Black Fox Metalcraft Blog

What is GSPR and how does it affect you?

Prior to 2016, I'd say exports to the EU made up 10% of our sales. As a young business we found it exciting to be selling abroad, and were proud to...

Teaching our 4 year old daughters to Weld

Happy 2025 to all our customers and blog subscribers! The year started with David and I taking our 4 year old twins Ada and Imogen down to the work...

How can designers protect their work online?

I honestly cannot remember now how we came to discover that a UK based company had stolen four of our weathervane designs nearly ten years ago. We'...

Why is Black Friday damaging to small crafts businesses?

What is Black Friday and how did it start? If you're anything like me, your inbox is probably filling up with dozens or even hundreds of emails fro...

Why do Inns and Public House Have Iron Signs

Wrought iron and metal signage is a common sight on farms not just because of the intricate craftwork that goes into their construction or how beau...

The golden age of Signwriting

By the mid 18th century, many cities such as Glasgow and London banned swinging shop signs, as their size had escalated to the point where they wer...

How can women in the UK get into Blacksmithing?

Though I went to an academically quite good school, there was absolutely no opportunity to try anything practical like blacksmithing, and metalwork...

Tree Planting

In march this year we planted 110 cell grown trees on the plot of land where we will eventually be building our straw bale home and new workshop fo...

Why does it take 4 weeks to produce a weathervane?

All of the weathervanes, signs and other metalwork you see on this website are designed here in the Scottish borders. Sometimes i draw in a sketchb...

Why our weathervanes and hanging signs are TIG welded

TIG stands for Tungsten Inert Gas. Tungsten refers to the non consumable electrode within the torch. Inert gas just means a gas that doesn't react ...

Custom Weathervane Fixings

Certainly not the most exciting blog post I've ever written, but actually a pretty important one. Fixing your weathervane in the best possible way ...

Why are Black Fox weathervanes powdercoated?

I wanted to write a series of blog posts explaning the technical side of creating weathervanes and swinging signs, so our customers know exactly wh...