After spending 31 years as a journeyman with Local 19, and the last 20-plus years working as a balancer for Flood & Sterling, a testing firm located in New Cumberland PA, Don Farr is an apprentice again.
He’s still working with metal but as a maker of knives, what’s known as a bladesmith, and he is working toward journeyman status with the American Bladesmith Society.
That he was able to speak with Shear Facts about his retirement pastime is a testament to the adage that timing is everything.
It was an ordinary April Saturday evening in Mt. Joy, PA but Farr wasn’t feeling well. He went into the house, sat down, and started sweating profusely. His wife, Jane, a registered nurse who spent 13 years on the heart team at Lancaster General Hospital, wasn’t sure what was happening. Was it a heart attack? He had no chest pain. She called 9-1-1.
This is when timing became vital. The first responders arrived within minutes. The closest hospital, Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center, had only recently opened, but it was just 15 minutes away and the EMTs were in constant contact with emergency room personnel while they were en route.
Farr was hooked up to an EKG machine and it was determined he was having a heart attack. Since it was early on a Saturday, the ER was quiet and the team was waiting when the ambulance arrived. But then Farr went into cardiac arrest. He was fortunate it didn’t happen in the yard or in the house or in the ambulance but in a relatively quiet ER. Doctors worked nine minutes to restart his heart, then he was transferred to a cardiac catheterization laboratory where doctors located an artery that was 100% occluded, or blocked, and inserted a stint.
Dr. Patrick Fitzsimmons, an interventional cardiologist who was on duty and treated Farr that night, commented in an article published in Lancaster Physician magazine that the rapid response of all involved and the experience of the cardiac catheterization lab team was instrumental in saving Farr’s life.
“Timing is everything,” admitted Farr, who acknowledged the care he received, and is continuing to receive, is first-rate. “I can’t say enough about the care I received. The first time I went back for a checkup, I had my heart tested, and I had 75% function. Three months later it was 100%.”
Farr is also back working at his craft as a bladesmith. He said one reason he got into it was after spending over two decades working as a balancer, being on the go all the time traveling up and down the East Coast from Puerto Rico to the Canadian border, he knew he needed something to occupy his time. Sitting around wasn’t an option.
“Why a bladesmith? It’s metal, I’ve been around it for 31 years,” said Farr who started his career as a welder. “Then I watched a TV show, Forged in Fire, and I said, ‘I got to try that.’”
Farr retired from Flood & Sterling at age 62 1⁄2, but it was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and his first taste of inactivity wasn’t appealing. That was when an opportunity at Millersville University presented itself, where he could serve as a consultant in building automation and system controls. This turned out to be fortuitous.
“You have to have good equipment to forge good knives,” he said, as he pointed to an anvil, noting he spent three years searching before finding the right one. “I said to my wife, ‘How about I go back to work so I can buy the right equipment.’ She said that was a good idea.”
Retired once again with a workshop in the yard behind his house that has everything he needs, he makes all types of knives for customers using stainless and high-carbon steel, and either maple, walnut, beech, or white oak wood for the handle while he works toward ABS journeyman status.
“I am three-quarters of the way through,” he said. “For the last test, I had to cut a free-hanging rope three times, then chop a two-by-four, first in one direction and then the other. That was to demonstrate the ability to cut. Then to demonstrate edge retention, I had to shave some hair off my arm.”
Farr hopes he’ll be ready for the last test when he submits five blades to the judges at a show in Atlanta in June.
“They have to be perfect,” he said. “Fortunately, they hooked me up with two guys that are actually journeymen in Hershey. I lucked out finding two guys who are close by to work with. It’s nice to be able to go over there to bounce some ideas off of them and learn from them. When I have my five blades ready, I’ll take them to my buddies and they’ll tell me if they’re good enough. I’ll wait until I get the go-ahead from them.”
Farr says he spends four or five hours a day, five-to-six days a week in his shop. It keeps him busy.
“For me, it’s a challenge,” he said. “I’m not going to make a living from it. For me it’s enjoyable. It’s occupying my time and I’m having fun. If I make a couple of bucks, fine.”
