Pendray, Al
Working out of a small blacksmithing shop in Williston, Florida, Al Pendray (1937 - 2017) pushed the limits of metallurgy. In the course of a 50-year career as a farrier, Al Pendray shod, by his estimation, some 250,000 horses. Among those were five winners of the Kentucky Derby, and several dozen others that placed in a Triple Crown race. During that time, Pendray parlayed his skills at the anvil into a side career as a custom knifemaker, eventually earning the hard-won title of Master Bladesmith. Armed with those skills, and many years of patient tinkering, failure, and still more tinkering, Pendray started making tiny breakthroughs in an extremely elusive quest: to become the first man in the modern world to recreate Persia’s long-lost method of making steel called “Wootz.” Inducted into the ABS Bladesmithing Hall of Fame in 2003.
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