Marc1

Well if they are on the old curriculum, they will tell you Australia is in Oceania. Australians would have a fit at such thought and ask where is Oceania You can always forge a kangaroo.

Spot on. Try Spain or Germany look up Kunstschmiede or Herreria Artistica on google or pinterest. Hundreds of ideas to make something representative. How about a figurine of Don Quijote plinking at the windmill.

Hand made not machine made. Look closer the bends are far from even. Happy Australia Day by the way !!!!!!!

Run away from such "customers" as far as you possibly can ... and then a mile further

Mm ... reminds me my time in a government office that investigated fraud. To learn and become proficient and have some results it would take a person a minimum of 2 years. Our small team of 10 had over 200 years of combined experience and had the best results in the country. Management and politicians dreamed at night to share our success and pretend it was their doing. So they deviced "innovation". Contracted a team of programmers to build a software platform to "help us". ... The problem was that the software team got paid to build something that only we could evaluate, yet our feedback went to the politicians who had a different agenda. The software as expected was a complete failure and any off the shelf product would have been better, and the perfect outcome would have been scrapping the lot and let us work. For 5 years we had the software producers that wanted to keep their job and so were not interested in outcome only in perpetuation, the politicians who wanted to have photo opportunities and pats on the back, and us who wanted the job done without interference. 3 different groups with different motivation pretending to work together for a common goal that wasn't. one team trying to recover taxpayers money and two teams trying desperately to find ways to toss the money up in the air ... I do miss that job

Do they sell anvils in the Kingdom of Didd?

Interesting how the meaning of the names match the rank. Not a prank is it?

Ha ha, so true. I also though the question was rather funny. It was made by a guy, or a lady, most likely hot ... (no that is not what I meant) ... guessing even more ... heated with an oxy torch and bent in a vice ... was he/she a blacksmith? I think he was, and he did it away from his workshop in the field and then kept it as a souvenir. Also he was left handed Now that was a stretch, but as likely as any other guess.

You got me ... I don't know what it says ... a, l, ? ... alice? I like it anyway. never done any signs or lettering that way. Why don't you try knots? There is a guy here that does knots sculptures that look terrific. PS I got my boat from South Carolina

That unit looks a lot like one offered by Changzhou Paipu Technology Co., Ltd in Jiansu Mainland China. Very cheap and not necessarily bad. Unless they spent a lot on quality control, it is the luck of the draw.

I wouldn't try to label the problem. In fact I wouldn't even call it a problem. Rather a result of how we think and act. An overwhelming number of to do task will invariably look daunting and we will therefore avoid the lot. I tend to accumulate task in the to do list and in my case, the only way I can overcome all of them is by doing one at the time and don't worry about the others. Another thing I keep at the forefront of my consciousness is that I am neither infallible nor omnipotent and so, I delegate the unpleasant tasks as much as possible, sell what I don't need or haven't used for 2 years, and leave enough time aside for leisure. Works for me ... now about my wife ...

I agree with cotton and wool. I once burned a one foot hole in a flannel shirt that was not cotton but some synthetic rubbish. Escaped injury but it was not fun. One issue I have is with my apron. I use one from Forg-Aprons that I had custom split at the front in order to be able to hold stock between my legs. It's all good for forging but if I need to weld something I find that a section of my upper chest get's UV exposure. Sure I can swap aprons with the welding one that is much higher but it's a bother. May be I need to rivet a flap at the front of my welding helmet. As far as scale in my shoes. I always wear leggers.

Yes, those nostrils and whiskers can sort of be in the way. Good for dogsturing the stock though.

красивая работ детали сборки ? beautiful artwork Assembly details?

Nice hanging scale. I like them. Have a set hanging in the shop just because it was there when I bought the house and never moved it. I use it sometimes. Value? $30

You can do it either way but drawing out is easier. if you had stock that is only slightly undersized, then may be upsetting is easier. Try both ways and then post some photos

Absolutely agree! A brief history of "our" smithy story. My father owned an antique shop. A customer came in with a photo of a forged bed head and asked if he could find something like it. My father told her he would research it. He went out to find a blacksmith with the talent to make it. Found and old italian smith who made it for him. He paid 100 for it and sold it for 1000. Soon he hired a shop and a few blacksmith to work for him and started to make things for his antique shop. By far the beds were the most sought after item and the shop started a craze that lasted two decades. The scarcity of real blacksmith that could see the difference between a forged scroll and a piece of steel contorted by a machine kept the business going for a very long time and the copycat, way back in the distance. Can this business strategy be reproduced today? Sure, if you can reproduce all the circumstances it will work ... therefore the answer in most cases will be no. Our profit margin in those days was astronomical. Material was dirt cheap, wages just as cheap, and no competition meant we could charge what we wanted. 1000% profit margin was the normand we employed the few true artist blacksmith still alive in the region. I started to work in the smithy at age 15 half true the busy times. When I turned 25 two of the old masters had passed away, a third had retired due to ill health and I got married and moved out to pursue other interest. There has never been any other shop able or willing to make anything similar to what we did. It was the sixties and seventies.

To be fair to all sides of the argument, business strategies are like navels ... everyone has one. From the little I now about the US, clearly your country is not uniform and each state and within each state each region has different markets and what works for one does not for the other. If there was one simple business strategy proven to work everywhere for everyone, it would probably be etched in stone and set on a pillar in a public place. I tried to steer the discussion towards the business of making money. Only because it is a favorite topic of mine. Why some people have difficulties making money and why others find it so easy. It is a line of debate that can become uncomfortable and most people get very defensive, however it can be an area of growth that is neglected in our education and probably the reason fo a lot of failure and frustration. What is the most efficient vehicle to make money is a different topic altogether. We assume that in a blacksmith forum, the idea is how to make money blacksmithing or at least with some form of metalwork. The question is moot in my opinion for the reasons given above. It may work in your corner of the woods but not in mine, so there are no formulas for success. In my view from where I sit, one way to make some money with blacksmithing is making artistic work that can be on public display. if you have the connections to sell your artform to councils, state governments or federal government, you have a good chance to make something with your hand that has a lot of added value and cash it in. Honestly there are easier ways to make money and keep blacksmithing as a hobby. if you need to make the hobby pay its way ... there is always ebay.

I had a look at some YT videos of making a rose and most had no thorn and the one that did, had them the wrong way ...

Vry nice .... one observation ... aren't roses thorns the other way around, pointing downwards?

Good post Beaudry. And good answers Charles et al, however you are missing the point. It does not matter if it is Ok to be rich or if it is evil/ immoral/ unpopular/ sinful. That is a moral debate. The question was asked how to price one's work. It is a classic difficulty and I am trying to show one of the main reasons ... yes there are other reasons. When you sell your work or your time, you do so to make a profit or to get paid wages. if you believe that making profit is immoral or that having high wages is reprehensible, your business is doomed. It's as simple as that. i am trying to point out that the vast majority of people have some form of glass ceiling inbuilt in their mind, and that ceiling is dictating without them knowing what they "can" earn and what they "shouldn't" earn. The most interesting part is when one challenges this beliefs, and finds that they are either vehemently denied or explained away with some popular logic. Yet the fact remains that the limiting belief is there and is stopping one from prospering every time he or she needs to set a price for something, or quote an hourly rate.

"Sociopathic corporations" ... "Don't believe in money system" ... "Buying stuff they don't need" ... "So called professionals, expensive parasites" ... this and many other of your thoughts in the thread, are but the manifestation of what you believe sets you apart from those bad rich. Nothing wrong with believing anything you wish, not a value judgement. However ... and this is the bit that matters, if you adopt that line of thought, you can not at the same time price your work or steer your business in a way that will make you prosper. You can not because your values will stop you. Your belief system will stop you or you will turn into what you believe to be bad. Rich are bad and I don't want to turn into one of those bad parasitic sociopathic people I hate. A natural and popular train of thought, result of lifelong conditioning. Clearly a set of values that is working against you ... generally speaking of course

I like a different definition for money ... it is the means by which a clever person invoices another.

There is a reason why a lot of tradesman and artists have difficulties with money. Be it charging the right price for their work or being organised with their money. The reason is somewhat unpalatable and goes at the root of our own character. "Money stinks", "money is at the root of all evil", "talking about money is rude", and a million more stereotypes of this nature are engrained in many cultures. Somehow we have absorbed this idea that interest in money making, profits and prosperity is akin to greed and is evil and should be avoided. May be not in those words, may be not even consciously but it is there at every turn. I used to like the series of the detective "Columbo". The murderer was always the one dressed in a suit, respectful and with lots of money. The artist and the tradesman who sell their product or time generally to others who have more money than themselves (although not always so), fall for this stereotype without knowing it most time than not. I used to be invited to speak at a personal development course and their target audience was middle class businessman. Many times I ask the following question: What is a good sum for a man to earn a year? The audience would go around in circles with ... well depends what he does, qualifications etc etc. I let them run with that for a while. Then I would say ... So if a person earns $50k a year, is that OK? Sure, yes, of course, nothing wrong was the invariable answer. (Note, I did not say what this person supposedly did) I would up this sum at 50k intervals and lose supporters in droves with every 50K. By the time I was at $200k only a few would find the sum palatable. At that point I would jump to $500k only to hear murmurations all around, and when I said $1mil, the room would explode in protest. No one is worth that much! outrageous! .. that is pure greed! and so on. What happened? The "anti values", that is alleged values that actually work against you ... in each of the members of the audience kicked in, at different intervals, but they invariably did in time. It is evil to earn "too much money", and it is extremely easy to tease this anti values out of anyone. We grow up in a home where money is not a topic of discussion, go to a school that does not teach how to make money, may even have a university degree yet no one told you how to make money. Money is dirty. I once asked a preacher after a fierce sermon against all those rich people, and I asked him ... How did God bless Salomon? With prosperity and riches right? If that is so bad, why didn't God make him poor and destitute? There are scores of misinterpretations in everyday life and even in religion that have created generations of money illiterate, that somehow think that not knowing anything about money is cool and the way to be, and that the opposite is a demonstration of greed, perhaps a sick obsession of sort. And so when it comes to charge for you hard earned artistic talent and your sweat for those hours of work, you don't know what is the right price. You wouldn't hesitate to pay for a welding course yet a business strategy is not on the cards. And it is not your fault. To find those pesky anti-values, understand them and replace them with some that actually serve you is not easy. Yet the first step is acknowledging that something is wrong if we consider money evil yet need an ever increasing amount of this evil to have a decent and prosperous life. Homework: Read "As a man thinketh" by James Allen. ...

I am curious about this frozen soil situation, never lived in that sort of climate. Is it really impossible to dig a hole even using a fencing bar? What about an auger attachment to a tractor? Only asking not suggesting the OP should do this