Lone master of metal keeps the fire burning on blacksmith street

Sitting before a bright orange flame, Vietnamese blacksmith Nguyen Phuong Hung prods a fire pit with a long metal rod before he hammers, bends and contorts glowing steel into a giant drill bit.

Hung, who toils away in his tiny corner stall in downtown Hanoi, is the last remaining blacksmith on Hanoi's Lo Ren street, named after the masters of metal it was once known for.

But his kind of intimate knowledge of the forge is dying out.