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I Forge Iron

First fire in a loooooooong time


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Well, I finally did it. I lit the forge for the first time in close to 20 years. I had drug it out and started arranging things last summer, after letting it sit since I brought it down from the folks estate in 2005. Last year I bought out one estate sale, and a farrier who was hanging up his hammer, but it still sat cold. Not sure what sparked me to get it lit, but I did. Tossed in a RR spike, and wailed away on it to get the feel of things again. Made a sparkler of the first one by not paying attention to my heat :P The second one became a sortahawk. After those two exercises I grabbed a piece of 3/8" round stock and started a BBQ fork for a friend of mine. Did a flared flat scroll at the top, and got a couple of sections of squared up reversed twisting before my neighbor invited me over for dinner. Being a single guy, I don't refuse a free dinner often ;) It all started to come back after all of those years.

Dad was my smithing partner, and much more to me. I sure could have used him a couple of times yesterday, as I only have two hands. This August it will be 10 years that I lost him. Guess it was just time to start again.

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Thanks guys.

It feels good to get back into this more than just talking about it. After Mom died in 2003 I decide that there wasn't anything keeping me in CA any longer. I wasn't really happy with how my life had gone to that point, and figured I needed a big change. To start my life over, and to be the person that I had always wanted to be,I moved to where I am now. New state, new friends, new job, new everything. It has been a little slow in coming, due to some heavy self doubts, but I am getting to where I want to be. That little step of firing up the forge, and making something, helped to alleviate some of the doubts I have had in myself. Weird, because I know I have the talent, I just haven't used it. When I was younger I never hesitated to start something new, be it tanning a fresh road kill skunk, or making some contraption with surplus parts. My mind never stopped, but my hands did. Hmmmm where's UnicornForge to analyze this thread? :D

Hopefully I can finish the fork Thursday after work , so I can give it to my friend this Friday.

Making a run to CA tomorrow 0 dark thirty, gonna be a loooong day tomorrow, and about 900 miles :blink: Got 3,000# of copper, and brass scrap to drop off, and new material to pick up, so I better get rested up for the trip.

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