rockstar.esq

It's difficult to give a concise answer because there are factors that favor one material over the other. One of the least difficult ways to approximate the difference in your area is to visit a home center that sells a variety of sheds. In most cases, the home center won't bother to even stock a shed that isn't appropriate for the local conditions and codes. Be sure to look at things that are sized appropriately. Economies of scale play a huge role when it comes to dimensional thresholds. A Shed that's 15% larger might cost equal to one that's 50% larger simply because the bigger one uses standard sized panels.

Steve, You're in a difficult position. One thing to consider is that you have quite a bit to offer this person beyond legal trouble. If you offered to help them to register under a different name and trademark, it might feel like they're gaining something. That may be less expensive than retaining a qualified lawyer. Even if it failed to make a difference, I would think as a peace-making gesture, it would read well in court. You might also offer to share some insights into the world of professional bladesmithing. Experts sometimes assume that their knowledge is common sense. This person stumbled into a world of hurt with a someone they might want to emulate. Just getting started, they might not be able to appreciate the accumulated struggles that you've overcome to build your business. I've benefited from the generous instruction of experts who delivered their lessons in a very grumpy way. Many of today's youth have no experiences like that and so feel entirely justified in dismissing anyone they deem as "mean". For what it's worth, many of these kids were taught to avoid taking responsibility. I've had limited success characterizing the entire conflict as a "misunderstanding" to achieve peace with them. "Sorry for misunderstanding" is about as close as some of them will get to acknowledging their mistakes.

Perhaps it's time for the court of public opinion? Many corporate giants have been moved to action by a viral campaign.

Frosty, Your points are well made, and appreciated. "Tunnel vision" is definitely less derogatory than "nerding out", and you're right, I'm certainly guilty of both on this topic. I think the reason I chose "nerding out" is because on some level, the expert knows they're sacrificing social conventions when they intentionally avoid giving a straightforward answer to their patron. There will always be "expert" reasons for this evasion, mostly summing up to degrees of "truth". The NASA engineers in my last post literally "showed their work". Perhaps they did this believing that the language of mathematics would convey an incontrovertible truth. From the bystanders point of view, the experts behavior appears self-serving, evasive, elitist, and arbitrarily difficult. The resulting animosity is why experts get labeled "nerds". Everyone involved is losing something.

Anvil, Thank you for your kind, and thoughtful comments. I can see where you're coming from, and it's pretty clear that I could have phrased a few things better. The "Chicken and egg" thing as it pertains to generating a following, by being the best, is where craft crosses over into promotion. History is full of celebrated artists who died in poverty because they weren't "discovered" in time. Many of these artists submitted their work to the "cultural experts" of their time, only to be rejected because people of the time valued things differently than later generations. It was, and still is, possible to be "the best" in any given field without ever generating a name for yourself. Working from the opposite direction, would be promotion. Getting a buying audiences attention might require educating, or entertaining people enough that it makes some aspect matter more than other considerations. For example, people might buy an S hook for way above market value because it's a memento of where they watched the entertaining maker during a craft show. It's a chicken and egg scenario whether the work or the maker will attract buyers attention. Marketing exists because the "unaided income and/or demand" for a given service/ product is too low. History is full of undiscovered geniuses and snake-oil salesmen. The "chicken and egg" scenario is very limited because it assumes that this is a two factor equation. It's entirely possible to sink tons of marketing into an excellent product without actually selling anything. For example, if customers can't find you because you've got a poorly-chosen business name. This is where my "nerding out" comment needed to be better explained. Experts have to specialize, which naturally means they're putting a lot of effort into unpopular skill or knowledge. There are often pivotal bits of knowledge to the expert, that define the experts worldview. That is what sets them apart from virtually everyone who would pay them for their work. In my opinion, "Nerding out" is where the experts pedantic interests overtake the utility of what they're saying to the public. There's an excellent article about the NASA Columbia disaster. There was one slide in a power point presentation that should have told the leadership that the damage to the shuttle was life-threatening. There were something like ninety words on the slide, with different font sizes, and spacing. The most critical information was thoughtfully buried in the smallest text. The heading and the conclusion statements were very optimistic and bland. Some of the smartest people in their field had an opportunity to tell leadership "This will not survive re-entry" but instead, wrote ninety words in such a way that were easily misunderstood by fellow scientists and engineers (all at the top of their field). All the skill, knowledge, and experience of those engineers was effectively negated by their inability to put the needs of their audience first. This is the crux of what you identified to as my attitude towards craftsman. There's this pervasive notion that if you're chasing a high-minded pursuit, money, power, privilege, and prestige should just flow your way. Those NASA engineers probably console themselves by saying "it was technically in my report". No, it was an abhorrent waste of ability, and a tragic demonstration of what happens when experts communicate so poorly. As for the "Plenty of room at the top' argument, I think there's an underpinning assumption which provides critical support. There was once a "worlds best hunter" of Mastodon. Things were probably pretty great for that hunter, for as long as it lasted. Following that hunters advice today, wouldn't be a good idea. Even so, if there's a market for five smiths operating at that level, by all means, strive to be among them. If you're successful, you'll make the world a better place. If not, you'll probably become a better smith, which also makes the world a better place. The central theme I'm objecting to is the assumption that the customer's concerns are secondary to the pedantic aesthetic interests of an expert expecting said customers to reward them in a highly competitive and comparatively small market. Just think about the engineers involved in that slide. They had to watch the greatest achievement of their lives end in tragedy, entirely because they communicated from the wrong point of view. It breaks my heart to think about the grief and frustration they must endure. A failed business can cause a lot of hardship for everyone involved. The world can't afford to see valuable skills and knowledge earned over a lifetime squandered. Take the customer(s) seriously. Anything that "faces" the customers should be putting their needs first.

I take your point, but there's a bit of a chicken and egg thing here. If nobody can find the "work", it doesn't get much chance to develop a following. Relying on "internet fame" via social media is far from a sure thing. Most of the platforms are incredibly unjust to content creators. There's rampant theft of content and links, so your "work" will eventually end up sending potential clients to a competitor's site. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that any complaints to the social media site about this sort of thing lead to getting banned, or blocked. I appreciate the simplicity of what you're suggesting, but there's a point where the limits of minimalism work against a business. For example, Smith is a really popular surname in America. "Smith Forge" would be a terrible business name in 2019. Google it and first page you get , Hard Apple Cider, Sunglasses, an Apartment complex, A wine shop, a different hard cider company, a Canadian web design firm, Wikipedia, Building Information Modeling, and a Popular Mechanics about home blacksmithing. Not one of those results was for a blacksmithing business.

JLP, You're making a solid point about using your given name, however you're working to the advantage of people with more common names. It would be hard to stand out when you share a name with hundreds of people per city. Or, for that matter, if you share a name with a famous or historical person. In the construction industry there's a strong tendency for building firms to name themselves such that they get a three letter initialism, like you are using. Further, they refer to themselves as "General Contractors" which doesn't convey any connection to construction whatsoever. Finally, they consistently use trite, two or three word mottos in their branding. Every competing firm ends up with a letter head that reads: ABC General Contractors "Building relationships", or "XYZ GC "Quality, Integrity, Passion". This seems to be a marketing strategy built around the assumption that their customer is looking for a precise level of bland conformity. Someone who spends three hours comparing identical shades of beige, worrying that one is too "Monkey dung", and the other is not "Monkey dung" enough. In the marketplace, all the GC's are subjected to competitive bids because they're all viewed as commodities. There's nothing intrinsically or aesthetically better about one firm over the other, so they're all assumed to be perfect equals. There isn't even a sense of scale provided in this marketing approach. Tiny companies knocking out basement remodels market themselves the same way as huge multi-national firms. I mentioned the "General Contracting" thing because it's the pedantic construction industry equivalent of "Blacksmith" or "Forge". I suspect that specialists tend to assume that whatever they nerd out about will be of pivotal significance to their clients. It virtually never is. In my experience marketing professionals tend to repeat whatever everyone else is doing, without considering whether a given trend is actually good for business.

Jason, Contact more than one insurance agent. Ask what influences your rates. In my experience, they won't volunteer the factors that make a huge difference in your costs or your coverage. I'm not sure why this is, but every time I've needed a major insurance change, I ended up changing companies because it was significantly better deal. Maybe it's just me, but I've found that the best deals tended to come from agents who personally answered their phones on the first call. As a final thought, it occurred to me that insurance companies and individual agents might have a limited range of policies that they routinely sell. Routine reduces their perception of risk. Asking for something awkward or unfamiliar to their established range, might seem like a higher risk than it really is. A Blacksmiths shop is full of risk. However you can do a lot to reduce that risk by making sure that it's as safe, clean, and well-maintained as you can manage.

That's actually an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Black Bear Forge is well known among blacksmiths who watch youtube. Unless your primary income comes from selling stuff to internet blacksmith voyeurs, it's not a marketing plan to follow. Even if it was, consider the predicament you'd be in. Your audience is mostly comprised of people who's primary interest is in making the thing you're selling, themselves. If so, it might be a good idea to sell plans for your projects like the TV craft shows do. Also, please consider how much work he's put into his videos on youtube. I've watched hours of them and it's clear that he puts a lot of effort into them. That's tons and tons of work to "teach" Google that "Black Bear Forge" is different from a similarly named maple syrup purveyor in Vermont. I made that up about the maple syrup company in Vermont, then just for fun, I googled to see if it existed. It does! To give credit where due, Black Bear Forge has been at this for thirty years. Odds are excellent that internet search terms weren't a consideration the day he started. Thirty years ago, most people didn't have five T.V. channels, let alone cell phones, call waiting, or affordable long-distance phone service. Print ads were about the only way to cheaply access customers across the country. When you were paying for every single letter of your ad, it made more sense to communicate efficiently. I suspect this is why businesses of my youth identified their purpose in all their advertisements. Businesses who named themselves "XYZ Forge" had to list off their actual products so people would have a reason to contact them. Think about that for a second. Even thirty years ago, businesses had to pay extra in advertising just to offset the word "forge"! Today, people use smart phones for everything. Little smudgy screens with tiny keyboards make it hard to type. Autocorrect, auto fill, voice search, and keyword ads all work against you if your business name is poorly chosen. Search engines are the arbiters of who get's found and who doesn't. At best, they are capricious, at worst, the search results will sabotage your business. In contrast, if you take the time to research the most popular search terms that customers use to access a business like yours, you'll likely discover that there are plenty of terms that virtually nobody is using for their business name. That would get you on the first page of every search engine with zero advertising cost.

Forge_man For starters, don't incorporate the word "forge" into your business name. It's been co-opted by marketing types to sell everything from umbrellas to lemonade. A quick internet search will reveal the absolutely overwhelming number of businesses using "forge" in their names, virtually none of which pertain to metal working in any form. If asked to define a "forged object", a significant portion of the public would answer in terms of identity theft. That's bad for business. If your customers cannot easily find you, and easily define what you have to offer, you will spend a fortune in advertising trying to teach them. GAP must have spent an insane fortune teaching everyone to expect overpriced jeans in their stores. Cut to the chase for your own business. If you're making forged steel goods, be specific. Architectural ironwork is better than metal art because metal and art are basically limitless terms. Marketing should speak to you customer in their terms, not yours. If 99% of your customers are going to search five consistent key words, it'd be wise to use one of those words in your name. A lot of entrepreneurs overlook easy opportunities to appeal to the masses. Everyone loves nature. Naming a business after a local geographic feature or landmark identifies your location. A lot of city, state, and county names are foreign words to the current population. Many of which translate into something that evokes pride in the locals. For example "Milwaukee" is Algonquin for "good land". It's a conversational element for your marketing which links your brand to your location. Moreover, it rewards your customers intelligence. If you get so successful down the line that you have to relocate, you can (and should) keep the name. Finally, I think it's really significant to point out that minimalist trends in business names provide a tremendous opportunity for new entrepreneurs to stand out. Drive around and look at commercial buildings. How many signs do you see that actually tell you what the business does? Terms like "restaurant", bank, clothier, grocer, shoes, they've all been stripped away. It's like everyone wants to play keep-away with basic information. Speaking for myself, I can tell you that I've overlooked businesses for years because they had a meaningless name that didn't communicate what they actually did. Whenever I've told the proprietors about it, they all say something equivalent to "yeah, we hear that a lot"!

Dasher, One thing that doesn't get mentioned much is that the mass of your top die has a dramatic effect on how much work you can get done. Large top dies have a lot of inertia holding them in place, so they require a lot of energy to get moving. That means that you get less work done with every hammer blow. In the design phase, it's super easy to talk yourself into thinking that versatility is a higher priority than efficiency. It naturally follows that bigger dies are "better". I built a guillotine tool a few years ago, and I can tell you that I'm planning to make a swingarm fuller because fullering dies in the guillotine tool waste too much of my effort. Working alone, it's pretty awesome for refining precise work like tenons, but it's exhausting for any sort of heavy forging.

Boiled vinegar has a way of getting right up your sinuses. My dog won't have anything to do with the kitchen when vinegar has been boiled.

Having spent eighteen years here, I can say that it still seems very strange to me that so many adults born and raised in Fort Collins have valley girl accents. I spent a year in Northern California, and only encountered that accent a couple of times, each one was a native of San Fernando, and none were older than mid 20's. This is the only place I've ever been where 40+ year old adults speak like they're in the movie "Clueless".

Slag, no harm done, glad we're on the same page! Ausfire, were I to go through this again, I wouldn't have delayed seeing the doctor right off. Most of the doctors have commented that tendons don't get as much blood flow as other body parts so healing takes longer. It's my layperson understanding that injuring it again during recovery is what sets up the chronic condition. In my case, it took less and less to injure it again. Daswulf, I definitely have that weakness in one range of motion that you described. Palm down hurts more than palm up. As it progressed, I've lost grip strength and dexterity. When it's really bad, my ring finger stings. I figure it's worth sharing that I wore the elbow brace thing more or less from the beginning of symptoms. At first, it seemed to help a lot. On the long term, I now see that it didn't prevent me from re-injuring myself. With the strap on and "warmed up" the elbow didn't hurt much at all. Once I stopped for the day, it was a whole different story. Cortisone worked much the same way. It concealed the pain to where I thought I was all better. Right around the three month mark, the first shot wore off and it hurt way more than before. My first doctor didn't instruct me to avoid hammering for three months. She said after two weeks, I could ease back into it, which is exactly what I did. I have no proof that waiting three months would have cured my condition. I can say that it never gets better on it's own, and it always gets worse after I push it. It's awfully difficult to go two years without encountering situations where you don't have a choice but to push it.

Slag, I sure didn't mean to imply that I was advocating trial and error in lieu of following a physicians advice. I very literally followed every physicians advice from start to finish, except for the first surgeon who was wanted to book surgery without imaging, or even examining my elbow. I discussed it with my General Practitioner and followed his recommendation to seek a second opinion. I'm not trying to give medical advice at all. I'm simply relating the (layperson) lessons I learned along the way to figuring out what was wrong with my elbow. The direct pay cost for the specialist ultrasound was very literally half of what a local clinic charged me for a cortisone shot. Speaking of that, all the surgeons I've seen were adamant that two shots of cortisone is the limit before they start doing harm.

I've had blacksmith's elbow for two years now and in that time I've learned a few things that might help others. Before I go on, I want to stress that I am not trying to provide medical advice. If you've got a problem, please see a qualified doctor. With all that said, here are a few things that took a a lot of pain, and a very long time to figure out. Blacksmith elbow tendon problems can be diagnosed with an ultrasound, provided you have access to a facility that has an elbow imaging specialist. However, I saw several doctors, physical therapists, and even a surgeon who wanted to operate without any imaging to confirm or diagnose my problem whatsoever. There are three root causes (that I know of) for this condition. Scarification, torn/perforated tendon, and stretched/thinned tendon. When researching treatment options, very little is presented in terms of resolving a particular root cause. It wasn't until I sought a second surgeon's opinion that I learned that some treatments excel for some conditions and don't work as well in others. This may explain why people have such inconsistent results with any given treatment option. It's my completely unqualified opinion that some popular treatment options made my condition worse. At a bare minimum, it wasn't worth the pain and the lost time waiting to see if an inappropriate treatment would improve my situation. One thing that nobody tells you is that each treatment option is a two to three month commitment. You're expected to wait at least two to three months to see if you recover before you can try something else. Nobody wants to "escalate" the treatment until simpler remedies fail. The unsaid thing here, was that imaging could have been done at any point along that line to rule out the time-consuming and painful treatments that definitely wouldn't have worked.

"Forge thick, grind thin" "A moment of forging, equals an hour of filing".

Dharris, I don't think a center punch mark would suffice to keep your punch on the right path. The tip of your punch is pointed, so there's nothing to keep you from clocking the punch at an angle like you did. It can be very difficult to get the tip angles perfectly symmetrical on a punch like yours. Without the holes to reduce resistance, and guide the punch, the shorter bevel will probably rotate the punch. It's hard to be sure looking at your photo, but it seems like you might have some asymmetry in your tip bevels.

George, I liked your geological references quite a bit! I really wasn't sure if my analogy would resonate with people. Your comment about a flood raises a very practical example of what I'm on about. Climbing up out of a disastrous flood might sound like the end of your problems. It's not. Everything on the new mesa was unaffected so you're effectively showing up for a duel with half your stuff, exhausted, starving, dripping wet, and freezing cold. When the 2008 crash hit, there were huge firms chasing tiny jobs because there wasn't anything else. When a company went under, many of the bystanders assumed it was because they couldn't win work. Maybe it was for some, but all the failed firms I had firsthand experience with were put out of business by jobs they'd won. For a couple of them, the fateful job was smaller than what they were doing before the recession. I suspect that the majority of working professionals visualize the "size" of a project in terms of it's contract value. If you're used to doing jobs twice the size of one that goes unpaid, it can seem like a minor problem. In reality, you're only earning some percentage of the contract value in profit. The accumulated profit is the only fund to "pay" for stuff that's not a job cost. To illustrate just how brutal this is, let's imagine a company that's used to doing jobs worth $100,000 apiece. Keeping it simple, let's say they always make 5% profit on everything they do. OK, so times get hard and they take on a job for $50,000 with a shady client who doesn't pay them. To earn $50,000 in profit to pay for that single bad job, they'll have to successfully complete $1,000,000 worth of revenue. That's 10 jobs at the $100,000 level, or 20 jobs at the $50,000 level. Pretty bad right? It get's worse. All of those jobs are now effectively break-even propositions where the "wolves are always at your door". Anything less than flawless performance put's you deeper in the hole. Some of that's outside of your control. During a down economy, there might not even be twenty jobs, timed such that you can plausibly complete them, let alone competitively win the contract(s). Sticking with simple, round numbers, let's say overhead comes to roughly 10% of your contract value. I don't condone calculating overhead as a percentage, but let's proceed to illustrate a point. A $50,000 job will occupy some unit of time. Let's say it's one month. If you didn't land work for one month, you'd be pulling $5,000 out of savings, and be looking at roughly two months worth of break-even work to make up the difference. In this example, this means that biding your time will cost you two to one. That's dollars, days, hours, whatever. Jumping on the first sketchy job that comes along risks a cost of twenty to one. Simply put, winning the wrong job is ten times the risk of not having a job. Individual situations will vary, but the overall trend still applies. This is one of many reasons why competitive work in down markets is so cutthroat.

Well said! People often think of this in terms of a balancing act, which oversimplifies the reality of the working world. For example, it's pretty easy to spot stratification in any given market. What's not so obvious is how structural the differences are between layers. I like to visualize it as mesas and buttes. Mesas are flat topped land masses that are wider than their height. Buttes are flat topped land masses that are narrower than their height. Mesas and Buttes can be the same height, and they can have the same surface area. Cheap public bids that have no barrier to entry would be low mesas. Lots of competition (area), and very little reward (height). Larger public bids would be a higher mesa, because they're harder to complete so the small-fry's couldn't handle the bigger work. There's a structural difference between players on adjacent mesas. If the "too big" company chases the little work, their overhead will make the work unprofitable. If the "too small" company chases the bigger work, they risk penalties for failing to deliver. To strategically transition from one mesa to another, you have to metaphorically descend from your current mesa, cross the dark valley floor, and do whatever it takes to ascend the new mesa. A successful trip is trans-formative to the business. As mentioned earlier, buttes can exist at the same level and size as Mesas. These are the more elusive and elite clientele. They've chosen to avoid buying at the public market so it takes a considerable amount of work to be in the right place at the right time. When things are going well across the entire economy, life on the buttes is always better than life on the mesas. The biggest down side of the butte is that you're relying on a smaller market share. If your "golden geese" quit laying, you're crossing the dark valley knowing that life on a mesa will require different strategies to be successful. Even if you transition to the same "height" of mesa. The "dark valley" in my metaphor is the part of business growth that many people are almost willfully blind to. They figure they'll jump up a level when things are good, and let the new work pay for the structural investments. Conversely, they figure they'll jump down a level when things are bad and hope to break even until things turn around. Both scenarios run up debts that must be paid while the work is getting done. While that's happening, you don't really know if it was a good move or not. It's entirely possible to have done everything right, at just the wrong time, so it all comes to failure.

Jason0012 It can be very difficult to get contract work with industrial firms. "Front line" workers in charge of the operation might get to award contracts, but they rarely have authority to get a given contractor approved to work with the firm. Be warned, that typically won't stop them from wasting your time with a whole bunch of false starts. Purchasing agents can be the same way, but they're often better informed about who to talk to at the main office. I can tell you that many/most office minions won't bother to process any paperwork unless there's a super obvious benefit to doing so. "I might be handy someday", isn't good enough. "I'm a direct competitor to XYZ corporation that you're already working with" might work, depending on how satisfied they are with XYZ's work. Bigger outfits have a few people who are simultaneously smart enough to understand what you're pitching, and empowered to do something about it. In my experience, these people see to it that all sales calls go to voicemail or lesser minions. Cold calling and/or dropping by mostly doesn't work. I know one small firm that "penetrated the bureaucracy" by conducting a long-term quasi-espionage campaign. They call the main number and ask for the shipping dock because nobody screens calls for the shipping dock. Once you get the shipping dock guy, you tell them you were holding for the purchasing agent while pretending to struggle to find their name. Sometimes the shipping dock guy will volunteer a name, or tell you if that department is in a different building. On the next call, maybe you ask for accounts receivable instead of purchasing. Explain that you're a vendor trying to get set up with....I'm sorry, my boss just asked me to check on this before heading out the door, I don't know who to ask for. Protip; if anyone offers to transfer your call, first ask them for the number in case you get disconnected. Take notes, and eventually you'll have a rough map of who does what with the ultimate goal of determining who's in charge of getting new vendors approved for contract work. You'll need to know what they care about so you're prepared to make the most of the opportunity. Big firms often have stringent business insurance requirements for their vendors. Some will do a credit check on you. Go in prepared for a long process. Getting paid works the same way. It's really common for large industrial firms to take 120+ days to pay a small contract. It might be worth your while to size up the client's potential before you sink the time and money into getting approved for contract work. One or two contracts a year might not be worth enough to merit six months of chasing your tail with office drones.

Frosty, I honestly believe that about 80% of the "soft skills" lectures in business school could be replaced with that sentence.

At 18, plan "A" was to become a rockstar because it was everything I enjoyed. Thank goodness for plans B through Z! It's really tough to know what your priorities will be ten, twenty, or thirty years down the line. A lot of jobs don't pay what they should, and a lot of life's necessities are incredibly expensive. My wife and I both have "fallback" careers that played a vital role in keeping food on the table. I think it's really important to stress a distinction that rarely gets made in discussions about career planning. Certified, doesn't mean qualified. Being the person who gets things done is what matters to an employer. Sure, they use credentials as a proxy for job suitability, but what they really want is to hire a person who will solve their problem. The tricky part about this, is that you have to see what the boss cares about, so you can apply yourself to what matters . That assumes you can bypass the H.R. obstacles to actually access the boss. There's usually a huge difference between what matters to your boss and what the coursework stressed for certification. Also, it bears mentioning that most certifying agencies do no quality-control on their graduates. That's not accidental. If these programs were actually accountable for professional incompetence on the part of their graduates, they would probably focus on things that matter in the working world. It's been my experience that accountability tends to improve performance. Before you jump into a trade school or a higher-ed program, look into what the employers are actually after. Things are so bad in the trades right now that most shops will literally pay your way through a trade school that doesn't suck. Good luck.

I could swear I saw a picture of an anvil with a sloped side like that with an explanation that it was designed to have a striker facing the sloped side. It kinda makes sense to me that the sloped side would help to reinforce the corner and deflect errant blows from the striker. The "fifth" leg on the sloped side seems like it would give extra support for heavy blows. I think MC Hammer is right about the age of the holes. I noticed that the edges around the hardie hole are very rounded compared to the round holes. That leads me to suspect that the round holes are much newer than the hammering that put in the sway back. Frosty's comment about rivet sets / punching bolsters makes sense in the context of barrel hoops. Either way, it's pretty clear that this anvil has had some love and some mistreatment. The incised border on that sloped face was nicely done.

Good points all around Frosty. This bit reminded me of an internship I did with a site utilities firm. The owner required that all employees (except the secretary and his wife) spend at least a month literally working in the trenches. Months later I was in the office when the owner was upset about lack of production on a job. He couldn't understand how the superintendent was onsite every day, yet they'd failed to notice that production had fallen behind. What I didn't realize then, but do now, is that the site was fifty acres of blowing dust. They had a single water truck onsite and used it sparingly because the biggest owner complaint was the cost of construction water. One front end loader tended to two trenches, bringing in the pipe bedding gravel as needed. Cycle times were increased because the operator couldn't see far enough ahead to safely pick up speed. The guys in the trench were getting utterly buried in dust with every load so the water truck focused exclusively on the two trenches, not the thirty or so acres of windblown soil leading up to them. From my time in the field, I remember how featureless the sites were. The most obvious way to measure progress was to make a mental note of where each track hoe was at the start of the day, so you could see how far it got by days end. Since the front end loader tended two trenches, you could easily see if one team was working faster than the other. When visibility dropped to 50', none of that is possible. The field staff doesn't concern itself with material quantities. All of that is sorted out for them. They just keep their heads down and run pipe from "here" to "there" . As a result, nobody on the field side knew how to measure their progress in terms of total material. The crews actually installing the pipe spent very little time looking at plans. Nobody had much sense of the distances involved, or how the scale of the drawing affects your perspective. The crew in the trench were probably aware that the pipe bedding tender was running slower than usual, but they were constantly distracted whenever they got hit by the passing water truck. The crews were working hard, which typically equated to making good production so nobody thought there was a problem. With today's knowledge, it's almost funny that the "typical office weenie" objection to fifty acres of blowing dust proves to be the undoing of so much field experience and leadership. If these guy's had any understanding of the "office" side of their livelihood, they might have made better decisions. The cost of construction water paled in comparison to the lost productivity. To say nothing of the significant environmental and health hazards that site was generating.