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Marc1 I see why you pull out the elite aspect. I was looking for a term to confer a consumer that's not in the market for commodities. There are home decor stores that offer inexpensive objects that serve no utilitarian purpose. I think it's fair to say those objects fit within the spectrum of art to most people. I also think it's fair to make a distinction between the commodity art, and art/craft that is bespoke, custom, or commissioned. I want to specifically clarify that sometimes clients commission "art" or "craft" that ends up very, similar to a commodity good. In such cases, I think it's fair to say that spending more doesn't necessarily mean you're getting something different. Essentially this goes to show that art isn't only for the wealthy. I also think this shows that art isn't defined by it's price. The difference I was trying to point out, is that the non-commodity consumer has the potential to introduce a whole heck of a lot of very real work and risk to the craftsman/artist beyond making the object. Commodity craftsmen/artists who look only at the "making this thing" costs are likely to underestimate their new situation. Cash flow is particularly tough on a growing business. Many businesses use a line of credit to cover the businesses overhead between billable milestones. They're literally taking on debt to get to the next payday. Sometimes that's a sound investment, sometimes it's not. I like to remind people that it's never the job you lost that put's you under, it's the job you won.

In the last 24 hours, I've personally experienced a few things that didn't make my earlier list. One project was increased by 15%, then another 15%, then it was cut in half. Now we're being told that the other half will happen, but we don't get to know when. A different project was 15% over budget, I presented ideas that saved them 18%. They accepted 12% of the options, then dithered for four months. Now they're wanting to know how much the price will change if they can't make a decision in time to lock material prices for the year. The 2019 price hikes come to less than 3%. Somehow, that price hike is more of an impediment than everything going before. Finally, we have a third project that was contractually set up to minimize delays. We met our original deadlines for the design, however the client couldn't get their landlord to answer a handful of "deal or no-deal" questions. A multi-million dollar project that affects literally hundreds of professionals is in limbo because the landlord won't respond to something that would clearly benefit them. These three jobs are worth more than every project my company completed in 2013. At the root of all three projects, there's a single individual who makes the decision. It's very difficult to know what influences their decision. Odds are good that all three will happen eventually. In hindsight, we'll probably be glad we did them. However it's incredibly stressful to have an entire years worth of work committed to three projects that can't get started.

Many interesting points made. Thomas's summary about the narrowing of consumers at higher ends of the market is well put. That reminds me of something I'd meant to write earlier in response to the conundrum surrounding charging more for elite clientele. I see a lot of people looking at business issues in a vacuum. A blacksmith might come to some productivity rate that they feel is fair when they're making commodity stuff. They then apply this productivity rate to "art" for elite clientele as though everything involved is precisely the same. In reality, there are absolutely huge differences between commodity consumers and elite clientele. It's much, much, more than just wealth. Here are few examples. Elite consumers buy largely on the reputation of the craftsman. You can't build a reputation without a respected party vouching for you. In practice, this means that the craftsman is only as good as their last success. Just one unhappy customer can implode your market. This means that there is significantly more risk in every undertaking. Risk is expensive. In many elite markets reputation and identity are inextricably linked. Say the wrong thing to the right person and you're no longer the brilliant artist, you're the ostracized interloper. This applies to all your subcontractors, associates, friends, colleagues, etc. A talkative apprentice, or an opinionated secretary can ruin you. Until you're familiar with the parlance and taboos of your market, there's tremendous risk in saying anything. Elite consumers are paying for a higher level of service. Some will meddle, waffle, delay, defer, demand, change, and aggravate the craftsman at inopportune times. It's incredibly difficult to meet strict deadlines when the client isn't cooperating. In my experience, it can be a full-time job just making sure the client stays happy and the job stays on track. Elite consumers can also be consortium's, committees, or groups that have little in common beyond the scope of a single project. Pleasing many masters is a daunting task. Since these clients rarely have full financial discretion, you can be stuck dealing with several demanding clients, and a reluctant banker who never pays on time. Wealthy clients have easier access to legal representation. In my limited experience with litigation, I can say that it's just incredible how slow everything is. I know of several wealthy clients who used legal delays to maximize the financial strain on a unpaid craftsman. Just before it got to an actual court, the client agreed to settle, then they simply delay paying until they're facing action again. There's a very real risk to a craftsman that you'll never see your earnings without spending a fortune on legal fees. There are dishonest people at every level of society. The fortunes of elite clientele can turn on a dime. I've seen multi-million dollar projects that took nineteen months from concept to contract that were scrapped because the stock price of one company fell. I've also seen such projects put on hold for six months or more before resuming with a shortened deadline and a fixed budget. The cash-flow of such a project can be financially devastating. Finally, elite clientele often demand specialized solutions to singular problems. This frequently means that a craftsman will need specialized tools, services, materials, or vendors to do the job. Finding the market leading vendor of a rarefied profession takes a considerable amount of research that has nothing to do with being a craftsman.

Biggundoctor, I've actually performed those thermal scanning services for our clients. Although I don't do anything hydraulic, I've heard that thermal cameras are very good at spotting problems for all the same reasons.

I like the vertical format one the best. There are some knife makers who add red to parts of their touch marks and it always manages to catch my eye without looking overdone. I think Steamboat hit that balancing point perfectly.

Marc, I had a physics professor who touched on this concept. A kilogram is a measure of mass, not weight. Weight is the force of gravity on a mass. A dual pan mass comparator is commonly called a "balance". The balance would work equally well in situations with more or less gravity. A scale, is calibrated to convert the gravitational force of an object into a mass reading. A load cell in the bathroom scale might give a lighter reading if you were atop K2, than if you were in the Mariannas trench because the force of gravity about earth is proportional to the distance from the center of the earths mass.

George, I think your debate about emotion is compelling. I read a very interesting article about Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and other modern architects that suggested that post traumatic stress as well as Autism played a large role in their aesthetic. I really want to stress that this wasn't about picking on people who like modernism. The article suggested that people unconsciously "identify" with things that resemble faces. for example, symmetrical windows on either side of a doorway suggest eyes and a nose. For people with Autism, the "faces" create anxiety because they overstimulate them. His designs were "cleaned" of extra stimulus. To this day, a "clean" design means roughly the same thing. Mies Van der Rohe suffered heavily from PTSD. He designed sight-lines in his homes like military "pill boxes" to minimize his exposure from outside while still permitting overwatch. The interesting thing to me, is how the motivations of the architects/artists are so different from their acolytes. If Van der Rohes designs were Art trying to protect him from the world, then the Brutalism that followed was Art trying to control the people. Craft versus art isn't a semantic argument when it ends in the picking of winners and losers. Personally, I'm ready for marketing types to move on from the pretentious "craft" nonsense. Nobody cares how hard it is to become a journeyman, so why are we impressed with meaningless titles like "artisan"?

Marc1, It works in other poli-sci directions as well. "Shabby Chic" and "Vintage" are very popular in certain groups. Every finish has a fabricated/calibrated level of "distress", and only certain fairly bland items are aesthetically allowed. It's particularly popular at local antique markets where the difference between old, and faux-old is pretty stark. There's one asking $25 for a harbor freight hand saw that was spray-painted a rusty brown! Generally speaking, the "Shabby Chic" people are pretty hostile to actual antiques. Somehow a "Farm house table" is a treasured collectible, but the Victorian hutch isn't acceptable until the glass panes are replaced with chicken wire and the original finish is slathered with milk paint.

Recently I've been involved with a lot of projects that design professionals referred to as "modern", "industrial", or "clean". By "modern" they're facetiously referring to cherry-picked stuff that was new in the 1900's. "Industrial" is often a disingenuous term because the aesthetic shares little with actual industrial facilities. "Clean" just means rectilinear without ornamentation, symmetry, or anything suggestive of a human face. My point is that words have an entirely different meaning to the people who feel they're at the leading edge of a trend. They're not looking for something with a traditional meaning, they're looking to apply traditional terms of prestige to an anachronism. It's important to understand that many of these people, have a real hostility towards history and tradition. For these people, it's only a valuable "craft" in the context of an anachronistic and/or counter-culture device. Effective marketing has to shoot the gap just right.

The gear reduction would increase the effective torque of that motor. I agree with Jim that a drill press would be the most likely application.

Vaughn, Peter Ross was a guest on Roy Underhills PBS show for an episode where they dealt with those tapered taps and swage threaders. The two piece "dies" are actually swages because the tool doesn't cut, it swage-forms the threads. This was particularly significant with wrought iron. The tapered taps were used on a wrought iron nut that had the hole punched. They ran the tap in until it basically jammed itself, then went in from the other side. If I recall correctly, the tapered "tap" isn't cutting so much as it's swaging the threads in. The wedging action pushes the form into the ID of the hole. Peter Ross made a point of saying that these tools avoided severing the fibers on the wrought iron as that would weaken the joint. So long as the thread pitch on the swage set and the tapered tap match, they would generate mating fasteners so long as round stock was a close fit in the hole. I surmise that the tapered tap creates an hourglass shaped thread pattern in the nut. The very middle of which is a good match to the swaged threads on the bolt. I suspect (but can not prove) that a tapered tap was faster than cutting full depth threads through the stock. They also seem a bit tougher to break than a straight tap. It seems like the slag inclusions of wrought iron would be a real bear on cutting tools. As for the why they might prefer these in a time when drills were in common use, I suspect that a wrought iron hole was stronger when punched/drifted than if it had been drilled. I have a guess about the 1/32" mark. What if that is the gap measurement at the dies adjustment? Shim stock or feeler gauges could provide a way to know if the dies are set properly for a standardized thread.

George, Thank you for your answer. One of the bigger challenges of "pay when paid" is that the generals don't feel any obligation to disclose when they're getting paid, or how much.

I think it's nice work. Your comment about the lacewood texture has me thinking that maybe a single coat of linseed oil isn't revealing the true potential here. I've used tru-oil "gunstock finish" on a hardwood cane with impressive results but it took the better part of twenty applications to get there. After a dozen or so applications, it'd only take a drop or two on a clean cloth to coat the whole cane. When it was done, the finish gave the wood figure a depth that wasn't really visible at lower coat counts. On the other hand, that finish was pretty slick and shiny which might not suit a working knife.

For their first anniversary you could forge a fork to go with it.

Quenching in old peanut oil from the fryer does carry the risk that someone nearby will come around expecting to steal a french fry.

People don't pay colleges to teach, they pay them to grant certifications. If a student earns straight A's for three years of a four year program, they won't be offered 75% of the wage of a graduate. They'll likely see offers running 50% or less. Now consider how many programs will graduate a student with a C average. Is learning 75% of what was taught a better indicator for a good worker compared to someone who learned 100% of everything they were exposed to? For most employers, the answer is yes because they figure "finishing something" is more important than doing a good job. In my experience, practical application was outright discouraged in disciplines ranging from art to science at most of the institutions I attended.

Beavers, Getting a lot of scale is pretty clear indicator that your stock is too low in the fire. Smaller fires have smaller zones for oxidizing, neutral, and carbonizing. Fire management is more than fishing out clinkers, and adding fuel. If the burning fuel isn't consolidated, the air supply can and will blow past the fuel. Depending on your situation it can give you a few telltale problems. The most common is a fire that won't heat the stock no matter how hard you're blowing. If the volume of oxygen isn't getting used for combustion, it'll actually blow a cold spot in the fire. Another fairly common problem at the opposite end of the spectrum is to have a situation where the oxygen flow is so localized that it acts like a cutting torch. That one is super frustrating because the rest of the fire isn't hot enough to efficiently get the metal up to temperature. Since flux, clinker, and ash generally collect over a forging session, this tends to happen after you've had a chance to get tired. So there you are, checking the stock periodically and it's just taking a long time to get hot. One minute the steel is barely glowing, the next, you're pulling a sparking stump out of the fire. It felt like any time I got 95% of the way done with my project, the "good bit" would get burned off on that last heat. Unless you're going for an igloo fire, the solution is to tap the top of your fire down a bit with something fairly broad like a paddle or a shovel. Listen to the fire under airflow. If it's muffled or whistling, the airflow might be choked off. I slide a straight poker along the edge of the fire and gently lift as I'm supplying air. Charcoal doesn't form clinker so you should be able to hear when the fire takes off. The heart of the fire grows much faster. 1/4" stock is pretty small stuff. It should get white hot in a few minutes when the fire is working like it should. Again, if your fire is deep enough, you can get stock in the neutral zone to white hot without it scaling in the fire. Finally, I use a side blast forge with a sand box. I dig a 1" deep x 3" wide hole just in front of the tuyere before building the fire. As the coked coal burns, the ash and clinker collect in that hole. It takes a few hours before I have to pry up the fire to increase airflow. If you set your tuyere pipe a little off the bottom, you might achieve the same result.

Beavers, I'm by no means a forge welding expert, I've watched the same videos that you mentioned. One thing that leaps out at me here is that 1/4" round doesn't have a lot of mass to retain heat. I have a friend who took a 1" thick x 4" x 4" steel block and ground grooves of varying thickness on one side. He welded a handle onto the 1" thickness at a right angle to the grooves so he could preheat the whole thing in his forge. When he's trying to weld smaller stock, he puts the heated block on his anvil such that the grooves cross the anvil face, and the handle is out of the way. The grooves constrain the smaller stock from moving apart while welding which is particularly important with round materials. Being pre-heated, the block also gives him a bit more time to set the weld. I would also suggest that the depth of your fire might be insufficient to get a large enough neutral zone. I don't use charcoal so I really don't know what would be ideal. I will say that the Dennis Frechette stresses the importance of a large mounded fire. Rowan Taylor has some great videos on it as well, he also builds what he calls a "mole hill" fire. Both of them appear to be burning coal. It's hard to say just how deep it really is, but Dennis is using a bottom blast with a fire pot and two courses of fire bricks to make it deeper. That's probably pushing 6" deep at stock level with lit fuel perhaps an inch above that. Rowan Taylor is using a bottom blast, but the "mole hill" looks to be approximately that high as well. They're not heating it like a rotisserie, they're surrounding the stock in a neutral fire. You might accomplish this by adding one more course of bricks to your "pot" depth then making a flat surface to mound the fuel over the pot. Any heated stock that's not covered by the neutral zone is likely to scale faster. A lot of videos are edited for time. Getting that much fuel cleanly burning isn't a short process, although I suppose charcoal would be less time consuming than coking coal would be. As for judging temperature, I met a farrier who offered a handy tip about forge welding outside. He said that the steel is the right temperature when it "matches" the fire. That's proven to be fairly accurate whether I was working in direct sunlight or in the shadows. However, there's one significant caveat. If you stop airflow for a moment and the stock immediately has a shadow, you're not quite to temperature in the core.

Steamboat, Thank you so much for telling me about those Wiha screwdrivers. I just googled it and found that they also make a driver bit with that head! Speaking of historical anachronisms, I typically carry a modern version of the "Yankee" screwdriver that accepts hex bits in my tool bag. It uses an Archimedes screw like a push drill to spin the bits. I've found that it's pretty much the ideal tool for removing panel covers on my own. It supplies sufficient speed and torque to get things done without damage, while still fitting in my leg pocket. Much like the manual screwdriver, it provides a lot of feel so I can tell if a bolt is wanting to cross thread on me. As a bonus, it really freaks out the younger apprentices who've never seen a "cordless" screwdriver that can keep up with their power tools. Frozenforge, I like your tip but it's probably better for non-electrical stuff. It does remind me of a "cheat" for getting a too-small slotted screwdriver to work. Take a wide rubber band and lay it so one side is covering the screw slot. Push the screwdriver into the rubber band so the rubber is between the blade and the screw slot.

Steamboat, It's actually a little bit impressive that nobody has thought to make a combi-bit for those fasteners. The phillips part would keep the bit centered, and the hollow ground straight bit would provide better torque. About fifteen years ago I bought a set of straight bits that had a spring-loaded collar on them. The collar would keep the bit from sliding off the screw until the head was flush. They were particularly nice to use with the little cordless screwdrivers we had at the time. Over the years I've broken and lost all of them. I haven't been able to find replacements since.

I just recently repaired a cabinet full of burnt wiring and welded contactors. Everything had worked for three years before the client noticed an operational problem. Long story short, the bolts on the contactor lugs weren't tight. Given enough time and opportunity, an insufficiently tightened lug will start arcing, burning, etc. In this particular case, it got so bad that some of the contactor terminals burnt apart, others welded, wires were scorched, just not good. I suspect I know the root cause of this situation. The bolts on the contactor lugs are multi-headed to accept phillips or straight bladed screwdrivers. Cordless drills are very common and phillips bits are the obvious choice because they're self-centering. Unfortunately, many electrical equipment manufacturers use soft steel for these bolts. Between the natural cam-out function of the phillips design, and the soft steel used, it's very common to strip the bolt head well before proper torque is applied to the fastener. Also, there are terminals with an insulated recess containing two square washers on a central bolt. If the manufacturing tolerances aren't very good, the top washer can rotate sufficiently that two corners bind against the plastic of the insulated recess. Tightening the bolt doesn't draw the washer down on the conductor because the washer is digging into the device housing. All of this is much harder to see if you're using a cordless drill. The solution is to use a manual straight bladed screwdriver that's ground to precisely fit the slot. It's certainly slower than a power tool, but the screwdriver gives tactile feedback. A wire being compressed feels different than when the washer is binding. Another advantage of the screwdriver is that you have better visibility of the conductor getting terminated. Many electricians use a "wobble" or "crank" type screwdriver to rapidly take up slack in the terminal before switching to the straight blade screwdriver for final torque. One final comment, there are a lot of cordless tools on the market that can deliver much higher torque than a given fastener will tolerate. I've seen electrical devices that cracked in two when their terminals were over-tightened.

I've had one with a round/ hollow wedge that came loose. Wonderlockem works very well to tighten and lock a dried-out handle in. I wasn't sure that it would be worth the price because I had tried the blo soaks without much to show for it. Loose but not falling-off hammer heads were back in action overnight. It's been about three months since I treated all my hammers so I can't really speak to the longevity at this point. I've also found that some factory handles last a whole lot longer than replacements do. I was given to understand that some factories use a press to insert the wooden wedge much further than it can be pounded in with a hammer or mallet. Paint helps to seal the end-grain of the handle. I've also found that wooden handles last longer if they're fit to tighter tolerances. Brent Bailey has a video on how he does it. One thing I started imitating is to mark the new handle to indicate the face or the peen side while I'm paring wood to fit. I think I was reversing the handle orientation during test fits. After trimming all those "high spots" it was loose no matter which way I tried! FWIW, Brent uses wonderlockem on his new handles. He's made a lot more hammers than I ever will. As for the debate about steel wedges, I doubt that blacksmiths would find a piece of mild steel to be a major obstacle. I probably have twice as many steel cutting drill bits as all others combined. Even so, a small hole on either side of a flat wedge is usually sufficient to get needle nose pliers in to finish the job. Typically, I end up drilling the wood out just to save time.

This thread has revealed many interesting points. I really appreciate everyone's input. JeepinJoe, good on you for putting the basics of accountable design into your contracts! If clients followed your lead, more of their projects would get built. Maybe this is too extensive of a question, but I'm interested to know if it's legal to have a "pay when paid" provision in a subcontract. General Contractor typically have a provision that states that they aren't obliged to pay the subcontractor for work completed until and unless the General Contractor has been paid for said work. For the purposes of this question, let's say that the subcontractor has 100% completed their work and everyone is happy with it.

Slag, Thank you very much for your legal explanations! It's never made sense to me that design contracts essentially exclude every negative outcome the client would be hiring them to avoid. This makes much more sense as a dodge, and I must admit, it's an effective one against the laymen who often eat crow when things go wrong. I'd like to encourage you to write a post about things along this line. I had a "contract law" course as part of my construction management degree but they never touched on any of this. I'd love to know how I could go about determining what is and isn't allowed in my state.

Slag, Your post is very interesting and timely. I've solicited design proposals from engineers on several occasions. On the most recent bid, all of the proposals included provisions that exempted the engineer from responsibility financial or otherwise for ; cost impacts, failing to meet regulatory approval, and omissions in their own designs. I've read Architectural design contract templates from the AIA and these same exclusions are very common. Many times, the specification manual will have lengthy passage(s) which stipulate that it's the bidders responsibility to inform the architect or engineer of any errors, omissions, discrepancies, or other relevant issues before the bid, or else the bidder will be held responsible for the consequences of same. If they've exempted themselves from liability via contract, or via specifications which are part of the executable construction documents, would the regulations you mentioned apply? Also, I think I should clarify that the projects that fail to pass building plan review, are generally revised and resubmitted however many times it takes to get to permit. I suspect they may be meeting the liability requirement by doing all the revisions necessary to get a permit at no additional cost. To the best of my knowledge, there are no consequences to the design team for the time lost. While I am curious about all of this, I think most clients and contractors can't afford the time or the money to seek legal solutions to design team problems.