RyeBear

As far as the blisters, after awhile you should get some calluses there. It sounds like you know how to hold a hammer so I'd say you just have to tough it out till you get callussed up. With the elbow pain it could be just that you need to get in the 'swing' so to speak (ha ha) and it will go away as your muscles get used to it. On the other hand my elbow hurt a lot for awhile and it turned out to be that the anvil was not on the right level so I was having to do funny stuff with my arm to get a square hit on it. You might check to make sure your anvil is at a good level for you.

Yes it sure is where they have mule day. We get it from east TN because my partner's parents live there. His dad is a retired coal miner and part of his retirement is that he gets unlimited coal to burn in his home heating stove, our families go camping in east tn together sometimes, and also whenever he goes to visit with his parents, we get a big truckload of coal for free. The coal is called blue diamond I dont know what that means exactly. It doesnt make much if any ash, barely smokes, and doesnt make clinkers. Before we used some of that older coal Mr. Williamson gave us, we were wondering 'what are these 'clinkers' we keep reading about?' we thought we were missing them or something ha ha, now we know we just get really good coal. The only bad part is that it mostly comes in big rocks ranging from about the size of a person's head, to the size of a trash can and have to bust it up with a rock hammer. His dad has a homemade coal smasher deal, we need to make one up but havent gotten around to scrounging up parts and doing it.

Thank you for the warm welcomes and the advice. I've been looking through the projects like you said. I updated my ac thing like yall said. I live about an hour straight south of Nashville. I dunno if anyone might know him, but I live just down the road from Steve Williamson, He's a great blacksmith. I believe he is pretty active in ABANA, I think he does demos and stuff. My partner knows him better than I do because I'm always at work, and dont get to visit him much, but he's been very encouraging and more than kind to us, always giving advice and help, he gave us some coal when we were out and couldnt make it to East TN for awhile to get more. He lets us watch him him work and stuff in his shop. He is going to make some tools for us, or let us make them in his shop and look over our shoulders. He's always really busy and a true master, so we try not to take up too much of his time with our questions and stuff.

Hello everyone, I just signed up and wanted to say hi and introduce myself. I've been blacksmithing as a hobby for about 3 years or so now, though havent really had an even decent setup until about a year ago. I make small things and sell them through antique stores and flea markets. I mostly sell fancy S hooks, drive hooks, pot hangers, fancy chains, and triangle dinner bells. my blacksmithing started with a friend and I cutting a beer keg we found and the dump in half longwise, starting a woodfire in it, blowing on it with a bicycle pump with a piece of conduit taped to the end, and banging on barely red conduit with carpentery hammers against a big rock. Not long after that we got about a 6 foot length of worn down pockmarked rail and put it up on some scaffolding and that was our anvil, as well as getting various sizes of ball peen hammers. The next step was getting 'real' firebox. It was about 2 or 3 square feet of flat quarter inch plate steel we cut slots into with an angle grinder. We stuck it up on scaffold too and put a box fan under it and thought we were hot to trot! Now we have a much better firebox, still homemade out of plate steel, but its much larger and actually has a dropped down box with drilled holes rather than crudely cut slots. We have a *real* anvil, 110 lbs, an argumentative old post vice, a few tools, a nice big work table, a squirrel cage blower, a few tongs we've made, and a steady supply of free low impurity hot burning coal. We still look back and laugh at the image of one of us red faced going to town on that bicycle pump while the other one tends a beer keg with a woodfire and some conduit in it. The main reason I joined was of course to further my learning of the craft. I've been trying to find some good projects to try but not having too much luck. I sorta feel like I'm at 'A' and all the projects I find are at 'W', 'X', and 'Y'; I need to find some 'B's if you follow. Something challenging for my skill level, but that I could get the hang of with a little practice. At any rate, thats my story, hello everone.