Meet the Smith

Quinn Harold Waterfield

Informally known as Bucket & Stríð Smiðr in the SCA

I grew up on the family farm in the County of Vermilion River, Alberta where my ancestors settled over 100 years ago. I was born during the socioeconomic drought of the late 90s, imagine the dirty 30’s only technically worse. Not going to mince words my family had some pretty humble origins. As such while most of my friends where experiencing the early dawn of the digital age, I was making due with sword sticks and exploring every ounce of pasture and bush we owned. When I wasn’t doing that I was learning everything I could about medieval history

How did I get into blacksmithing? I was a destructive child, and trees are great sword targets! Sticks got old and I found the anvil in the old shop, I went to town on scrap pipes and made better swords. Now pipe swords where fun but they bend easy if your edge alinements off. lucky when I was around 12 my dad got tired of that shit and bought me a machete if I promised to quit messing up his scrap pipes and trees, he probably regretted that.

My dad never said anything about me not making knives, and I’d be damned if I didn’t take advantage of that in our deal. This was before I had a forge so I cold hammered some reedbar with a machinist hammer until it was flat and filed a edge onto it. My parents decided to nurture this hobby when I was 14 and took me to a knife making class with Ed Storch where I learned most of what I know about making knives and stock removal.

When I was 16 I spent a summer helping my maternal grandparents in Spiritwood Saskatchewan. Grandpa Fern had heard about my interest in forging and told me stories of how he and his father would work the bellow forge to sharpen horse ploughs. He then showed me the antique buffalo Co hand crank forge he had in the storage shed. I didn’t know it at the time but this was to be my last gift from him as my reward for helping out. Grandma died in December that year just before Christmas and he followed her in October 2016.

With a forge I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the craft and practicing bladesmithing. Luckily my fraternal grandmother had kept her fathers tongs in the old shop with the anvil so I was pretty well set in the tool department.

A few like minded friends from school took a interest in my hobby work and asked for swords and axes, to which I happily obliged them as best I could. In a way I really couldn’t of got the ball rolling without my friends, they provided the funds needed to buy supplies and get the practice needed.

Going into my college years I learned about the HEMA YouTube scene to which I began learning about proper design and functionality. My first big break is when I managed to get in touch with Skallagrim in 2017 and made him a kalinga / Igorot head hunting axe. His youtube video got a hell of a lot of attention. Unfortunately being in college working oilfield to make winter rent I was unable to capitalize on the opportunity.

Most of my spare time was spent in the forge building the business and making extra cash. In my practicum I realized I wasn’t happy with the career path I had chosen and decided to pursue professional bladesmithing. Before my “graduation” Covid-19 had hit and ballsy as I was I managed to survive working in the forge through to today. I believe it was no small feat given the niche community of collectors and martial art practitioners.

Following Covid I became an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism to explore armoring and to be closer to historical martial arts, getting to fight in full armor was a good bonus.

For those unaware the SCA is a non profit international reenactment and educational organization for pre 16th century history. The SCA was the first armored martial arts / reenactment group of the 20th century. Later Buhurt was founded by European SCA members who wanted sport steel weapon combat and grappling, It has also become a international entity. Historical Medieval Battles (HMB) and Battle of The Nations etc. are newer buhurt leagues separate from the original Russian dominate league.

I’ve been smithing since 2014 and plan to be the Canadian go to for anything medieval one day. there isn’t a lot of blades or tools I cant figure out how to make or don’t know how already.

Lets get forging!