new to forum

[Omnislug]

just recently found the forum.  I've been away from ironwork for a number of years but have started collecting new tools over the last year and just got my new Kanka anvil, posted elsewhere about that, and put up a extension to an old shed as a little smithy. I made my first shop at 15 out of the junk on the farm, tire rim forge, made my own charcoal in a 55 gallon drum , mostly bladesmithing and actually sold a few knives a few years later though I look at my early work with not so much pride but wonder why I was so impatient back then!  years later I got to work in professional smith's shops like Iron For life and Harmony Forge in Santa Fe NM as well as Firefly Lighting where I made hundreds of custom lights and some forgework. Got a chance to help teach "the Magic Of Metals" class at the Esalen Institute in California and when I moved back west Rejuvenation Lighting In Portland Oregon.  Inherited a bunch of tools from my step uncle who did ornamental ironwork in the bay area, ended up selling the 300+ pound hay budden (regretted it ever since) because I was moving so often it was really a pain to always pack it out but still have a few of those tools.

Always felt passionate about this craft but I wish I would have invested more time in learning the older blacksmithing side of the craft than the focus on bladesmithing. I'm just starting again after years of being away from it, have a wooden shed with a lean-to I just built for the forge, going to try making a profit with this little shop. I've got  a decent imagination and have drawn/written up lots of ideas for the future. I love the pacific Northwest and I'm putting down roots now so my anvil can actually be my anchor now.

[Omnislug]

thought I'd mention that I scarcely consider myself  much more than an apprentice still after all these years, the craft is so varied and smiths of a few hundred years ago had skills to put much of us modern folk to shame, I 'll likely never be or consider myself a "master" though I do try always to have impeccable work. 

[ThomasPowers]

Well there are multiple sides to that: my great grandfather was a smith for a small Arkansas hill town, he ended up with over 900 acres of land.

Now he could repoint and dress a plowshare for the local soil where I could not.  OTOH he never welded up a pattern welded billet or can discuss the metallurgy of iron and steel and he certainly NEVER smelted iron from ore!---things I can/have done.