From a distance, you can hear continuous sound from blacksmith's forges. This village is called "Min Kan" in Myaing Township, 25 miles from Pakokku of Magway Division.
In Min Kan Village, there are 250 households and their main livelihood is blacksmiths, which have been successfully carried out for generations.
Because of their skillful craftsmanship and quality products, Min Kan is also known as "Blacksmith Village". There are a total of 40 forges, producing quality farm implements such as knives sickles, adzes, pack-axes, mattocks ploughshares and so etc.

These farm implements produced in Min Kan are much in demands especially from farmers. Each forge employs 7 to 12 workers.
There are many steps in order to produce a good quality knife. First, the iron bar is hammered repeatedly. As the worker has to face the heat from the furnace and a lot of hard work is involve, you can truly say that it is one of the most tiresome Myanmar handicraft art.
The forge is filled with noise of hammering, as it takes a lot of hard work and hammering to produce a straight, smooth and sharp knife with handle. Different types of knives are produced for different purposes.

From June to December, knives are mostly produced. During that time, each forge produce 50 to 70 knives daily, and over 2,000 daily by the whole village. The second product is the sickle, the essential tool of farmers, which they use in harvest time.
The difference between the knife and the sickle is that the edge of the sickle has sharp teeth. The production process is very intricate and it requires a lot of workers. Not all the regions produce them because of this reason. Therefore, sickles are mostly produced in Min Kan village.
From June to November, 100 to 120 sickles are produced daily, by each forge while the entire village produces from 4,000 to 5,000 sickles a day.

Ploughshares are usually produced from April to June. It is the main farm-supporting implement used in ploughing and threshing. In producing the ploughshares, less workers are needed than to produce knives (or) sickles as there are, only a few steps in the process.
But the production rate is similar to that of the others. In order to avoid the heat, the villagers start their work in the early hours of the morning.
These farm implements are mainly distributed to Yangon, Bago and Ayeyarwaddy Divisions.
Myanmar is an agro-base nation and its economic growth mainly relies on the agriculture sector. Min Kan Village, well known as Blacksmith Village, is producing essential farm implements for the farmers of the country. In other words, you can truly say that this blacksmith village is rendering assistance for the development of agricultural industry of the State.