Chuck, you know it's like a lot of other arts. When you don't know nothin', you don't notice nothin'. Something I used to hear from a couple of Scandinavian master carpenters I labored for in my youth. Now that I know just a little bit more than nothin' I really get more and more out of "lessons" or just watching an experienced smith work. At first all you notice is a guy hitting a piece of iron with a hammer. Then you notice what color it was when it came out and went back into the forge. Next time you notice his stance with the anvil (sometimes I swear he's makin' love to that thing :-). Another time you notice the angle of the hammer in relation to the hot steel in relation to the anvil face. I've got a list of mental notes of "moves" that I want to watch some guys make. For instance, simply drawing a point for a steak turner. At the hammer in, I watched a couple of guys do the whole thing in one or "maybe" two heats. I can burn up a good three, four, even five heats to pull a satisfactory tapered point on a piece of 3/8 or 1/2 square. 'Course Mike does it for a living so is generally pretty happy to instruct by the time I get there as he's already put in a 10+hr day at the forge or out in the sun. Though he did make me a slot chisel and two hammer eye drifts while I was forging the head for the tomahawk (dang it I didn't get to watch). Anyway, gotta get ready to go on vacation now. Sorry for my long posts, not to mention some of the worlds longest paragraphs (I didn't major in english:-). It's a blessing and a curse to be able to type 60 words per minute.
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