What Blacksmithing Taught Me About Dealing with Failure

And why melting your mistakes might actually be good for you

Let’s get this out of the way: failure looks like sparklers.

Not the kind from a birthday cake. I mean the kind that shoot off the end of a bar of steel when you’ve pushed it too far. You know the look. That clear, bubbling surface. That blistered brightness that’s no longer “glowing hot” but instead screaming, “you’re cooked.”

It’s what happens when you overheat steel in the forge. You won’t smell much — not really — because all the oxygen has already been consumed in the fire. What you get instead is a sort of visual alarm system. The metal starts to sparkle, to puff, to bubble. And when you pull it out and give it a tap, it doesn’t bounce back. It doesn’t fight. It folds. Soft and fluffy, like a marshmallow that just gave up on itself.

And just like that, your project is ruined.

That’s what blacksmithing taught me about failure. Not in some vague metaphorical sense. I mean it literally. Melted, mushy, irreparable. Fuzzy around the edges like it forgot what it was supposed to become.

I’ve snapped blades. I’ve scorched stock I spent hours prepping. I’ve quenched too early, too late, or in the wrong quench altogether. I once had a student ask me if their knife was supposed to look like a sad banana. It wasn’t. But we made it work.

Failure is everywhere in blacksmithing. And once you stop seeing it as a red flag, and start seeing it as part of the rhythm, it actually gets kind of fun.

The first time I failed in the forge

It was supposed to be leaf coat hook

They said it was a great beginner project. I wanted to believe my teacher lied. But maybe I just really committed to messing it up.

I overheated the steel. Didn’t know what the sparklers meant yet. When I took it out and gave it that hit, it crumbled at the tapered point. The leaf head snapped right where it met the stem. It started with the telltale sign (which I now know), the joint looked like dried wrinkles were forming. I grabbed it in 2 hands and added a littttttle pressure to test the strength and it disintegrated like cursed breadcrumbs. It didn’t just fail, it dissolved.

I stared at the remains in silence. Then I dropped them into the scrap bucket and went outside to whisper my regrets to a tree.

But the next day? I came back. I tried again. Because in blacksmithing, failure isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the next piece.

There are a thousand ways to fail in blacksmithing

I’ve probably tried most of them.

Honestly, figuring out how you failed is half the battle. And completely what makes you a better smith. Every mistake carries a lesson. And the forge doesn't let you skip ahead. You either learn or you repeat.

Let’s take a little inventory of ways you can screw it up:

• Work the steel too cold? Crack.

• Overheat it? Mush.

• Twist it one too many times? Snap.

• Work a welded joint back and forth too long? You’ve just invited a break.

• Don’t wait long enough before cooling? Risk it all.

• Quench too fast, or too still? Welcome to Warpville.

• Drop a hardened knife tip-first onto concrete? It’s now a decorative letter opener.

• Try to fix a warp after hardening? You’ve entered banana zone.

• Forget to normalize or anneal for long enough? Hello, invisible internal stress.

• Work the metal too long without letting it rest? It gets tired. It will punish you.

Every one of these mistakes is a rite of passage. You will do them. You will learn from them. And then you will do slightly better next time. Slightly. Eventually.

The ego lives in the hammer

When you start smithing, you think the hammer is your tool. But it’s not. It’s your mirror.

The way you strike, the way you hold tension, the way you breathe, the metal reflects it all back to you. If you get too aggressive, you’ll warp it. If you go too soft, you won’t move anything. If you lose focus, the steel will wander.

Your ego wants things to be perfect. It wants symmetry. Clean lines. Flawless tapers. But blacksmithing rarely gives you that on the first try. Or the fifth. Sometimes the metal humbles you. Other times, it outright clowns you.

You learn to let go. To adjust. To strike with intention, not expectation.

The steel does not care how many followers you have. It will make a fool of you in front of a class. It will crack under pressure. It will laugh in your face if you pretend to know more than you do. And that’s good. Because it means you’re learning the right way.

Why failing in public is actually the best

Blacksmithing is one of the few crafts where failing publicly is not only common it’s encouraged. Messing up during a workshop is a bonding moment. Everyone in the class nods like “Yep, been there.” And then someone hands you a new piece of steel and you try again.

There’s no shame in burning a blade or forging a crooked bottle opener. That’s how you figure out how not to.

It’s easy to scroll Instagram and see nothing but perfect-forged knives and mirror-polished axes. But what you don’t see is the pile of heartbreak that came before those photos. The cracked welds. The twisted spines. The rings that didn’t quite close. The hardened tips that pinged off the anvil and vanished into the void forever.

Behind every clean piece is a small mountain of failure. And usually a few choice swear words.

Forging makes you face failure faster

Most people go through life trying to avoid failure. They treat it like a pothole. Something to dodge, something that derails progress.

But in blacksmithing, failure is the forge itself. You cannot create without heat. You cannot shape without resistance. You cannot learn unless something goes wrong first.

Want to get better at forging? Fail more often.

Want to stop cracking your tangs? Crack a few first and learn why.

Want to get your quenches cleaner? Ruin a few blades and pay attention to how they died.

Failure is a teacher. And unlike most teachers, it doesn’t grade on a curve. It just shows you what happened and asks, “Wanna try again?”

The broader life lesson hiding in the fire

At some point, it clicks.

You realize this isn’t just about metal. It’s about you.

Blacksmithing doesn’t just teach you how to shape steel. It teaches you how to be okay with doing something badly. It teaches you how to fail in public. How to get better without getting bitter. How to find beauty in the attempt, even if the result isn’t perfect.

Failure in blacksmithing isn’t final. It’s just a pause. A reset. A chance to understand what happened and give it another go — this time with a little more knowledge, a little more control, and maybe a little less caffeine.

In the forge, every mistake has shape. Every crack has a cause. You don’t just mess up. You learn. And that’s a rhythm worth living by.

Because if you can hold your nerve while striking hot steel, and you can laugh when it all goes wrong, and you still want to do it again?

Then you’ve already succeeded.

Sage wisdom from the anvil

So here it is. You will fail. You will burn steel. You will curse at tongs that drop things at the worst moment. You will make knives that curve like question marks and rings that pinch like crab claws.

But you will also grow. You will learn to read the fire. To listen to the steel. To stop seeing failure as the end, and start seeing it as feedback.

Blacksmithing is a crash course in patience, persistence, and the joy of doing hard things badly until you do them well.

And once you’ve forged through failure a few dozen times, you start to realize something else.

You can do that in the rest of your life too.