• About Us

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• General Store
  & Giftshop
  
• Custom Orders
  
• Catalog

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• Blacksmith Cam
  
• Home Movies
  
• Photos

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• Bookstore

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• News
  
• Awards/Honors
  
• Links
  
• Map
  
• E * Card

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• Basics
  
•   Primer
  
•   Simple Forge
  
•   Pump Bellows
  
•   Fires
  
•   Shop Layout
  
• Advanced
  
•   Spons Table
  
•   Welding
  
•   Rivets
  
•   Splits/Cuts
  
•   Twists
  
• Blueprints
  
•   Spanish Pike
  
•   Forks

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• Blacksmith Dogs

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• Server Stats

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• Help Desk Archives

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• Weird E-Mail
  
• E Mail WB3
  
• E Mail RD
  

Project History

The shop was located in an old hog shed, using a home made 2 stage pump bellows designed from plans found in a 1912 reprint of a late 19th century book for farmers. The first forge was constructed of a halved water heater tank that had seen previous life as a slop trough in that same barn. The hog barn sits on a hill above Lytton Creek in the Texas hill country, a very upstream tributary of the mighty Colorado River.

Since the very beginning we have strived to maintain a 19th century historically accurate shop. Our water comes from the creek.

Photo by George Hixson,
Houston Press

No electricity, no powertools, no welders or other devil creatures. [Servers and webcams are not devil creatures per se, have you ever tried to weld with a web cam...].

In 1994 we debuted this site on the web, being without question the first blacksmith shop on the Internet.

In 1996 we opened a shop in Houston, Texas using the blacksmith equipment of Boyd's great grandfather who had a shop in the late 1800's less than 1/4 mile from the existing shop in the country.

In 1997 we finally found the bucks and registered the lyttoncreek domain name. In late 1997 we began our bookstore in association with Amazon.com. In the early spring of 1998 we beta tested a live web cam from the country shop. Summer and fall saw an expansion of the country shop and in November 1998 we opened our SSL giftshop.

Over the years our site has garnished a multitude of awards and recognition for which we are proud and will someday set up a trophycase. Lately we have been getting about 15,000 hits a month.

The Artists

Boyd is an attorney-sculptor-computer jock-flintlock rifle shooter and General Counsel and Director of Web Development for Hypercon who is a seventh generation Texan, an aristocratic Englishman (many centuries removed), and a collateral relative of that famous outlaw Belle Starr. The 1994 Texas State Muzzleloading Silhouette Open Rifle Champion, Boyd is an avid historian of the Texas and Southwest from colonial spanish times up to the civil war. Boyd has been a practicing artist for over twenty years and studied under such luminaries as David Parsons, Charles Duggan, and Joe Donaldson. His work is part of numerous private & public collections.

Huntley is an almost native Texan, blacksmith, sculptor and professional server dweeb with a very serious background in gaming (DWANGO). Huntley is a flintlocker extraordinaire able to shoot out the flame of a candle at 50+ yards as he demonstrated at the Hill Country Muzzleloaders competition in 1994. Over the years he has won numerous state and regional blackpowder matches with his trusted but rusted Thompson Center. RD took up sculpture and blacksmithing at the same time and both won his attention. His latest works take a novel look at the integration of form and function.

Apprentices

Too many to count it seems. At the shop in the city we have the property donor's sons, Ray and Luciano. Up at the country we have Floyd, the son of our neighbor. Over the years we have roped in our accountant George Kell, a city councilman from Buda, a lawyer from San Marcos, at least 2 other Hypercon executives who shall go unnamed, 3 Hypercon employees, a writer for the Houston Press and at least one real chicken farmer who now claims that his aged non-laying chickens have always been pets.