Bull Sigh

I hear you, George. Laramie was one of the areas where we shopped for property. I've spent lots of time in Wyoming and love the state. We just couldn't find the kind of property we were looking for at that time. One of my hairbrained ideas is to build a small automated train that runs from outdoors to indoors (one track into the house, one into the shop) that can carry a rack of stainless rods. In the winter, you park the train in front of a parabolic reflector till it's hot as Hades, then it drives itself into the house giving you free heat. Well, the heat is free, the stainless would be pricey... In the hot part of the year, you park it at night on the N side of the shop till sunrise, then move it into an insulator, then move it inside when the shop gets hot. Choo-choo...

I used to teach classes in Louisiana and Texas, both near the Gulf coast. Being there in July made me feel like a lobster in boiling water. It's not a coincidence that I bought retirement property at 8500' elevation. I just don't deal well with high temps and humidity. Regardless, air movement and being able to exhaust the heat from a forge seems intuitively to be a key. In the cold part of the year, extracting that heat away the CO and CO2 also makes sense, as does having an air conditioned office and work space nearby. I'm a morning person and am usually moving by 3 to 4 AM and ready to roll by 5. Working in the cool morning (or evening) air is an option for the hot part of the year, then doing something else in the hot part of the day. I realize that conflicts with business operations for some folks.

So now I'm working through this thread, aware this work was 9 years ago. I also love ringing the bell when a project is done, even though I know that few things in life get finished, just that stage before the next stage is added on. You? Intense? Well, without intensity, many things get side-tracked or whither on the vine. I'm old now, turned 70 this year, so I have to treat intensity like it's a precious resource. For people that are turned off by intensity, they can find plenty of people to hang out with that don't threaten their insecurities. My Dad was a very capable boxer and taught me the fundamentals young. I did some Golden Gloves, but it was too formal for my taste. I liked martial arts better. I started rock climbing at age 5 but didn't get focused until college age. For the next 30 years it was climb to live and live to climb. I did all the forms and styles like snow, ice, big wall, alpine, soloing. Big rock climbs were the thing that moved me, where you look down on the tips of trees pointing at you from far below. I've done a vertical mile in a day of technical climbing a few times. These days, my gimpy knees keep me on easy ground. Racing motorcycles created most of the scar tissue. To this thread, I'm studying it from the organizational perspective. A demo trailer approach forces space efficiency. I want to have a home forge that is large enough to do the work but is well thought out so that space isn't wasted. As I look towards the eventual final sunset, I want to compact down my footprint. 11 months ago, my Dad passed and he had a big, beautiful home. I spent 2 months there sorting stuff, taking some but giving away most to the younger generations and it made me realize how we accumulate stuff, stick it in a corner and forget about it. I want to give my kids a far easier cleanup.

A parent can try endlessly to teach, but ultimately, kids learn from their own experiences. It's not easy to see your kids learn the hard way, but trust is a 2 way street. I bought a Winchester 22 rifle at Montgomery Wards at 8. My Dad was not worried at all, nor was Mom. Rather than bringing home rabbit or squirrel, they would rather it be a few bass or bluegill.

Better living through chemistry... Smithing at 8 is amazing! I'll do what I can to assist on your gyrocopter. I have not looked at material availability lately. For years, the military took nearly all of it. A mechanical engineer is good to know on the design side. Having a Forged In Fire test-it-till-it-breaks approach is worthwhile to find the failure mode versus design aspect.

I did, in fact, pop some corn, LOL. My son was the catalyst for our dream forge. I got him and his brother hands-on with tools when they were barely able to walk. I got them little cordless drills, hammers, etc. My dad was a talented carpenter and enlisted me at a young age to help cut plywood on the table saw and stuff like that, so I learned to value how projects take shape - that 3-D form thing when walls go up, then roofs and all that. Dad was a problem solver because he did so much work alone or with limited help. I was reminded of that mind set many times in reading your thread. Difficult problems require thought up front, and often reiteration to reach the correct solution. That cycle is what motivates me, because I'm not naturally creative and only get there from a situational push. Back to my sons... I got them pocket knives when they were 3 or 4 years old and used it as a way to instill proper tool use, safety, first aid, etc. Our friends told me what a mistake it was to put them in the path of danger but I saw the 180 view of starting kids young by showing trust and educating away most of the risk. My younger son latched on to the history of knives, swords, axes, etc., and he was about 10 years old when I got him a book about bladesmithing. He asked then if we could get a forge. It's taken too long to finally get there. I was educated as a chemist, but spent much of my career in materials science, including composites, ceramics, cermets, etc., and visited manufacturers that made components for the DOD (now DOW), so I saw production level casting of steel and alloys, drop forging, etc. Only in the last few years did I start to understand what is possible on the blacksmithing end for a small shop. It's pretty exciting, even if the learning required is pretty extensive. Learning keeps us going forward. Thank you for your reply. Once your school is up and running, I'll look into what classes you have available.

It took me a while, but I read this entire thread. It's been kind of a dizzying experience - so much to take in... This is the kind of info I came to this forum for, but I didn't really expect to find this kind of epic adventure. The typical forum thread on building something just sort of dissolves into a dead end, but the commitment here is amazing. Great photos, great commentary and community involvement. My own goals are to build some tiny fraction of your teaching center and leave it for my son to push forward. Great work, thank you.

Thank you for the welcome and the advice, Brian. "I don't know if you have a shop space or any equipment yet." I'm in-between. We have a house N of Denver that has my shop, but I'm disassembling it right now as we prepare to sell that house and move south. It will be a while before the dust settles. In terms of equipment, I have very good woodworking tools and minimal metalworking tools: inexpensive welding rig, good drill press, small band saw, single burner forge, 125 pound Cliff Carroll anvil, decent belt/disc sander, etc. I think the next buy will be an upgrade to the welder. I'm looking to rent some warehouse space as an interim forge while getting the house build done.

Nice build Pault17. Show more as you finish it off. I don't yet qualify as a newbie forger but I'm starting to get minimal equipment together and trying to build a forge plan in my mind. I have quite a bit of general construction and woodworking experience and some metal-working experience, but I expect that learning to forge will be a fairly heavy lift. I'll be using this thread for creative inspiration. I don't just want a forge but a broad scope custom fabrication shop for wood, metal, polymer and composite materials. I worked as a contractor for DOD projects such as the M1A1, F17, F22, etc., and would like to make custom axes and knives in my senior years.