Blacksmith Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This is a blacksmith with twelve years in the trade, working between a custom architectural shop and a production forge. The name and the shops are invented. Read what sits highest: the type of work, the equipment, the welding tickets, and a link to photographs.

Blacksmith hiring is small-shop hiring. The person reading is usually the owner, they are behind on a job, and they want to know whether you can be useful in week one.

• What kind of smithing. Architectural railings, gates and hardware; knifemaking and bladesmithing; farrier work; historic restoration; industrial drop forging; artist and sculpture fabrication. These are separate trades that share a hammer. Say which one is yours.
• Equipment you can run alone. Power hammer size, press tonnage, forge type, ironworker, plasma table, welders. A shop with a 200-pound hammer wants to know you have run one.
• Welding certification. Most architectural and structural work needs welding that will pass inspection. AWS certification with the process and the code is worth more on paper than any amount of forge talent.
• Photographs. This is a visual trade. A link to a gallery, an Instagram account or a PDF portfolio does more than three extra bullets. Put the link in your contact line, not at the bottom.

• Forging: drawing out, upsetting, punching and drifting, bending and scrolling, twisting, splitting, forge welding, texturing
• Joinery: rivets, collars, mortise and tenon, wedges, banding, and knowing when a job actually calls for an arc weld instead
• Heat treatment: hardening, tempering, normalizing, annealing, case hardening, quench media selection, reading color and using a magnet or pyrometer
• Materials: mild steel, wrought iron, high carbon and tool steels, stainless, bronze and copper, and how each behaves at forging heat
• Equipment: coal, coke and gas forges, power hammer, hydraulic and screw presses, treadle hammer, ironworker, band saw, plasma table, drill press, belt grinder
• Welding and cutting: SMAW, GMAW, TIG, oxy-fuel, plasma, and any AWS certification you hold with the process named
• Layout and drawing: shop drawings, full-size chalk layouts, blueprint reading, working from an architect's detail, basic CAD if you have it
• Finishing and install: wire wheel, wax and oil finishes, paint systems, powder coat prep, galvanizing, anchoring into masonry, scaffolding and lift work
• Business side if you are self-employed: quoting, material takeoffs, client meetings, invoicing, insurance and a shop safety plan

There is no license to call yourself a blacksmith in the United States. Skill is proved by work, not paper. That said, several things do carry weight and cost little.

• Welding certification. American Welding Society certification is the single most useful piece of paper a smith can hold, because architectural and structural work has to pass inspection. Name the code and the process, for example AWS D1.1 in SMAW, and the year of your last qualification test.
• Safety cards. OSHA 10-Hour or 30-Hour Construction, forklift, overhead crane and rigging, aerial lift. Anything that lets you work on a job site without a chaperone is worth a line.
• Trade schooling. A welding or machining certificate from a community college is common and useful. Full-time blacksmithing programs exist at a small number of craft schools and folk schools, and they are worth listing with the school and the course length.
• Apprenticeship. Most smiths learn under someone. Say who, where, how long and what you were doing by the end. An informal two-year apprenticeship described in detail reads better than a weekend workshop with a famous name.
• Associations and events. ABANA, the Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America, and its regional affiliates run conferences and hammer-ins. Membership and any demonstration or teaching you have done belongs on the page.
• Bladesmithing. If you make knives, the American Bladesmith Society runs a tested Journeyman and Master Smith rating. It is a real, examined credential and it means something to buyers and shops.

In a visual trade, the photographs are the interview. Nobody hires a smith on prose.

1. 1Photograph everything you make, on a plain background, in daylight. Twelve good photographs beat sixty bad ones.
2. 2Show process as well as product: a forge weld in progress, a heat treat setup, a joint before finishing. Shop owners judge technique from those more than from the finished piece.
3. 3Put the link in your contact line at the top of the resume. Not in a bullet, not at the bottom.
4. 4For each piece worth naming, note the material, the size and how long it took. "Forged mild steel gate, 6 by 8 feet, 90 hours, riveted joinery throughout" tells a shop what your hands are worth per hour.
5. 5If you are applying as an apprentice, list the classes, workshops and hours you have logged, plus any related hands-on work: welding, farm repair, auto body, machining, carpentry. Physical trades transfer.
6. 6Say you own tools if you own tools. A smith with their own hammers, tongs and an anvil is easier to hire than one who needs a bench set up from scratch.

One page. Plain layout. No photo of yourself, no date of birth, no graphics. Send a PDF and paste the text into the email as well, because most of these shops read email on a phone in a noisy building.

• Put the equipment list where it can be scanned. Shop owners read equipment lists the way software engineers read a tech stack.
• If you are applying to an industrial forge or a large manufacturer, they will use an applicant tracking system. Mirror their words: forging, die setting, heat treat, drop hammer, press operator, blueprint reading, first article inspection, scrap rate.
• For custom and artist shops, the resume matters less than the portfolio and the referral. Send both, and name any smith who will vouch for you.
• Be specific about lifting and conditions. Forge shops run hot, loud and heavy, and owners want to hear that you know it.
• If you are self-employed, put your own shop on the resume as a job with dates, revenue range and the number of commissions. It is a job.

“Send me pictures first. I can teach somebody my way of doing a scroll, but I cannot teach them to care what the corner looks like. The resume tells me if they can pass a weld test and show up. The photographs tell me if I want them at the anvil next to mine.”