George N. M.

Chapters 50-51 of the Rule of St. Benedict (6th century), with which King Alfred would have been familiar, and which established the rules governing the medieval Benedictine monasteries, instructed that monks who were working in the fields or doing other work at times of prayer were still in communion with God through their work. Basically, "work is prayer." "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Actually, an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. A generalist knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything.

Dear Marc, Wow! This is one of the few times where I have to stop and ask myself "Am I speaking the same language as the other person?" It seems that communication is not happening. And this is someone who, I assume, has the same first language as I do, even though he is in a different hemisphere. I don't think that Ozian and Yank English is that different. We will just have to agree to disagree about whether money and economic success is perceived by most people, consciously or unconsciously, is "good" or "bad." That said, I think we can agree that people will often sabotage themselves and make decisions which, from the outside, are not in their best interests. This, in my opinion, can derive from a lot of factors, psychological, emotional, cultural, etc.. This can occur in relationships. We have all seen people sabotage their own relationships for no cognizable reason. Sometimes they may think on some deep psychological level that "This person is too good for me" or "I'm not good enough for this person" or "I can't live up to this person's expectations." I have seen it happen in educational situations because of cultural reasons. At one time I lived near a US Native American reservation and had a friend who taught on the rez. She told me that there was a strong cultural pressure not to do well in school because if you did you were and "Apple Indian" (Red on the outside, white on the inside.) This, I think we will agree, can happen in economic situations where someone, on some level, for whatever reason, does not want to be as successful as they could be. Besides your postulate of "rich=bad, poor=good" there may be reasons that arise from psychological and social reasons. People with more letters after their name than I have can speak to all the possible reasons but, basically, poor, flawed humans, which we all are, can be their own worst enemies in a lot of areas. And just to bring this discussion back to something nearer to how it all started is that I agree with much of what Exo313 says about the conflicting roles craft, artistry, business, and trade play is a good way to look at the competing demands of any craft or profession. Most of us are a mix of all those and not in equal proportions. The artistic person has to reach to be successful and the business or trade oriented person has to reach to be artistic. None is inherently good or bad but probably some of all are needed to be successful in the world. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I got tired of small people coming to my booth and sadly asking, "Do you have anything for a dollar?" (Probably having been given $1 by their parents to allow them to "shop.") So, I started making mini-swords by flattening double headed construction nails. On some I will drill a hole for a jump ring so that it can be worn as a pendant. Your can also curve the blade to make it look more like a pirate cutlass (or a saber). I have a sign on them saying "$1 for folk 12 years old or under, $2.50 for all others." They can also be given away to anyone you find worthy. If a parent buys something fairly substantial it is nice to throw in a little extra for the small members of the family. All good karma.

Dear Marc1, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree with most of what you say. I do not think that most children in western civilization are taught that the rich are evil or that it is somehow tainted or wrong to earn too much money. Economic success is often admired and held up as a goal to strive for. Look at the adulation in the tabloids or on TV or the internet of the megarich, most of it, IMO, undeserved, but there are people who buy and watch and justify the publishing of this sort. That said, I think most people have an inherent sense of "fairness" and are offended by people making a large amount of money that is not commensurate with their accomplishments. That is why people who are rich by inherited wealth are derided. They are wealthy by accident of birth, not by any accomplishment of their own. I think most people would agree that there is something flawed in our economic system where athletes are paid large sums to play games at an elite level and teachers, first responders, and the military are compensated at much lower levels. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are looked up to by many more people than those who think them villains. Hard core socialists or communists may consider the rich evil and the poor virtuous but in the 21st century in most western societies they are a very small minority. There is a strong belief amongst many people that poverty is the wage of sloth and if the poor would just pull up their socks and get to work they would not be poor any more. The idea of intelligence, culture, lack of opportunity, education, etc. never comes into it. There were many voters in the 2016 US elections who thought that because a candidate was rich and successful he was qualified for high office just because of that. I grew up in a blue collar family and was never taught that it was bad to be too economically successful. My father, who had lived through the depression, could never understand why I would not make getting the highest possible paycheck the highest priority in my life and career choices. To him all else was secondary to the amount of the paycheck. Finally, a sad as it may be, the basic measurement of how successful a person is is based on their economic worth. How happy they are, how good a spouse or parent, how much they have contributed to society only comes into it as secondary factors. If person A has accumulated more dollars, pounds, euros, or yen than person B then- A is considered more successful than B. This discussion has wandered far. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Of course, a generalist is someone who learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. It has been my experience that many people in various trades and professions founder on the necessities and economics of business. I have seen this happen to doctors, attorneys, plumbers. blacksmiths, mechanics, etc.. They start out working for someone else who charges $X for their time but they are only paid a fraction of X for their salary or hourly wage. After a while of that they say that they can hang out a shingle and get all of the X for themselves. When they do that they realize that the extra portion of X has to go for rent, insurance, materials, etc.. Also, because they are trained in their craft or profession and that is what they love doing they do not like doing the grunt work of running a business and are not good at it or motivated to do it. And, if they hire anyone to help them they are now a "boss" and have all the paperwork, taxes, and brain damage that brings with it. Pretty soon, even if they are successful they are a business person and are doing little of the craft or profession that they love. Often, they go back to working for someone else so that they do not have all the headaches being a business person brings. They are happy to settle for the fraction of X they are being paid and think it cheap payment not to have to do all that terrible business stuff. That is why I always suggest to anyone on this board who is inquiring about opening a blacksmithing business that they take a very hard look at what running a successful business takes and whether they honestly think they have the skills and temperment to do it. It can be a daunting task and is not for everyone. Don't quit the day job until you are sure you can. Also, many small business people do not understand the necessity of getting at least partially paid up front and end up getting stiffed. Don't deliver until the check clears. If a customer balks at putting down a 50% deposit before work and materials you don't need that job. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Just a couple of thoughts: If you are going to use live steam make sure that you have a long talk with whoever regulates boilers and pressure vessels in your area. In CO it is the state but there may be local regulatory agencies in other areas. This is important for both legal and safety issues. Boiler explosions used to be a fairly common occurrence and not fun ones. Also, if you are running a machine designed for steam power with compressed air think seriously about introducing some water into the system to keep the various glands and packing from drying out. They were designed for a wet environment and may not like a dry source of pressure. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Thomas: True enough but I can get new springs at the hardware store for less than a dollar. Maybe I am just not used to them but tong clips or rings have, on the few times I have tried them, seemed more awkward to use than a vicegrip. It may just be how we learned and what we are used to. I will say that an advantage to tongs is that they never get too hot to the touch. Vicegrips, if they are too close to the fire, need an occasional cooling off in the slack tub. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

As background to my question let me say that I am a self taught smith and never had a master or even another smith to guide me until I had been forging for a dozen or more years. When I started I realized that I needed something to hold metal to keep from burning my hand with transferred heat. So, I went to my tool box and got out a pair of vicegrip pliers. They worked fine and in different sizes were my standard hot metal grabbing tool. It wasn't until I had been blacksmithing for some years that I acquired a pair of tongs. They struck me as working OK but I had to keep pressure on the reins to keep from dropping stuff. Now, I use both depending on the project but I still tend toward locking pliers (vicegrips), particularly for small size pieces of metal. I have been told that locking pliers were invented by a Nebraska smith in the early years of the 20th century who was tired of dropping hot metal. So, what does anyone think about the advantages of using either locking pliers or tongs. It strikes me that tongs with specialized jaws work better for a special shape, e.g. holding the head end of a railroad spike, while locking pliers are better than simple flat jawed tongs for general work. I will give you that tongs allow quicker adjustment of the geometry of holding device and work piece while a locking pliers gives a more positive pressure and less tendency to drop the work piece either by relaxing your grip or knocking it out of the jaws while striking. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

It's pretty hard to date tongs unless you have some sort of context. Tongs haven't changed much in thousands of years. If you can determine that they are wrought iron you can probably say confidently that they are pre-20th century but not much more. Tongs with certain jaw shapes associated with certain uses might be dated to those uses. I always like to put old tools back into use, it seems to me that is the right karma, but if there is a chance of damaging them with repairs or use it is time to honorably retire them "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I have always wanted an anvil shaped helium balloon to fly over my booth at fairs.

So, if I am following Rockstar's logic, and I think he has some very valid points, if you want to sell "Art" to the elite market you should stay with that market and not do mere utilitarian craft. If you have just sold a customer elite "Art" for $Xk you should not be seen selling bottle openers and dinner triangles at the craft fair because it will diminish your reputation in the elite market. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I assume that the sphere was commercially manufactured. Correct? Do you know what its original purpose was or did you just go down to Spheres R Us and get one of the correct diameter?

Of what is the red ball made? It seems very appropriate for the holiday season. The spiral piece around red sphere looks like the track of an orbiting body to me.

Marc1, you have hit on the real issue that I was trying to make. IMO there are too many people who call themselves artists who are only trying to shock and disgust. If I dump a pile of guts on a photo of (name your least favorite public figure) it is NOT art, it is a pile of guts on a photo, no more, no less. Fortunately, economics enters here. There are few folk who will pay good money for something that is only disgusting or shocking to be seen in their homes and offices every day. And the stereotype of artists being emotionally dysfunctional has some truth in it. Curiously, creativity and emotional turmoil seem to often be linked.

The problem I have with the definition of art as being something which elicits an emotion in the viewer is that I have a hard time saying that something results in a reaction of disgust or hate or revulsion as being "art." A positive reaction to beauty or something which makes you thoughtful can IMO be art but not something which brings out a negative reaction. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Thomas, as is his wont, has distilled things down to the basics in a few sentences. He has expressed the essence of the creative-real world interface. If all artist blacksmiths were financially independent we would all do what gave us joy and never mind the financial value we would gain from it. If we loved making widgets we'd make them all day and give them all away to anyone we met. If all we were concerned with was financial reward we would only make things that we could sell for the highest price and creative joy and happiness would not play any part. Perhaps that answers my initial question at the start of this thread. Maybe "Art" is that which is created out of the desire to create with no consideration of financial return. If someone wants to buy it, fine, but it was made for other reasons. If it never sells, that is fine too because it accomplished its purpose by being brought into existence.

Another observation on the differences between girls and boys: Boys do sound effects, girls do dialog. If you give a little boy two rocks he will bang them together saying, "Bang!" "Koosh" "Boom" "Pow" and other suitable sounds. Give the same two rocks to a little girl and she will have them talking to each other and will come up with an involved backstory for them. In the 90s a friend was going to raise her son in a nonviolent way with no toy guns or other "violent" toys. She did her best until one day at breakfast her son, about age 4, bit his toast into the shape of a gun and started "shooting" things in the kitchen with it. At that point the mother bowed to reality. The son, now in his late 20s, is an avid Wyoming hunter who puts lots of meat in the freezer every fall. "Vive la difference!"

i think that the real trick is figuring out how much offset you should set into the teeth. I'm sure that ice needs a different kerf width than wood or metal. You might visit some museums and see if you can make some measurements on preserved ice saws. There should be a reasonable number left in Maine. For all that I know there may be extant jigs for setting ice saw teeth. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Dear Turbo Dog, I am in the process of moving to Laramie. Once I get my shop set up you are welcome to come over and pound hot iron. You may be surprised how hard super quench will harden RR spikes. Did you pick them up along the old Laramie, Foxpark, and Western RR to Centennial and Walden, CO? When coal furnaces and stoves were common every child knew what clinkers were because they had to haul them out. Now, the term is about as common as buggy whip terms. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Dear Thomas, Thank you. That is very cool. I know that Wrights are good anvils and it has served me well over the years. And being an anglophile having a UK made anvil is all the sweeter. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Also, consider what shapes you will need in a swage block for whatever type of smithing you will be doing and then design it appropriately. For example, some smiths might use graduated hemispherical shapes for different sized bowls of ladles, others not so much. I've always thought that many of the round and square shapes in the face of a "standard" swage black were there for "industrial" smithing. If you are repairing steam engines and similar they have a use but for lighter smithing maybe they will never be used.

Dear Peppie, No, a 120 degree shape will give you a "flat" triangular shape. The internal angles of an equilateral triangle equal 180 degrees. Hence, each angle equals 60 degrees. Funny how that high school geometry comes back in useful ways. Look at a triangular file for confirmation. "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I checked the bottom of the anvil and it is completely flat with an approximately 1 inch by 1.5 inch vertical hole extending up into the middle of the anvil. I postulate a handling hole. No markings that I can see or feel on the bottom. Yes, there is a shelf on the ends of the base for mounting angle irons (see attached photo). There are what I assume are 2 handling indentations on the sides of the anvil (see 3d photo above) which I have always interpreted as for being where large tongs would attach when the anvil is upside down during manufacturing.

Thomas, I will check tomorrow. G.