Hey everyone, Jason McDonald, 29, Corning, NY. After a month of reading the wealth of information here, I figured it was time to introduce myself. I'm just getting started in blacksmithing. What drew me to it was the passions for old tools, and working with my hands. I've spent my adult life working primarily in manufacturing (forming semi molten glass for a living for the last 3 years). After stumbling across this site and others, I started looking more deeply into blacksmithing and the only way I know to describe it was that a fire was sparked inside me that has started becoming a full blown obsession, sometimes to my fiance's dismay, :-). I built myself a charcoal forge out of firebrick and a cast iron cess pool grate. I found myself a chunk of rail road track that I bedded in a bucket of sand, probably will mount it in concrete at some point this weekend as I'm not how well the sand will work. I even stumbled across a completely intact, albeit rusty, 50# post vice at the local scrapyard!
Thank you to all the experienced smiths on here for being willing to share your knowledge for betterment of the craft and so that others like myself may learn and perhaps someday pass the knowledge on in similar fashion.
Jason