Pete Hill BA Hons fwcb

With an interest in the art and the mystery of forged steel since the age of twelve, Pete started his smithing career on leaving school at a forge in Dorset, gaining the basic skills before attending university to study design, graduating with a first class honours degree in 3 Dimensional Design with Metal. A couple of years were spent gaining further blacksmithing experience working at several forges around the country after graduation, before joining the team at Ratho Byres Forge in 1996 and becoming a partner in 2000.

Pete leads our extremely popular midweek and weekend Blacksmithing Courses – suitable for both the absolute beginner and those with previous experience.

Pete is both a Bronze Medal holder and a Silver Medal holder from the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths, a major honour awarded for work of a consistently high standard

Pete is well known on the blacksmithing circuit having demonstrated and taken masterclasses at events around the world and developing firm friendships with other smiths. These friendships have lead to an ongoing and life long exchange of knowledge and skills which is a unique trait amongst artist blacksmiths.

Pete is both a Bronze Medal holder and a Silver Medal holder from the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths, a London craft guild dating back to the 15th century. A major honour indeed in the world of the artist blacksmith and awarded for work of a consistently high standard.

Pete is generally the first point of contact for clients and he oversees the design process, then the progression of the commission into the forge, generally hands on with developing any specialist tooling required for each new job and working side by side with the team through the forging process. Pete is experienced with dealing with the installation of all our commissioned work be it a garden gate that can be lifted into place or large scale public art that requires specialist lifting cranes, thus ensuring that the overall service from conception to completion is dealt with in-house at Ratho Byres Forge.

To relax, apart from forging for fun and attending blacksmithing events, Pete keeps ducks and breeds Polish Chamois chickens and is currently building a 3’’ model traction engine, a ten year plan which will no doubt overrun!