Bowling Green, Va. --
BOWLING GREEN While a fast-moving downpour sent thousands of boys scrambling to their camps yesterday, others braved the much-needed rain and stayed in line along Merit Badge Midway in hopes of getting closer to achieving Eagle Scout status.
Boy Scouts need at least 21 merit badges, in addition to completion of a service project and other leadership requirements, to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout.
The 2010 National Scout Jamboree offers expert instruction in disciplines that might not be available to Scouts back home. Merit badges range from geology to scuba diving to pioneering.
Metalworking is one of the more traditional trades on the Merit Badge Midway, and although it has to compete with such modern activities as snorkeling, the line never grows short.
"These guys are trained professionals, where some of the counselors at other merit badges are reading from books," said Jeremy Verheyden, 16, of Portland, Ore.
Verheyden and troopmate Jeremy Linch, 13, were timid at first when approaching the 3,000-degree forge, but they enjoyed learning basic foundry skills from Newport News scoutmaster Andrew Hagemann.
"You can't do this at most summer camps," Linch said. "I like working with my hands, and you're working with professionals."
Hagemann is one of those professionals. Though he specializes in blacksmithing, he also wrote the current "little book" on the metalworking merit badge.
Each merit badge has a short book written by an expert in the field. At this Jamboree, Scouts can work toward a metalworking merit badge in three of the book's four skills: foundry, blacksmithing and tinsmithing, all of which have the boys working with extremely hot metals in solid and liquid forms.
An expert is not on hand this year to teach the fourth skill, silversmithing.
"You get instant gratification when you watch what's going on," Hagemann said. "Every little boy likes to play with fire.
"I think there's something primitive, primal, that without even knowing it, you're connecting back into the day of the earliest technology."
Hagemann, a NASA engineer, first took up blacksmithing in 1974 after serving in the Navy. He became an Eagle Scout in 1969 and believes the instruction for merit badges has improved dramatically since then.
Nicolas Gruenbeck, 16, of Costa Mesa, Calif., got acquainted with blacksmithing last year during a trip to Philmont, N.M., at the Boy Scouts of America's premier adventure base. Gruenbeck said metalworking doesn't run in his family, but the Jamboree has furthered his desire to pursue a career in blacksmithing.
"I really enjoy the hard labor of it," Gruenbeck said. "It's interesting. Not a lot of people do it nowadays, and it's a rare thing to find."
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Elsewhere yesterday: A highlight of Day 4 included a visit from NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who were introduced to a thousand cheering Scouts.
The drivers became patients in a first-aid contest in which Order of the Arrow Scouts were timed in setting splints on Gordon's and Earnhardt's limbs.
Last night, Scouts were to attempt to set a Guinness world record for the most people yo-yoing at the same time. Check TimesDispatch.com for updates on the record.