Hello from a newbie!

[Lightbulb]

Hello all! I’m from Indiana and I found this place while googling how to build my first forge, stumbled upon the JABOD thread and now I’m off to the races!

Everyone here seems really helpful, and I look forward to the opportunity to learn a new craft! 

[Goods]

FYI, Indiana Blacksmith Association (IBA) conference is coming up the next weekend at Tippon County Fairgrounds. Check out their website. I plan to be there Saturday, June 1st! Not sure where your at in IN, but they have satellite groups all around the state.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Lightbulb, glad you're on. 

Meet up with local IBA members, you'll learn more in an hour working with an experienced smith than days of trying to figure it out yourself. Take anything you see online with a grain of salt, Youtube allows anybody to post a video regardless of expertise so you see stuff there that's most often wrong sometimes downright dangerous. There's a section of IFI that links videos we've vetted. There are excellent instructors posting good videos but until you've learned enough to sift the wheat from the chaff you'll need someone to screen the junk.

We LOVE pics: shop, equipment, tools, projects, kids, scenery, heck there's a subsection for shop pets. Videos not so much, it's a world wide site with members in more than 150 countries, lots are on dial up connections and paying for bandwidth so we try to minimize file sizes.  There's an excellent link for working with Iforge for maximum goodness but I can never seem to find where I saved it. I'm like that my memory is screwy, it's a TBI thing. 

Again, glad to have you.

Frosty The Lucky.