Hey all you Metal-Fabbers, welcome to 2026, the year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The year is also an excellent marker to celebrate American handwork and craft. That’s what BARN’s Handwork Week 2026 is all about: celebrating what BARN is and our creative craft.

21st Century Design

A great way to begin your year of design and creativity is to tour the 21st Century Design show, running Jan. 22 through April 21, in the BARN Commons. It showcases some of the innovative and high-quality work being produced by folks in the Metal Fabrication and Tech Lab studios. The piece you see pictured above was created by Linda Sohlberg, who shaped sheet metal into an imaginative array of fish-like organic shapes — truly inspired and creatively crafted. Well done, Linda!

We’ve got a lot of different activities going on in the Metal-Fab shops, including:

Forge Jim DeRoy will hold his Fundamental Blacksmithing Skills class on Tuesday, Feb. 11, from 12:30 to 3:30 PM on the concrete apron outside the Welding Shop. This month’s project is a wall hook with a decorative heart. Learn more >

Yori Seeger will host the third of four sessions of his Blacksmithing a Carving Hatchet this coming Saturday. While it’s too late to get in on this wonderful tool-making class, he’s hosting a similar week-long class as part of BARN’s Handwork 2026 offerings with the Forge a Woodland Hatchet class. Learn more >

Don’t forget that we host Open Studio for the Forge  every Saturday from noon to 3 PM on the concrete apron outside the Welding Shop.

Here’s a link to all upcoming Forge activities, with more coming soon.

Foundry

Mario Oblak and Jeff Oens are working diligently to get their Handwork 2026 offering ready for prime time. They’ve now made two successful pours of the bronze bell, refining the process and results at each step. We’re all excited for this event. Learn more >

Another casting project they’re working on is casting bronze bowls. We don’t have any classes scheduled yet, but you can see some early results in the image above, or see the real thing that’s on display in the 21st Century Design exhibition in The Commons.

Machine Shop

Ramesh Shrivastav is working on a challenging project in the Machine Shop that he’ll use to demonstrate (high voltage/low amperage) Plasma Electric Arcing. You can see a rendering of the device below. We’ll keep you posted as he makes progress on his project.

David Hays is upgrading Metal-Fab’s 3D printer with a new hot end and on-carriage extruder. He hopes to have this back online in the next week or two.

The Machine Shop is revamping its intro to mill and lathe classes with one or two new offerings, one of which we believe will be an adjustable tap holder/wrench. You can expect to see these new offerings beginning in April.

Sheet Metal

If you’re interested in pursuing the creative art of metal shaping (such as Linda’s piece shown above), we’d love to hear from you. Indoor and outdoor mobile art using freeform organic shapes is both challenging and fun. Or if you simply need some coaching on a utilitarian sheet-metal project, let us know that, too.

Welding

David Sigmond and his young students meet this week for their fifth of 10 sessions in the Weld a Tension Table class. We’ll have images soon.

Our Tools of the Trade classes are a great way to get yourself oriented to the Welding and Sheet Metal Shop. You’ll learn how to use all the tools needed to cut metal, prepare it for a good weld, use fixtures to hold your pieces in place while you tack, and then grind the welded joint to fit your needs.

Metal-Fab offers classes in brazing and silver soldering, MIG (Metal Inert Gas) and TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welding, as well as handheld plasma cutting and CNC plasma cutting. And don’t forget our Open Studio events in the Welding and Sheet Metal Shop.

We hope you found the recap of what’s going on at the Metal-Fab Studio interesting and helpful. As always, if you have any questions, requests, or suggestions, please reach out to us and share. We’d love to hear from you.

See You at Tidy-Friday

Our next Tidy-Friday is Friday, Feb. 13. Please do drop by and pitch in at these second- and fourth-Friday events each month from 10 AM to noon. There’s always coffee, and we usually have treats, too. These Friday morning meetups are good fun with a healthy mix of conversation, laughs, and a bit of work to maintain our tools and shops. Hope to see you there.

Until next time, be safe and have fun!

Andy Dupree
Metal-Fab Lead

David Hays
Metal-Fab Programming Coordinator