The second Saturday of almost every month Jim Witte swaps his dry-erase board and textbooks and instead teaches his students with a steel hammer and anvil.
As the anvil rings with every blow of the hammer, Witte, associate professor of adult education, demonstrates how to shape scorching red pieces of metal.
But Witte has not always enjoyed the practical creativity of metalwork as he does now.
Before he started blacksmithing, he spent his spare time working as a woodcarver.
"I've always avoided metalwork because trees lived at one point," Witte said. "Metal never lived."
But after watching some smiths work during a Syrup Sopping Day at Loachapoka 10 years ago, he became fascinated with the craft of blacksmithing and picked up the tools of the trade.
"When you heat up metal and you bring it to a malleable temperature, it begins to take on a life of its own," Witte said. "And as the temperature changes and the color changes the metal's telling you different things about it. So you really begin to develop this understanding of what it's doing in order to make it transform into what you want it to be."
However, Witte emphasized blacksmithing is not to be confused with the work done by a farrier.
A farrier shoes livestock, while a blacksmith repairs or remodels metal objects.
Witte said he doesn't want to make a job of smithing.
Like woodworking, he just wants to do it for personal satisfaction.
"It's a hobby," he said. "I do not want to make it a job because then I'd have to work at it."
But Witte does occasionally take requests to make or remodel pieces. He said he'll create reproductions of antiques like wall fixtures and do repairs on utensils like kettles.
Witte said the aspect of being able to combine creativity and practicality is a reason he enjoys blacksmithing.
Preserving history is another reason Witte said he enjoys smithing.
"Blacksmithing is an old skill," Witte said, "and by doing that here as a hobby, we're kind of preserving that historical skill to pass it on to other people. If we don't do that, then that skill is lost."
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