The blacksmith of our time – where does a representative of a rare profession work in Kazakhstan

Kazakh generation, born in the 90s of the twentieth century and later, probably read in fairy tales about the profession of a blacksmith. We immediately recall a kind and savvy character of Gogolэs fairy tales, blacksmith Vakula, and also the character of Leskov’s tale Levsha, who was a blacksmith and had managed to forge a golden flea. But many young people could not dream of meeting and talking one-on-one with a real blacksmith. Baigenews.kz correspondent was lucky, because his interviewee in Almaty appeared to be 60-year-old Kairat ADILSHEYEV, a blacksmith by vocation and a true master craftsman of this forgotten work specialty.

Blacksmiths were always in demand in rural areas in the old days. It was needed to make horseshoes, and tools for farming and road transport – there were plenty of orders for smiths in this profession. As industry and various scientific and technological inventions grew, it seemed that mechanical machines began to rapidly take away the work from blacksmiths and they had nothing else to do. Moreover, more and more people began to move to cities where blacksmiths seemed to be no longer wanted. Kairat Adilsheyev states that there is indeed really not much work left for blacksmiths now, but if you are a worthy worker in this profession, you will be very much in demand.

Kairat Adilsheyev was qualified as a specialist mechanizer of a wide profile and a combine harvester in his youth. He succeeded in working on a tractor in the kolkhoz, and in repairing the machinery. His father was a carpenter and Kairat-aga has been surrounded by people of labor and agricultural specialties since his childhood. For some reason, his father did not teach Kairat-aga the secrets of the carpenter’s profession, but one day the villagers asked him to craft a horseshoe.

“But I had never done it before, did not learn it, only saw what the old men did, and I repeated after them. And this was my first time making a horseshoe. I don’t even have a clue what dimensions, what is what, what to do and how. I told the man who gave me such “order” that I needed to bring a horse so that I could figure out the dimensions for the horseshoe. He brought an animal that left a hoofprint on the soft ground, I took the measurements and proceeded to make a horseshoe! I spent about 10 minutes – for a blacksmith it is considered a long time. And it worked! So gradually my career as a blacksmith went uphill”, Kairat Adilsheyev recalled.

When he moved to Almaty, he did not abandon his vocation – he worked as a blacksmith at the Elektroshchit electric plant, after which he was engaged in manufacturing iron art patterns for gates, mirrors, beds, chairs, candlesticks, and so on; his products and those of his colleagues were sold in the shopping center. But the opening of the borders to foreign goods put an end to this way of making money for blacksmiths.

“There used to be a lot of blacksmiths before, now nobody needs it anymore. There are amateurs in the city, they do it as a hobby, but it’s all fading away, alas. When I worked in artistic forging myself, we used to hang out together, but now we don’t anymore. And they have stopped – all these patterns, different forged artistic things are brought to our bazaar from Kyrgyzstan, it is cheaper, and it is no longer cost-effective for our blacksmiths to do anything at a loss. There are only a few amateurs left, but it is mostly the older generation. Young people don’t work in this area. I recently asked my son, but he won’t do it either. Yes, it’s hard work, what can I say, but young people want to have it easy – they ride, drive and put the money in their pockets. But I’m interested in being a blacksmith, despite the difficulties”, Kairat Adilsheyev said.

Left practically without a job, Kairat-Adilesheev got a job at the power plant in the boiler shop. In conversations with colleagues – power engineers and fitters, Kairat Adilesheev said that he used to work as a blacksmith and actually likes to do it. The blacksmith Victor Zolin, who worked at the maintenance company Energoremont, was being retired because he decided to leave Kazakhstan forever due to family reasons. “Uzyn kulak” informed the company management about the talent of Kairat-aga and since then Adilsheyev has been working as a blacksmith for 6 years. His job includes forging parts needed for the repair shop. He produces various socket wrenches, hexes, transition coupling halves (keys), spare parts for turners by means of heating in the furnace and forging on the anvil. The secret of successful and error-free work is the ability to heat the iron to the proper temperature and forge it correctly.

Not everyone can easily take and forge even the technologically simple product without training, our hero admits. Kairat recalled how the year before last, in his absence, his colleagues from the maintenance company tried to forge with an anvil to break some steel product in order to send it to the laboratory to check the internal structure, but they did not succeed.

“It seems like nothing is difficult from the outside: you heat it up, tap it and it’s done. In fact, if your hand doesn’t feel the metal, you won’t make it, you won’t bite it properly. And if you don’t feel the right angle when working on the anvil, you will feel the metal smack you on the forehead (smiles). As you get more experience, you feel where and how to hit, where to bend, where to unbend, with a hammer, when to hit, how to hit, at what speed. If you don’t have time or rush, then you’ll heat it again, and that’s wasteful double work”, Kairat Adilsheyev said.

He works according to strict blueprints at the company, but he finds time and opportunities for creativity. Our hero emphasizes that a blacksmith is a working profession, but a very creative one.

“A man in the profession of a blacksmith must be creative, he must be able to make these patterns and all kinds of beauty. And if he has no creativity, and just beats standing there – the work will not go further, a person will knock for a couple of days and give up. For example, someone will order you something or ask you to make something at home, and you start to think like an artist, and see in 3D, and you have to draw it. I forged chairs and mirror frames, I can draw on paper at home, so that then on these drawings to make, for example, a product. Sometimes I have something in my mind, I can draw it and then make it”, Kairat Adilsheyev said.

Despite the fact that the forge is old, there are certain devices that facilitate the work of the blacksmith. If previously one blacksmith heated and held, and the second sledgehammer hit the heated iron, now the anvil is semi-automatic, the speed and force of blows of the automatic anvil blacksmith controls with a pedal. There is also a crane for very large and heavy structures. For this reason, the only thing required of the blacksmith is the right feel in the hands. Sooner or later the time will come when our hero will be sent to retirement by age, and he waits for this time with anxiety for his profession, because he does not know whether he will be able to find successors or not.

“There are no young ones now, I haven’t met any. But perhaps there will be a successor; of course, there are young amateurs out there. The profession of blacksmith is alive, and I believe is necessary and will not vanish anywhere. It’s hard to explain in words what I like about it… Creativity is present here in combination with strict rules, it’s great. I can’t explain it any other way, it’s easier to show it in practice. If a person has a desire, he will come, and we will be able to work”, – said our hero.

Kairat-aga is now at a stage where he has already come to the teaching mastership, he is ready to pass on his skills and abilities. And meanwhile there are no students willing to learn, he himself tries to learn new methods, as he recognizes that the blacksmith could use a special education at a technological university, where it is necessary to study the structure of iron and other subtleties from the point of view of science. Kairat Adilsheyev is not only a man of a rare working profession, but also an intelligent person, ready to support a conversation on any topic with great pleasure, as well as subtly make fun of his colleagues.