is the most interesting order that you've ever gotten or something that really surprised you?

SPEAKER_04 9:23

Thankfully, I get those all the time. It's something that makes my business really neat.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Okay, I like it.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

I'm just uh a few things that come to my head. We were talking about it earlier. I made I make Damascus steel once in a while, and I got an order for uh from a wristwatch maker. So he wanted these intricate little pieces of Damascus steel that he was gonna cut up and make these watch faces for. That was something I would have never guessed that someone wanted Damascus steel for, but it's a super neat idea. So there was that.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Can you talk to us about Damascus steel? Because there's steel, and then I was looking at it and it's got this beautiful, like it's just very unique and different. So talk to us about Damascus steel because you're not just like, oh, here's a steel, like watch face. Like there's a whole process to it. Walk us through that.

SPEAKER_04 10:09

Yeah. Okay, so first a little terminology thing. Damascus steel is technically the improper name for it. It's it's it's called pattern welded steel. Um, the reason that is, is because proper Damascus steel, um, most true to the definition, is something so we'll just go back in time. I'll start with the whole explanation. So uh iron is what you get out of the ground, right? And you refine it and you can make something out of iron, and people have been making things out of iron for millennia. And iron is great, but it's not hardenable. You can make a sword out of iron, but it's not going to be too long before it gets really beat up. But what you can do is add carbon to the iron, which makes steel, and then you can quench it in water, you can do different things to it to make it harder than it would be otherwise. It'll react to being cooled fast or heated fast or whatever. So, what people would do is in the early days, like um talking more than 500 years ago, is they would sprinkle carbon on top of hot steel, and then they would literally pound it into the steel and work it and wrap it in there. And um if you've ever heard of like Vikings saying that a certain sword has like the power of a bear or something like that, like they would literally take bone, make it into carbon, and pound it into the sword. And uh, even if they didn't understand the metallurgy that was going on, they knew that when they did that, the sword was better at the end. So that's what true Damascus steel is. The the stuff that we make nowadays is meant to look like that, but we make it a little bit differently. We cheat a little bit, and that is by instead of actually pounding the carbon right into the steel and folding it, we use two different types of steel. So, and one of the steels is a carbon steel, like I talked about. One of them has nickel in it, which is the ingredient that's uh in like stainless steel. Anyways, we take that and we you can forge weld those pieces together, layer them up, uh, work them, twist them, fold them, and at the end, when you polish and then you acid etch the steel, it's reveal it reveals the pattern in there, and it's like two different colors of play-doh that you put together and you stretch and twist or whatever. And you can make a really neat pattern with it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

And can you guarantee what the pattern is going to be? Like if someone sees something and it's like, I want this exact pattern, or how does that process work? Because part of the really unique part of your work is like you're not just manufacturing these on the line and just you know, a hundred hammers go out the door tomorrow.

unknown 12:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Like walk us through that unique processing. Can you guarantee someone what it's gonna look like when you're doing this Damascus process? Or is it you're like, hey, it's gonna be close to this? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_04 12:57

Yeah, so it depends on how skilled you are at it, because then you can the the more experience you have, the more you know what's under the skin of the steel, right? Because you can't see what's going on necessarily as you're working it. Um, and there are people who are a lot better at it than me. But uh I can generally I can guarantee the types of patterns. So if so there I offer twisted patterns or explosion patterns, and so if for sure it's gonna look like uh kind of like the example picture that I might provide someone, but there's always gonna be surprises in it.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

What's the most challenging part of your business?

SPEAKER_04 13:33

I think the most challenging part is figuring out how to do custom projects that people order. And um some sometimes it's because they're intricate or just involve processes I've never done before. Sometimes it's because they're just big, frankly, for my setup and seem impossible. Um like recently I got an order for more on the industrial side of my forging stuff, for U-bolts that were 30 feet long and made out of three-inch round steel, like huge. And they had to be bent hot.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

And so uh Do I do this all your own?

SPEAKER_04 14:08

Yeah. Well, I have a I had a helper and I have I hired people once in a while for stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

But uh yeah, so we had to build a forge or a furnace to heat up this long portion and build jigs and uh stuff like and and and handle this piece of steel that weighs like 800 pounds and it's like a wet noodle when it's hot. Um but so figuring out things like that are probably the most difficult part. Wow. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

And how do companies like that find you? Like where they're like, hey, I need a you said a 30-foot bolt. Like I mean that sounds like a very unique project. It isn't it's not something that is commonly ordered. But how do companies find you and be like, that's our guy, Ethan can make that for us?

SPEAKER_04 14:50

Yeah. You know, I often ask my clients the same question because I'm just as curious. So in that instance, it was because he knew about me actually through my YouTube videos. He went to my website and saw that I do the kind of the more industrial side of forging and uh and reached out to me. Sometimes, you know, people can Google Blacksmith in Alberta and I'll come up. Um, but through those avenues, so it's all internet. All internet. Occasionally there'll be a word of mouth thing, and that's great when that happens too.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Are you worried about AI um changing your industry or taking your job or how it will affect you?

SPEAKER_04 15:29

For the most part, no. I'm very, very insulated from that um as far as my actual uh the actual forging is concerned. I think there's gonna it's gonna be a long time before there's robotic forging bots that do handwork like I do. I guess the only disadvantage is that the the AI slop content that's out on especially on YouTube and like in the short form videos especially and long form just makes that the market for videos, say, more and more saturated, I think would be the the name for it. So I don't think I've encountered problems with that yet. Could be the case in the future, but just from the just like how it's harder now for someone to get into uh and and build an audience on YouTube, just because there's the market is so saturated, right? There's some so much YouTube going on. AI allows people to just again flood the market with slop. But otherwise, uh it's not too I'm not too worried about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Talk to me about, you know, social strategy both on Instagram, YouTube. How do you continue to compete? Because for you, you just said there's a direct correlation. I post, there's ad revenue, there's like orders coming through it. What are you doing to future-proof your business and how do you stay current and relevant with so much competition in that market?

SPEAKER_04 16:53

Okay. Well, I'll tell you my principles. I definitely don't execute them right all the time, but we're human. But the uh the idea that's worked the best for me is simply to provide value to people, right? That's the point of any business is successful business is not it can't be coming from what do I want to do? I just want to make it about me and I want to do what I want, and then I got to try and find a way of monetizing that. Now, funnily enough, that is a huge part of my business. It is something that I wanted to do and then found a way to monetize. So I'm not discounting that at all. But within my field, now I have to figure out how to provide others value, use my skills to do that. And so that could that of course applies to the the handiwork itself, like trying to have a skillfully provide a good product, something, if it's a forging hammer, it's got to have better aesthetics and better performance than something else that someone would buy. But then when it comes to the social media thing, it's the same thing. How can I not waste people's time, do things that they're actually interested in, and present it in such a way, again, where it provides value to them. And uh the value is not purely utilitarian. It's it can also be comedic, it can be interesting, it can be, yeah, whatever. And so, like I find, and I watch YouTube videos too, and so I see I try to watch not as many of them, but uh as I as I'd like. But I notice when I'm watching someone's video and I've just find myself skipping through and skipping through, and it's just kind of wasting my time. Like I don't I didn't need to watch all of that. And there's incentive to make really long YouTube videos because you get more ad revenue that way, or you can get more ad revenue. If you get the watch time. If you get the watch time. So you have this, um, and so I do I do do long videos too, because I know that people like that, and I also do really short videos and try and cram as much in there. Because I, you know, honestly, I imagine my dad, who uh like he's a farmer, super productive guy who doesn't watch a lot of YouTube. But if my dad was gonna watch YouTube videos, what would he want? He would want the facts right now, just get it to me. Don't want any funny business. I just wanna uh in a i that he would want a very condensed format, you know, and that would provide value to him, whether he was looking to be instructed or entertained or something like that. So if so that would be that's probably the biggest thing, is simply the principle of providing value, and then how can I apply that to a video, like a video that there's actually a market for or someone wants to watch it. And then the other thing that's interesting um is that the it doesn't seem to work very well to be pushy or be super um overt about you actually me actually selling things. So rarely on a YouTube video, for instance, do I ever say, I'm selling this, you should go to my website and buy it, or something of that nature. It's usually it's just me putting up a video, say, of something I'm making, or of explaining something that might be providing value to someone. And then what happens is because people like it organically, so to speak, well then they look, then they see, oh, this guy has a website, and then they look at the website, and then it's um, and then it goes from there, and then I get orders. And it seems that if I if I try and be more overt about or overt about advertising, if I can think of if you can, if that makes sense, then it's uh then it seems to drive, say, views or interest or the value it has to other people down. And so you get less, I've found anyways, just in my personal niche, you know, whatever, I get less engagement, I get less money at the end of the day out of it.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Are you looking at your metrics and how it impacts your business on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? Walk us through that side of it because this it's been so enlightening for me as a small business owner, where I was like, oh, he's just a blacksmith and he posts some videos. But you're quite intentional with your social content because you understand the direct impact that it has on your business. So, what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_04 21:12

Yeah, okay. So I do look at my metrics pretty often. It's more out of curiosity and it's kind of just fun. You know, it's like watching the stock market. You can see it go up and down, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

This was great, now we're having a bad day.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

You know, we're having a bad day. Yeah, and when things do really good, it often surprises me, especially early on, or I should say like I got more serious about doing YouTube stuff about three years ago, I think. And I was surprised at some of the stuff that did well, and uh but then I just tried to take note of that or see what it was that might have helped with that. Um and so that that would be an instance where I would pay attention to the metrics, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

That's great. So your husband, your musician, your father. Your son, you're a business owner. How do you manage it all? That's a lot. And you're creating YouTube content all the time.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

Well, I have a gracious God who sustains me. And so I'm uh and I'm very thankful for that. And a gracious wife who is helpful, who is a helpmate, suitable for me. She is high energy, she's great, she's super productive, she's joyful. And so uh it would be impossible to do what I do without her.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

What's the best thing that she does for you?

SPEAKER_04 22:32

I mean, I mentioned her joy, her productivity is very good. She's productive, and then she's on my tail in a helpful way about being productive.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And uh so that's bringing the best in you so that you like succeed as a as a couple. Yeah. Yeah. So you've got the the joy of the Lord, you've got your strength from up above, you have an incredible teammate and partner, a wife who sees your bigger vision. Did you sit down and have a conversation be like, hey, this is what we're building, and like are you on board? Walk me through that because the unique thing that I continue to come up that comes up in all these conversations that we've been having on rural unrecognized is that the whole family's involved. Like it's not often just like, oh, this is a solo mission. It's like my husband and I or our kids are involved. Um, there's all of these different facets, and I grew up on a farm myself, and so it was like, okay, this all has to be done. Now the whole family's gonna go do it. Like you didn't go to 7-Eleven and grab a Slurpee. One, you couldn't, and two, that was just what it meant growing up on a farm. And so obviously, knowing that you necessarily didn't have the most traditional career, and she'd known that you had done this, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah, she did.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, like this, it wasn't a secret. You've been doing this since you were 11 or 12. What was that conversation like being like, hey, this is where we're gonna m invest and we're gonna grow this business? What was that like?

SPEAKER_04 23:53

I think we did talk about it quite a bit before we were married. The the odd thing is that I've never I have some long-term vision, like I do have some goals for what I want to do, and I daydream about that often. But I don't have like a step-by-step strategy. Like in five years, I actually don't have like a super solid like five-year plan, ten-year plan, like a lot of people do. It's uh I but I do have a vision for things about how I want them to be. And then often, um, and I learned this from my dad, because my dad is a rancher very and they have a very successful ranch. And uh, I've asked my dad questions about this too, and he also, even though he does have vision, kind of like what I described, he doesn't like plan that out a whole bunch necessarily. Instead, he is very uh faithful in the moment and looking to the next um the next opportunity. Just like, where's the next opportunity? Where where do we need to to go? And just taking it kind of uh step by step in front of you type of a thing. I would say I do that too. So Emily knew before we were married that this is what I want to do full time and be a blacksmith, and she was all into that, so that was great. Um, but there was by no means like a grandiose vision of how how good it could be, and and I don't have that either. But I'm very thankful for where I'm at, and I would say that that's what I do is just look for the next opportunity all the time.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Right, being open to opportun opportunity and taking action once you see that opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

You said that you had some very big goals. Um, like not necessarily that it's like you have this perfect, I have a five-year mark and a ten-year mark. But what is one of your big goals that maybe you've been scared to share or you don't talk about it often?

SPEAKER_04 25:44

Hmm. You know, I don't have anything, I'll think about that, but I don't think I have anything that I haven't shared a whole bunch about that I have big plans for. Um something I'm doing right now is restoring a steam locomotive, which is a goal that I've had since I was a little kid. Mostly because I've always well, I I've always liked steam engines, as I mentioned kind of the beginning of the conversation, and steam locomotives are like the pinnacle of uh steam power and steam engines. And so I've always wanted to run steam locomotives. I've ran lots of steam tractors, I've I've uh helped and I do run a steam locomotive once in a while in Fort Edmonton, but I wanted to I realized that the best way, uh the the most um the way it was gonna guarantee that for me was to have my own engine because it's it's actually difficult, very difficult to get in on other crews, and um there's not a there's no steam engines that are very close to me that are operating. And so uh I like it sounds crazy, but I've thought to myself for a long time, the best way to do that is gonna be for me to just own my own engine. Not that and you can't you can't just go out and buy a running steam locomotive. If they ever do come up for sale in North America, you're talking for a very small one, you know, it could be a quarter of a million dollars or something like that. So they're not it's just totally out of the question. Um but I had my eye on one for maybe about 10 years and finally had the opportunity to buy it a couple of years ago and did and have started that project. And that's one of the things that's driving the YouTube videos at the moment, but it's it is part of this grand scheme where because the YouTube videos are paying for the restoration, when it gets done, I'll have this engine that I can lease out to tourist railroads that like the Battle River Railroad, you know, some something local they've expressed interest. And then and then I have my own engine that I can do whatever I want with and I can run it and and maybe get more engines. I'd love to restore equipment like that. It's a really neat thing. So I would so that's a goal, that's a goal that I have that uh it's kind of a long-term thing that I'm working towards.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

I love that. How have you involved you have young children? How have you involved your young children in the business and what does that look like? Because part of what you do is actually quite dangerous. Like it doesn't look like you know, it's like, oh, heading out to the shop, like there's heat, there's spark swelling, like walk me through. I mean, it's almost two things. How have you folded your kids into the business? And then how do you keep yourself safe in an industry that can be quite dangerous?

SPEAKER_04 28:16

The the kids haven't been super involved yet. Uh my oldest is four, and so we can do things like they they actually love to come out to the shop occasionally. So uh so Emily will send them out to the shop and they waddle over. And uh generally I'll just put safety glasses on them or earmuffs. And I have uh if I'm working, say in my forging area, there's a large area around that that they can wander around in. There's that no hot where no hot steel is, and they can uh uh a lot of the machines are fairly safe where the they they can be unplugged and the kids can actually play with the levers and stuff and it's fine. So so they can do that, but uh they haven't gotten involved in uh I I'm actually really looking forward to the day when if when they want to get involved with actual doing some work and training them up. That would be super fun. Yeah. And then as for myself, I I personally walk on the um walk on the more dangerous side of things. I'm not uh I'm not quite as conservative in that way. I'm I'm very willing to take risks. So I try to back off of that a little bit for the sake of my wife and kids.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Yes, you have a young family. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

Don't want to take too many big risks, but the nature, and just as you said, the nature of the work that I do is a little bit can be a little bit dangerous, especially because I work with a lot of big machines. So most of my work actually isn't just at the hammer and the anvil. Like you think of an old timey blacksmith, I certainly do do that, but most of it is with big power hammers and presses and stuff like that, and working with steam engines, big heavy parts, and cranes and pressure vessels and stuff like that. So the and and there are certain things, especially power hammers, which are the tool that I use most. Tools kind of an understatement. Um they're big machines. They are machines that are meant to hammer away and keep hammering away, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. There's no emergency cutoff switch, there's no um, there's no nothing. They just go. And so, like my biggest power hammer is a steam hammer. The weight of the hammering part uh weighs 600 pounds and it moves up and down like uh around 180 times a minute, like smack, smack, smack. And I'm about this far away from it working, manipulating pieces of steel in it. It's probably not quite as intimidating as you think, or at least now once I'm used to it. Um so there certainly is a danger in that. Um, so it's a good idea to be rested and competent, feeling confident and sharp of mind. Sharp of mind. You know, and I teach blacksmithing classes once in a while, and that's actually what I have on my website. The prerequisite for the blacksmithing classes, the beginner ones, are you must be of sound mind and body. I can teach pretty much anyone. Pretty much anyone can blacksmith, even a young kid if they're well disciplined and they pay attention and stuff. They just as long as you're of sound mind and body.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

What are the best ways people can support your business? I mean, I don't necessarily, you know, most people think of like hammer. You go to Home Depot or Rona or like the local hardware. They're we're in a world that's moving faster than ever of convenience and instant gratification. Like I need a hammer, I Amazon it and add the card.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Go grab it. And so we're living in this world that's really fast paced. And so support looks different. And obviously, again, rule, people aren't just walking by your shop and being like, oh, that's a great spot to go, or look for investments, or look for Christmas gifts, or that. So what do you how can people best support you?

SPEAKER_04 32:03

Sure. So if someone's interested in buying something of mine, say we'll take the hammer example. So most of the the tools that I make and even the hammers are meant to be used by people who would like to invest a little bit in the product like that because they're using it all the time. Uh, usually some people actually buy them as art pieces, some of the fancier hammers. Um, but then anything, even something that's maybe more domestic related, like a bottle opener or a steak flipper or something like that that I sell, they are more expensive than the utilitarian item that you could find in the store. And so it's meant for you could put it in the category of like an heirloom piece or just like someone who uses any item for their work or entertainment all the time. They might want a quality item and maybe I could help them with that. And then also, it's great if someone wants to support me just to follow me online or watch the YouTube videos or whatever, if they if they find them interesting. Um, that all helps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

And you talked about, you know, your YouTube. Many people are following you as you're restoring the steam locomotive.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

Isn't that right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So from start to finish, if you could give me your best guess, how long will that process take?

SPEAKER_04 33:18

I started last year. I estimated about five years. And I think I'm so I guess I'm a year or a little over into that, something like that. And I would say I'm on track at the moment. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

So another three and a half ish years till completion. What will you do to celebrate the moment? Because this isn't something it's not like buying Lego pieces or even restoring an old car where you just like order parts online. You are making a lot of these pieces as you're restoring and you know, having this come together. How will you celebrate the completion of such a big goal?

SPEAKER_04 33:55

Well, assuming I can get it onto a railroad, that's the which there's there's plans in place for that.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

But once How do you get it onto the railroad?

SPEAKER_04 34:03

Wow, that's a little complicated.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Are you programming a crane and hopping it on?

SPEAKER_04 34:07

Oh yeah. So the this is this is a very small steam engine, a very small steam locomotive. It's full size, but it's as about as small as you could get to run on a standard gauge, like a mainlined railroad. So the benefit is of that is that you can load it onto a low-boy trailer, transport it like it with a truck and trailer. And so it actually, um, how I've moved it in the past is you build a rail ramp. You like you you lay down rails and you just put blocks under it, you drive it right up onto the trailer, and then same thing, down onto rails. And so once it gets onto a railroad, um, my plan is I'd want to invite everyone who has been a part of the restoration or or just good friends of mine, you know, that want to see it. And then do to to test everything out, do like a private train ride basically and uh and give people the opportunity to run it. And I'll probably have a glass of wine and smoke a cigar while we're running it, and that'll that'll be how we'll celebrate.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

I like that a great glass of wine and a cigar, yeah. Bring all the people that have been a part of the journey to come come together for that.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

You talked about supporting watching the process, they can you know purchase these pieces as heirloom. Uh how do people find you if they've never heard of you and they're like, who is this Ethan guy? Or I'd love to maybe buy an heirloom hammer, or you know that you've got this piece of slower living, which is a lost art, I find in a lot of what we do today. How do people find you and connect with you? Please don't order.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

If you just go on the internet and you type in my name, Ethan Hardy, then you'll find my website and YouTube and some other social media profiles. They're all under my name. My company name is Hardy Locomotive Works. And so thankfully, that's it's easy to find.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

I love that. We'll post all of that in the show notes so it'll be easy to find while they're listening to this episode on whatever platform, but you can check out the show notes for all the links to find your website and your social handles and for people to follow along in this incredible journey. Is there anything that I've missed about your business that you wanted to share or maybe we haven't covered that you've been thinking about?

SPEAKER_04 36:12

Yeah. I've been thinking about uh my parents. So even though you mentioned I don't have any uh ancestors that were in blacksmithing or it wasn't passed down to me.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

You started this as a first generation blacksmith.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

Right. And so, and my parents are cattle ranchers, but it's really worth mentioning that they're an integral part of that. And because because they supported me, not just as good parents do where they say, Oh, yeah, you go, Ethan, or you do whatever, um, but they also uh provided a place to me. They built uh uh when I was growing up, and I knew I wanted to do some sort of work, whether it was blacksmithing or woodworking or welding or something. Um my parents had built a a new shop for some tractors on the ranch, and I got a part of this shed as my my own. I got to do whatever I want with it. And I set out my blacksmith shop in there. And um, they helped me buy equipment. They loaned me money to buy equipment. Uh they let me stay home from school. I used to miss, I went to public school, but I used to miss like a third of the school days a year. And and I dropped out of school when I was 16 to do this full time. And my parents let me do that too. So they Did you never graduate with your never never graduated? Yeah. My wife, and that's kind of funny. My wife is like a, you know, graduated top of her class. She was going into law school. She's like a uh actual Smarty pants. And I'm a high school dropout. Still haven't gotten my GED or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

And it just causes in school kids, but it also just goes to show you that like hardware, hard work, grit, and determination. That's a bold move for parents to make. Why do you think they let you do it?

SPEAKER_04 37:48

I wouldn't want to misrepresent them. Um I should probably ask them about it now. Uh at yeah, at the time, like I had I think the right word would be badgered them about it for quite a while. I had uh I also had many mentors. I think I can think of two of them, really important people that mentored me in uh this kind of area of life, were not in my family, that were either were high school dropouts or they were and very super successful and that were encouraging me, like this is what you need to do. Because right now, at that time, it was so important to spend a whole bunch of time and resources on the specific things that we're going to that could um that could really benefit me in the future. And so it's probably maybe because they put in a good word for me. I'm not sure. Something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Do you have any regrets about dropping out of high school?

SPEAKER_04 38:47

No, I don't. I'm also a musician, I play fiddle, and so he's a very good fiddler if you haven't heard of. So I've heard you live. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

I FaceTime my dad, and I was like, Dad, you gotta sit the sky on the fiddle.

SPEAKER_04 38:58

Like That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. That's a time for a musician that's very developmentally important, I guess. And I had recorded, I was recording an album around that time. I had recorded an album previously to that, and so and I was competing in fiddle competitions in the summertime, so I was spending a lot of hours on that too. And in hindsight, it was it was really worth it for that too. I don't have near as much time to practice now as I did back then. I don't make as much time. I still play, I still play for dances, I still um I m may compete in fiddle competitions this uh this summer, but there are just because of how we mature and how our brains mature at that age, there are things that can be practiced and become part of you when you're that age that is not impossible but more difficult to develop later on, you know. I'm by no means a world-class musician, but world-class musicians, they have to, when they're young like that, their whole world is music because you have to be immersed in it. And it's the same for blacksmithing. Um, if someone wants to be really good at that, it's difficult. Because I was I was interested in both of those things and other things and wanted to wanted to excel in them, it was difficult going to school to achieve all of that. Yeah. And I also found it more effective, find it more effective to learn the things that I needed to learn apart from school, um, uh school-like subjects like arithmetic and language and stuff like that, and history. So I've had a lot of um we've actually, even just as a couple, Emily and I have spent a lot of time working on things like that, especially uh language and history related that we didn't get in school that we feel are super important, formal logic and uh as well, and rhetoric and stuff like that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

I love that. What and this is the famous question that we ask all of the guests in the podcast: what does rural unrecognized mean for you?

SPEAKER_04 41:07

So it is rural unrecognized is uh I would say what it means to be now is something that I'm very thankful for the era that I live in now, where someone who frankly, the thing that I do is very it is so unique, not just in the uh thing my uh genre of work being a blacksmith, but the fact that the what I do now could only be done now in history. Okay, like sure, blacksmithing was a common trade a hundred years ago, but the type of stuff that I do now and risk and restoring machines and stuff for an audience that wants to see it when I'm in the middle of nowhere is something that I can only do now. So now I can be rural and I can be, I have the option to be recognized. Or it's it's at my fingertips. Just like anything else, you have to, it's work and it's risk, risk and work. But the the opportunity is there, which is amazing. I'm very thankful for it. I can't even imagine being in a different circumstance. So that's that's what it means to me.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

I absolutely love that. I encourage you to go and check the show notes, to go and look at your incredible work. If you're looking for really meaningful gifts, something that's different. You can can you purchase you music? Is it available to listen?

SPEAKER_04 42:24

Yes, you can. You can go on the streaming services. There's one album there, and then I have them available on my website too.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

I love that. I will be listening to that on my drive home this afternoon. Thank you again, Ethan. Congratulations on all of your success. And thank you for sharing your insight into your incredible world. I can't wait to watch this steam engine locomotive get restored.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Thanks for listening to Rule Unrecognized. Behind every business, there's a story we're sharing, and it deserves to be recognized.