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Glenn has passed away. It is a sentence every friend, and especially son, hopes we never have to read. Glenn and I started IForgeIron over the kitchen table in 2001. I still remember we had sweet tea in the old Tupperware glasses. He had exhausted online blacksmithing resources, In his pursuit of knowledge, so he decided to start one. He always had a way find simple solutions to complex problems. Glenn did great things gradually. One step at a time. Over the twenty plus years that followed, he hosted Tuesday chats with Blacksmithing Blueprint releases. He spent hours each day by the forge and the phone answering questions. He made friends like you around the world. We became blacksmith archivists in an ever changing internet. IForgeIron is one of the oldest websites continually running. Glenn took pride in keeping it educational, family friendly, well moderated. Over the years, friends come and go. Glenn was always reverent in keeping us up to date in the Prayer Forum when friends departed. Now it is his turn. Ring the anvil in his honor. -- Glenn had three loves to life. His wife, Karen. His family. And his love of the craft. When Whitesmith, Glenn’s son and my younger brother, passed away in 2011 the community gave us two gifts. The first was a forged flower bouquet that sits in front of our fireplace. The second was two urns. Whitesmith rests in the first urn. Glenn now rests in the second urn. My mother wants to send thanks for the blacksmith who made the donation. If that was you, please message me. Steve Sells will be coordinating gifts made of metal for Karen. Contact him. I have a list of things to figure out in Glenn’s absence. Luckily I Forge Iron is not one of them. We had extensive talks this year about it. Our major goal is keeping it going for the next twenty years. We started a mini donation drive earlier this summer. Sadly, I was going to close it, but hadn’t heard back from him... Given the circumstances, I’ll leave it up for a while longer. If you’d like to help, please consider donating here. Thank you to the moderators who have keep the site clean. I’ve tried to speak to all. Thanks to all the donors big and small who keep the lights on. Finally, thanks to all the members who fill our home online. I'll try to add more later, but for now I'll end on this. As Glenn would say: Let someone know you love them.

Twitter is crashing, Reddit is dying, and IForgeIron is still here - we're antiques. Every few years, the internet changes and we ask for your spare change to keep going. It is that time again. Donate Here As always, I've already paid the bills, so we're at no threat of being shut off. But coming up this fall, we have some major decisions to make. $300/yr: Forum Software & Anti-Spam Services $260: A Bunch of dumb fees we pay for other software $100: We get to renew iforgeiron.net/org this time for a bunch of years. In classic fashion, we'll strike out each goal when achieved. The last donation drive two years ago in 2020 carried us through COVID-19's uncertainty. Thanks to you, we survived the pandemic. Should We Remove Ads? Glenn and I don't like the way ads are served on the site. Traditionally, they cover around half of our monthly bill, which is nice, but we pay the rest. These ads are generic, uninteresting, and annoying. You don't want that and neither do we. We have three options going forward: We remove ads all together. We partner with one of the equipment dealers. We become an equipment dealer. My father spends countless nights and hours on the phone talking to forum members. I countlessly worry about some dumb server box in someone else's closet. It has worked for all of us because you're reading this now. We've always viewed our blacksmithing expertise as education. First, we can remove ads all together. I can pick up extra hours at work and the donations can take us across that goal. Second, we can talk to the major suppliers. We tried about a decade ago, they were insulting and dismissive. The short of it is, we defended Uri Hofi's rights to his hammer design while they copied it. Third, we can become a dealer ourselves. Getting into ecommerce is messy. We'd like to avoid that unless you feel there is a need. Donors Will Get A Badge of Honor As always, we'll enable the badge of glory on your profile that tags you as a supporter. If you've donated and haven't gotten the glowing message, please message Glenn or me with your email address and we'll sort it out. Every donation goes directly into our bills. Any amount helps. Thank you for keeping us going for over two decades!

Consider this a 4K video blueprint. I went to Jymm Hoffman's shop and filmed how to forge a frying pan. Here's a 10 minute instruction video: Video contains some short scenes that may be objectionable to some viewers. Please forgive the PUBG references, our YouTube audience is much younger. What do you all think?

Mostly snakes. However a cricket kept me company with his chirps tonight.

Great photos, good stuff.

It's a rumor. I Forge Iron now pushes out over 2,500,000 pageviews a month, which requires more focus on the technical end. After last night, we'll be refocusing on the Blueprints soon.

This upgrade is straight forward. We're switching login systems. The Blueprints being offline are a another story. I'll post an update on the Blueprints soon. The advantage is one login. Also, you do not need to like us on Facebook. I put the banner up to remind people we are on there as well. I'll take it down in a few days. Everyone is affected.

I Forge Iron is expanding. As a result, we are changing the way we handle login authentication. We ask you check you account so we can fix any problems before the upgrade. Please make sure your login information is current. A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. One reason for this, is I Forge Iron now has a store and we'll be introducing an SSL (encryption). The upgrade, which will be rolled out soon, will allow users to login via email or username. Across multiple sites even. Members stuck as, "Awaiting validation" will be deleted. These are people who signed up, often spammers, but never confirmed their email address. Make sure your email address is correct! you may find your account is closed if not current

Cool.