In a cold, old barn at the O’Keefe Ranch in Armstrong, Patrick McIvor is hard at work.

“Warming up a piece of material that I’m turning into tongs,” said McIvor.

An anvil rings out as McIvor hammers out a tool of the trade.

But in a larger, more philosophical sense, McIvor is working on keeping his craft alive: the time-honored, ancient art of blacksmithing.

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‘It’s several thousand years of existence. Just after the bronze age and the copper age came the iron age,” said McIvor.

As one of only a handful of blacksmiths in the Okanagan, McIvor is a master craftsman from a bygone era, having studied the trade with blacksmiths from Turkey to Finland.

“I started out when I was younger, wanting to make swords, knives, axes and armor,” McIvor said.

And while he still makes iron-age weapons, for the last few years, McIvor has been forging ahead, hammering out something new at historical O’Keefe Ranch.

“I teach classes in traditional blacksmithing,” McIvor said.

From the basic intro to blacksmithing, the hammer, the forge and the anvil . . . to two-day seminars on knife making.

“We take a piece of four-and-a-half inch coil spring and you forge it into a knife,” McIvor said.

The class cuts right to the heart of matter – with hands on training.

“That is how you learn this stuff; you watch it, you see it in action,” McIvor said.

McIvor says his classes create a hands-on sense of satisfaction for his students — which, he says, a lot don’t get these days.

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