Charcoal at nine and tools by four, if you reserve a forge day in the Guimaraes hills

What happens between nine and four

The fire is lit before you arrive, because charcoal takes the better part of an hour to settle into the kind of heat that will move steel. The first hour you watch a single tool made start to finish, so the order of things is in your head before you hold anything. Then the treadle hammer, which does the heavy drawing down while the smith steers the bar; you work the treadle first and the bar later. Lunch is bread, soup and whatever the house has, eaten in the yard. The afternoon is one small piece of your own, usually a hook or a cold chisel, quenched, tempered and taken away with you. The last half hour is putting the shop back the way you found it, which counts as part of the work rather than an afterthought.

Standing, heat and what it asks

You are on your feet for most of six hours on a stone floor, and the shop runs hot in November as readily as in June, because the fire takes no interest in the weather. Nothing is heavy in the lifting sense: the bars are short and the hammer supplies the force. What tires people is the standing and the attention, since a bar at working heat gives you perhaps forty seconds before it has to go back in. Cotton or wool, closed leather shoes, hair tied back. Sparks land on clothing and mark it, so bring nothing you would mind losing. If you have a heart or breathing condition that heat makes worse, say so when you write and we will tell the smith, rather than let you find it out standing at the anvil.

What sits inside the figure

From $188 per person. That covers the day itself: the smiths' time, charcoal and steel, use of the tools, glasses and gloves, lunch in the yard, and the piece you make, which is yours to keep. It does not cover getting there. Guimaraes is roughly fifty minutes by road from Porto and the shop sits above the town, so most people take a car or a taxi for the last stretch, and we will say exactly where and when to be. Beds are not in the figure either, though this office will book them in the same message if you want the day set inside a longer week. The workshop bills you directly in its own name. This office takes no payment for the day and holds no card details at any point.

Awkward things people ask about this day

Only six of us have written in. Does the day still happen?

Not yet. This one needs eight, because the shop has two smiths and two anvils and eight is the number that makes the day worth their while. What happens instead is that the date is held provisionally and you are told, in writing, how many names are in. If it stalls at six a week out, we say so and you decide. Nothing is charged either way.

Can we bring our twelve year old?

No. The shop sets sixteen as the lowest age at the anvil and does not make exceptions, and we will not ask it to. There is a fire, a hammer that moves under a treadle, and scale coming off hot steel at head height. Younger children are welcome in the yard with an adult who is not working, but they will be bored by ten past ten and honest about it.

How does paying actually work?

The workshop invoices you in its own name and you settle with the workshop. This office never takes the money and never sees a card. We are paid a commission by the shop after the day has happened, which is why you will see no charge and no deposit request from us at any stage. If the day falls through for want of numbers, there is nothing to unwind.