David Osmundsen

Wyoming Blacksmith

David Osmundsen moved to Buffalo, Wyoming, nearly 17 years ago after a fateful summer trip brought him to the Big Horn Mountains. While doing summer missionary work at the Crow Indian Agency in southern Montana, he passed through the small western town that stuck with him. “I liked it and decided I would like to move to an area like Buffalo either after I retired or sooner. I decided to finish raising my children there.” David moved his family from Wisconsin where he worked as an artist in residence and gunsmith and literally set up shop – his blacksmith shop, Arrowhead Forge.

He has been blacksmithing for three decades, developing his personal style which he defines as “functional iron art.” “I don’t do so much that is just sculpture. My pieces are functional sculpture; garden gates, fireplace tools, railings, furniture, etc. David has perfected his style over the years from a variety of influences. “Any style you develop takes time. Mine is certainly influenced by who I learned from and from looking at other people’s work and figuring out how they did certain things. I’m always learning and combining things I see every day. I’ll see something like the way a tree branch grows that really attracts my eye and I wonder how I can do that in iron.”

David first took an interest in blacksmithing while studying to become a gunsmith in Colorado. He found a local blacksmith who allowed David to work in his shop in exchange for teaching him the trade. “When I was working for him, he would teach me to make a fork or something. He really only expected me to make one, but I was so excited about making them that I would make a dozen and then go out and sell them. I learned far more than he was teaching me.” David worked with that blacksmith for a little more than a year before opening Arrowhead Forge in Maine and doing a little teaching of his own.

“Since I’ve moved to Wyoming and set up shop, I’ve had a lot of people asking to be my apprentice. I’ve sworn up and down that I wouldn’t have an apprentice. So, I’ve started teaching again.” This is his fourth year teaching and he’s had folks coming from California, Alaska, Mississippi and recently received an inquiry from a student in Canada.
“And, as a matter of fact, I do have an apprentice now also. Trying to avoid having an apprentice has actually led me to having one.”

David says he would like to increase the teaching aspect of his business, which he hopes could then provide him more time and financial security to produce gallery pieces where he can “design and build things exactly the way I would like them done.”
“It’s really fun building that way because you’re free. You don’t have to follow a drawing you did for a client months before. You’re freer to let it flow.”
Everything David builds in iron is completely unique and full of variety, “the true definition of custom.” “Something that I build is done specifically for you. I look at what you’ve got in your home, growing in your yard or what your interests are and then I build to suit you. I might utilize similar features from another piece but there will never be another one like the one I build for you.” While there is no ordinary piece, an elaborate garden gate might take David four to five weeks to finish while a simple set of fireplace tools generally only takes three days. “It’s pretty much unlimited what can be done in iron.”

In addition to his home and office furnishing-type pieces, David also enjoys doing historical re-creations of period tools, axes, and more primitive knives.

Image Above: Forged Iron Leaf Napkin Rings. If you have ever tried to swing a hammer and delicately form a semi-molten piece of iron, you can appreciate David's work. He made iron napkin rings for the Senate Wives’ luncheon for Rosalynn Carter, way back when and has just now introduced a new design.


To view more of David's work go to Arrowhead Forge on www.contemporarywesterndesign.com

For more western design that includes, western furniture, rustic furniture, western fashion,western jewelry, western art and western home accessories go to: www.contemporarywesterndesign.com