Richard Perkins and blacksmith Malcolm Johnson demonstrate handcrafted broadforks at New Timber Forge. Each is individually forged with a 3 mil steel box frame and tines spaced 18 inches apart, designed for 75cm beds. They're sold without handles so you can fit your preferred length.
Questions this video answers
About 40–45 degrees.
About 18 inches between the points and about 20 inches overall (sized for 30 in / 75 cm beds).
"3 mil" cross section steel (quoted from the speaker).
They are sent without handles so users can fit handles of the preferred length.
Chapters
So we're at the forge of Malcolm Johnson, who makes these awesome broadforks at New Timber Forge. We're in the South Downs, just north of Brighton somewhere. I used to live and I particularly wanted to come and see the forge and pick these up because I've tried a lot of broad forks and in my opinion these are the best I've seen and worked with. So that's why we wanted to stock them. These are all individually forged points and then hardened and tempered and weld it onto these frames. And there's two main reasons I love this sport. One is the angle of the tines, which means this is an incredibly ergonomic tool. It's operated to about 40, 45 degrees, which means you're never using your body. And it's a nice heavy tool. It's not too heavy, so it's the weight of the tool that's actually doing the work for you. And the width of the tool is just perfect for 30 inch beds or 75 centimeter beds that we all work with because it's about 18 inches between the actual points and about 20 inches wide. So it really works perfectly in a 30 inch bed. And I really love the quality of the work that Malcolm does. He's actually a fine piece blacksmith and doesn't actually just make board for. He's mostly excited about making creative things at the forge here. But we're really happy to be able to pass some of these on to you. These are the only ball forks that we use at the farm and we have a few. We're going to be sending them out without handles, both to reduce the shipping cost, but to allow you to put the right length of handle on for you. I like a handle up to the middle of my chest, but that's different for different people. And so there'll be some links below the video where you can find handles for yourself.
So this is built with 3 mil cross section steel, which goes. If you have a look here, you see it's a straight on box section which allows you to put the handle right down and avoids any moisture building up into the actual framework. And then all of the tines are welded on on the front side having been drilled through and very tightly fitted on the backside, which means the whole box section is supporting this. There's really that time angle that makes these such an ergonomically perfect board fork in my mind. And you'll see that they're very nicely lined up.
