• Hink crafts tomahawks, popular at Mtn. Rendezvous events.

The art of developing metal into  a tool or for art, features the unique sills of a Blacksmith.

Few have those skills today, but one person is working to keep the related talents  alive. Dee Hink of Afton knows those skills.  He’s a blacksmith.

Hink was recently a featured speaker for the Star Valley Historical Society when he set up his forge and anvil on the lawn of the Star Valley Pioneer Museum at the Lincoln County Fairgrounds.

He recently displayed the same equipment and his work at the Idaho High School District 8 Rodeo Finals in Afton, giving visitors an opportunity to see the process and the finished product.

Hink started blacksmithing as a youth when he found abandoned equipment in a high school shop class. “I kind of fiddled with it and that’s how I got started.”

Much of Hink’s work centers on handmade tomahawks.  He  displays and sells the “hawks” at rendezvous events in the Intermountain West.

“I do tomahawks mostly and I’m known on the rendezvous circuit as the hawk maker,” he said. “I do the rendezvous in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.”

Hink noted a resurgence in blacksmithing skills as some of the new house construction includes blacksmithing art as part of the home design.

Addressing the unique skills of a Blacksmith, Hink concluded,  “We try to bring back the past so we don’t forget in the future.”