When is good enough actually good enough?

[jlpservicesinc]

I was reading in a recent mag where Yellin in an interview said something in line with this discussion.. (all paraphrased)  He was asked something like" How do you know when something is done/finished"

He answered the question "  Something is finished when it no longer needed to have anything done to make it complete"..  Other than that it is " A work in progress"

He then went on to say"  A smith who has achieved the level to know when it is completed,  also amougnst his peers" is a smith worth having.. 

A smith who believes his work is finished but still shows it needing further work or refinement should not call it finished " But a work in progress".. 

 

I find this to be true..  When I make something I always know where the flaws are or where something could be done better..  This ideology of Yellin has plagued me since the day I picked up the hammer..   When I work for money sometimes it becomes " I will work the item till I can't afford to lose any more money" and it's "good enough" and no one will know but me..

Then there is the stuff I make with love or spirit.. An there is no such thing as " good enough",, and the money (since there is none") doesn't matter.    These are those rare days where I am willing to open my cosmic chakras and to make or produce or refine till it no longer "needs" anything  from me..     ( head nodding) 

 

Now that I don't work for money per say..  "I do take on jobs but only the jobs I want"  If I start out and it's not going the way I want.. I will throw it in the scrap bin..  Ah, here is the kicker..  Now after 30+ years of doing this.. I know right away what kind of day it will be at the forge, I know it from the moment I take the first hammer swing..   I also know how to fix it..   And change that day.. 

 

I also know now that I can do better..   LOL.. It's funny because I used to be pretty good.. But now I have the potential to be even better. Just not as fast.... 

So,  we keep talking about when is it good enough..   

 

Well the real question to me is " What flaws are acceptable"          Is a cold shut acceptable?  Is a hammer mark acceptable?  Is a line being out of place compared to all the rest acceptable? I find now that after all this time..   things are less acceptable because I understand the potential for the item not " Needing" anything from me..  " Then it is finished".. 

[ThomasPowers]

One issue with historical replication is that we are accustomed to a different level of surface finishes nowadays. We are also accustomed to museum pieces that show centuries of patination.  It's a difficult line to make things that look *exactly* like they should with neither modern machine finishes nor centuries of patination.

I was once at a presentation by Dominic Tweddle on the goldsmith's house in York and how hard they worked to have everything look like they would have when it originally was inhabited.  One thing he mentioned was that an inventory referred to a red chest as having been inherited from an Aunt (IIRC) and so they worked on it to have the configuration be a generation  older and with wear to match.

[jlpservicesinc]

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

One issue with historical replication is that we are accustomed to a different level of surface finishes nowadays. We are also accustomed to museum pieces that show centuries of patination. 

I agree if that is what you are trying to accomplish..        

 

If you are one who"  Is into making items that can be represented as " having the right patination" for a given era. or wear and selling the items as originals or reproductions.   More power to you.   Same with Textured finishes, etc, etc.. 

It becomes what the person whom made the item is looking to do..    If you go to my pictures page you will see many different finishes from filed, to raw, to waxed, to oiled to polished..    some latches got nothing nor ever touched with a file.. Where back in the good old days latches were nearly always finished with file.. 

If you look at any items from the time frames(1550-1940's) I generally have interest in.. The finish work was superb,  dropped off on a larger scale closer to modern MFG times....  Surgical tools, saws, hand saws, draw knives.. Anvils, vises, etc, etc.. 

My point was/is..   ideally it comes down to how you feel about what it is you are making and the level of finish..     I feel much like Yellin..     I strive for perfection in each and every thing I make.. It's what keeps me in search of refining my skill set..  As my skills get better so does speed.. So does capability in size of materials being worked up to a certain limit.. 

If someone is simply happy with the progress they have achieved then more power to them.. I have never been a fan of textured finishes,, Yet they have there place in modern design..  I've seen many outstanding modern produced artistic items.. A delight to see..    But it's not my thing..   Then again.. I would consider myself more a trades smith then an artist..    Beauty in functionality to me is outstanding..  My goal is to be the best Blacksmith I can be.. My work will eventually show that.. I figure I have another 30year..

When to stop working on an item is when you no longer need to.

[gote]

Beauty in functionality. Yes that is something I believe in.

Someone mentioned a cold shut. If you have a bad cold shut, it is really difficult to “refine” it away. If the piece goes bad it is better to consider it as “ raw material for something else” and start again.

In the work process of an artist or artisan there is usually an optimum. Up to that point the piece is being better. After that, “refinement” really makes it worse. Part of the skill lies in recognizing the optimum and stop work in time.

[JHCC]

51 minutes ago, gote said:

Someone mentioned a cold shut. If you have a bad cold shut, it is really difficult to “refine” it away. If the piece goes bad it is better to consider it as “ raw material for something else” and start again.

 Over the weekend, I was making a pilum and noticed that there was a small cold shut on the tang. It was crystal clear that it was minuscule and purely cosmetic. I could easily have taken it out with a file or a hit on the grinder, but I knew that it would be hidden and wouldn't affect the strength of the spear. 

 In that situation, leaving it alone was entirely "good enough", even though it would be unacceptable in almost every other situation. 

[ThomasPowers]

Another example:  Like making caltrops, they were supposed to be "quick and dirty" because to use them you essentially "threw them away".  Fine finish with file work is doing them *wrong*!  I was once lucky enough to pick up a crossbow quarrel head found outside a castle in Germany.  The vendor was puzzled by why I bought the one with the most evidence of rusting on it.  The answer was that it showed the flow of the wrought iron and so showed exactly how it had been forged from the original stock, again an item that was mass produced and not expected to have a high level of finish.  (I do have a Metropolitan Museum of Art annual discussing highly ornate quarrels that were made as presentation gifts to Cathedrals by the guilds...very high level of finish with engraving, gilding, etc...)

[jlpservicesinc]

The level of finish for most items made within the last 5000 years by todays standards would be consider more finished..   Reason being is if you make 1000's  of calthrops or arrow tips. thumb latches, knives, axes, spears. swords, hinges, butter knives, nails, axles, tire rims, bolts, nuts, rivets.. ETC. ETC, ETC..  

The quality and quantity gets better as you make more and more..  Think back to when you first started forging metal and the level of finish you had vs now.. 

Or better yet.. You all seem to forget it was an apprentice type trade, where you had to show a mastery of what you were making to move onto your own and it was the master smith, sword smith, armorer, vice maker, anvils maker, nail maker.. that decided when good enough was good enough.. 

I've seen all sort of medieval armor, viking tools and hardware,  and the level of finish was amazing. As were the battlefield tools.  people seem to think just because it's old or made 2000 years ago it should be crude or not well made/finished.. 

And while I would agree that certain items were not filed or finished for a given job.. (as an exaggeration  filing the outside of a wagon tire) most arrow heads or cross bow bolts tips were very well forged and some were also made from steel vs wrought iron.  and were hardened accordingly. 

 

Somehow this thread took on a life of it's own, vs "how do you know when good enough is good enough"

 

I'm starting to think you just want to post more pictures of stuff that is finished forged vs filed..  Very tricky you are.. 

 

These are all vintage items Hand forged and finished to the 999's yet just mundane everyday items.. 

The first picture was from a mill town and the scarf is not even finished.. ????/   These other items are amazing.. Look at the details on all of them and the level of finish even the vise has a nice little detail.. 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Yes with practice you get good; when you are paid by the piece you also learn how to produce the fastest way that will get the $$. I've seen a good sized number of medieval arrowheads in Museums and Collections.  They do not tend to be fancy at all; especially the ones NOT on display but back in the drawers of the storage section.  There are artifacts of preservation and display where fancier stuff tends to get saved and put on display and plain items tend to get recycled back in history or stay in the drawers today.  (Or that example of the hoard of Roman nails found in 1959  at Inchtuthil where there were so many some were even scrapped!)

The masterpieces for the various guilds were not examples of typical work; just as a Doctoral Thesis does not reflect a person's typical posts on the internet.

Armour and swords were high end items for most of history; telling me that cars have a high level of fit and finish because you'd been looking at Rolls Royces and Maseratis doesn't seem to apply to Yugos.

Can I get a cite on the steel for arrowheads?  I went to the presentation on war arrowheads at the 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies given by  David Starley of the Royal Armouries and he said that steel arrowheads  or even case hardened ones just were not found.  He did mention that this contradicted commonly held beliefs. (I don't know if his presentation has been published; I would like to get a copy for my research library....)

Note that historically there was a known division of Blacksmiths vs Whitesmiths with the whitesmiths doing things that required a filed "bright" AKA "white" finish and blacksmiths producing items that went out the door with an as forged finish; oddly enough armour was often sold "black from the forge"  to be finished/polished by another guild the metal polishers guild...and then to an engraver and gilders and....The guild system of the medieval and renaissance times is fascinating and sometimes very weird...

Anyway more pictures are always good!  But artifacts of preservation still apply.  I could of course take pictures next weekend of the mending rods from a cistern cracked in the 1906 quakes in Socorro to show rather crude smithing.  Some of my old tools are very much on the unfancy side of things too; but I have some very nice ones too...

[jlpservicesinc]

I'm not disagreeing..  Just trying to clarify..  

The tools you have that are shoddily made might not have been made by a skillful smith or they may have been made as a 1 or 2 time use tool, or they may have been made by the apprentice..    Just like today there is a ton of crap work out there vs nicely forged items.. I've seen it 1000's of times in 38 years.  And yes the stuff on display can be the best pieces to define what quality was being produced as that is what people want to see..  

It's up to the individual to be a poor, good, better or the best smith they can be and the work one produces (since we no longer have a master to answer to, one must judge for themselves) and the product will show that level of skill, study of determination..  

But again,  there are millions of items produced by skilled Blacksmiths  (never mentioned whitesmiths) which are finely finished right from the forge.   Quality is Quality no matter how you slice it..   A good smith can make great items with crappy tools..   A newbie smith can make crappy products with brand new tools..    The range is incredible.. 

Again this thread comes down to  " When is enough, enough? 

In the town I grew up in.. there were 5 blacksmiths 1800-mid 1900s and one lasted into the 60's...

 Anyhow I had talked with a gentleman who was in his 80's.. He lived in town his whole life.. He knew all the smiths and while not a blacksmith himself as a kid he would go and run the blower/bellows for them..  And as an adult he brought stuff to be made or fixed..   He told me that"  For a given item you would go to the appropriate smith..  If you needed say a wagon tire fixed you would go to  Sam's.. If you needed a shaft  welded or turn bolt end forged you would go to Freds.. If you needed  a horse shod you would go to Ralphs.. If you wanted a quality hammer you would go to Roberts.. 

What he then said was " all the smiths were capable of doing a fair job on all items but these smiths did an outstanding job on each of the items mentioned.. Each one was a master in their own right, but each one had a knack for the items they did the best work on..    

I think this is true for any smith New, old, any smith alive..  Just because you can make something, does not mean it will be a quality product or you have achieved perfection.    

The example from my previous post the 1st picture was one of eye bolts forge welded but not blended.. The smith decided that they possessed the needed strength and finish and he was correct because they were attached to part of a dam with 3/4" steel cables and the cables had snapped but the eyes and forged pieces were still attached to the destroyed dam which was washed away in a flood..  

The second ones were of a support rod for the Train department.. Each weld is stamped with the guys number and each one is finished to the 9999's... 

Here are some examples of earlier work..  The first 2 pictures are of an ice chisel for ice fishing.. LOL.. Made from a leaf spring..  Does it need anymore finish than it has?   The other picture is of fresh from the forge and anvil with no file work at all just hammered to shape.. Thumb latch bodies (thumbers needed a little clean up)..   That is how I sold them and they need no more finishing.. .... 

 

[ThomasPowers]

I'm enjoying that we can have a discussion on the topic and not a flamefest!  I think that at times we are both playing devil's advocate to each other too.  

Whitesmiths are often associated with things like locks and keys and sugar nippers.  I think they went by the wayside fairly early in the industrial revolution as their type of work was very much subject to economies of scale especially in the equipment used---why knifemaking tended to be done in certain locations using LARGE water powered grinding wheels and knife blades were shipped by the barrell all over the world from those centers.

[yves]

On 16/04/2017 at 11:12 AM, jlpservicesinc said:

The tools you have that are shoddily made might not have been made by a skillful smith or they may have been made as a 1 or 2 time use tool, or they may have been made by the apprentice..    

I am about 15% in the analysis of the Hotermans collection, more than 2700 iron utensils and implements from the 17th and 18th centuries for cooking on the hearth. Not having the experience some of you enjoy, I was very surprised early on when I found an object that did not have the quality of the others. I had thought, should I say "of course", that the blacksmiths of the 17th and 18th centuries were the models to turn to and that they could not have turned out shoddy products. And then I stopped being surprised and shocked. Some implements have truly been forged in such a way that the iron was transformed in a precious metal. Some, because of all the reasons given by jlpservicesinc, and others, like the client did not want to pay or could not afford a quality finish, were put out quite roughly.

I own a trammel I found in Brittany. I enjoy it for all sorts of reasons. But it is not perfect. The apprentices were the ones who forged the every day trammels for ordinary people, the smith putting his skills to design and forge the trammels ordered by the nobles and the bourgeois. My trammel was certainly forged by the apprentice. And I like to imagine that the smith  pointed to the roughness of the tree symbol chiseled in the hook, the strap that is not perfectly blended after welding … and, again I imagine, when the apprentice said he would bring it back to the fire to finish the welding, the smith probably said something like, "No, it's OK. for the amount he is paying, this will be good enough". And that trammel was good enough to work over the flames for more than 150 years.

As pointed out, books depict the best quality objects possible ; the most desirable are in the museums and exhibited by them. The shoddy stuff never reaches the book pages and stays in the drawers, at the bottom of the boxes on the shelves. So of course I thought that the smiths of the past were perfect. And then reality came in with experience : they were not. They lived in the real world and the real world, often, only asks for what is good enough.

Thomas Powers, by the way, you are  right, this discussion is quite enjoyable.

[ThomasPowers]

By artifact of preservation I mean that high end items tend to get preserved much more often than low end items.  You damage your low end car and to the scrapyard it goes; your great grandfathers Rolls Royce on the other hand probably has a reserved spot in your garage.  Gold and silver eating utensils tend to be saved over wooden and horn ones.  So when you're looking at historical items it can be hard to find the "normal" ones.  For Arms and Armour I like auction catalogs to see items that are not the same ones shown again and again from the Tower of London or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This is also why shipwrecks are so valuable as they are a snapshot in time and modern archeology does preserve the low end stuff as well as the high end stuff!

[yves]

Hotermans was a collector who came on the French market some time after Le Secq des Tournelles. For the later, money was no object and all his time, his fortune and his ferocious energy were devoted to the enlargement of his collection. And he was choosy. Let us not forget that Le Secq filled a church in  Rouen with his objects (see d'Allemagne's "Decorative antique Ironwork", all objects of this collection) and most of them great art work. It seems like Le Secq picked up all the best and left the rest to people like Hotermans (who are not very  numerous …). That would partly explain why ordinary objects seem easy to come by in the Hotermans collection.

As to the "normal ones", the "good enough ones", I came to believe that they are still to be found in France, not necessarily because they were prized and preserved. The explanation I offer is that there are areas in France that exist for 500, 600 years if not more. They became "remote areas" when they were left behind by economic development (whole villages have been deserted or almost, for quite a long time, some are for sale) and the Lescqs and Hotermans of this world have not gone to them. 

[jlpservicesinc]

1 hour ago, yves said:

Hotermans collection

Where can I find a copy of his collection?   I'm always looking for more detailed information.. 

 

It is funny but I seem to gravitate more towards " Peasant"  wares vs elite/rich..       Plain everyday usable stuff.. while I find the really ornate stuff neat and even some of it beautiful I'm not overly impressed..  

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

When I'm making something for myself, I usually settle for good enough, It'll work. When making for someone else, I try to make it to the best of my ability.

[jlpservicesinc]

On 4/16/2017 at 4:32 PM, ThomasPowers said:

I'm enjoying that we can have a discussion on the topic and not a flamefest!  I think that at times we are both playing devil's advocate to each other too.  

 

I am with you totally..  Anger is to easy to come by..   

1 hour ago, yves said:

So of course I thought that the smiths of the past were perfect. And then reality came in with experience : they were not. They lived in the real world and the real world, often, only asks for what is good enough.

Thomas Powers, by the way, you are  right, this discussion is quite enjoyable.

2 things I have noticed with time..   1, I am less concerned with what is presentable to others. (my standards are very high and I have to be happy before it leaves).  2,  and item of function can be finished when it reaches it "functionality"

I have enjoyed this thread also though I think it gets a little off track once in awhile..

 

53 minutes ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

When I'm making something for myself, I usually settle for good enough, It'll work. When making for someone else, I try to make it to the best of my ability.

That is funny.. I find I usually take more time..   Of course this is now vs 18 years ago..  Back then it really depended on who was going to see it..

 

[ThomasPowers]

I tend to have all my mistakes and my best work belongs to other people.

[yves]

7 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I tend to have all my mistakes and my best work belongs to other people.

The way I put it : "I live with my errors".

[yves]

12 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

Where can I find a copy of his collection?

The Hotermans collection was acquired by the Stewart Museum in Montreal (now the McCord-Stewart Museum) in 1971. Here is a time line about the collection. This is taken from an article by By Richard J. Wattenmaker

Quote

In the Winter 1971-72 issue of Vie des Arfs' appeared an article on the acquisition by the Macdonald Stewart Foundation of a collection of approximately two thousand wrought iron utensils assembled by and formerly belonging to M. Hotermans in Paris. A portion of this extraordinary resource was first exhibited in 1971 at the Palais des Arts, Terre des Hommes and subsequently imaginatively installed in the Montreal Military and Maritime Museum, lie Ste-Hélène. In 1975, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, organized a traveling exhibition of sixty-three pieces selected from the reserve collection, tapping only a small number of the remaining treasures of the Macdonald Stewart Collection. 102 A considerable number of objects in this collection served as points of reference and study by a brilliant and dedicated French scholar-teacher, Raymond Lecoq (1913-1971). 

Wattenmaker's  article (pdf) may be found here : file:///Users/yvescouture/Downloads/54656ac.pdf

The original article on the acquisition of the collection by Stewart and refered to by Wattenmaker (in french (pdf)), may be found here : file:///Users/yvescouture/Downloads/57937ac.pdf.

Lecoq's book's title is "Les Objets de la vie domestique, Ustensiles en fer de la cuisine et du foyer des origines au 19e siècle".

Very few utensils are part of the permanent exhibition at the museum on the Île Sainte-Hélène. This fork, for instance, is part of it. I wrote an article on it : https://yvesforge.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/une-fourchette-dhonneur-du-xviiio-siecle/

The greatest part of the collection is stored in the museum's storerooms.

The more than fifty articles in my blog (https://yvesforge.wordpress.com/) are almost all about specific utensils and implements of this collection. I have much more material to write about … as work permits.

Not to highkjack this thread, if you would have other questions, you can PM me and I would gladly get back to you as soon as I can. 

[Mark Ling]

2 hours ago, yves said:

The way I put it : "I live with my errors".

yep, were not doctors so I guess we have to.

A doctor buries his mistakes, a blacksmith hauls them to the scrap yard!

 

13 hours ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

When I'm making something for myself, I usually settle for good enough, It'll work. When making for someone else, I try to make it to the best of my ability.

Same here....The problem with that is then people see my tools and think of my skill level lower than it really is because I leave my self with the lower end tools that I didn't see fit to give away but were still functional...

                                                                                                                                    Littleblacksmith

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JHCC]

10 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I tend to have all my mistakes and my best work belongs to other people.

Much of my furniture is prototypes left over from my cabinetmaking days.