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I Forge Iron

The Dutchman says hello


Deimos

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Greetings,

I am a starting blacksmith from the Netherlands (who would have guessed...) Found this site after the Dutch blacksmithing forum turned out to be empty and dead.

My skills? Started 17 years ago (34 now) as a welder, then rolled into maintenance and building machines (mobile cranes, transportation systems etc) later worked as a hydraulic mechanic/designer, a cycle mender, electrician and now i am working as a Eplan engineer.

Its all nice and stuff working, having a cozy desk job, but with the loss of calluses came a growing need to start making things again. So what do you do then? You empty out the shed, get your tools out of storage and start building a blacksmith workshop. Found myself a pretty worn down Peter Wright (payed 325 dollar for a 196 lbs anvil) and i am building my gas forge this week.

I hope i can learn a lot from the information posted here.

 

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I love learning stuff i did not even know i needed/wanted to learn, that is why a welder turned into a electrical engineer :P

Anvils over here are very pricey, a 50kg (110lbs) Peddinghaus goes for at least 350 euro (400 dollar) and the good ones go for about double that. And since i know almost nothing about blacksmithing i would rather learn (and fail) on a cheaper anvil.

I want to make training weapons (in the far future, for now i will just make stuff to get better at hammering metal) i already started doing stuff with PE since there is almost nothing half decent for sale, and for metal training weapons there is even less. And everything that is for sale is either A: deadly sharp B: trash C: expensive D: all of the above

It kind of started when my instructor came to me with a spear head he bought online that was in no way fixable to a staff, so i started grinding and welding to make it fit to a staff, and then he started coming up with pictures of things asking if i could make them. The welding part is no problem, but cold bending is not really what i want, so i decided to make a little forge. And when you have a forge, you kind of also need an anvil (or anvil shaped object). 

When you have both a forge and an anvil, mind as well start learning how to be a blacksmith.

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Just a little jargon correction: Anvil Shaped Object is something made out of cast iron and generally sold as an anvil; but can't be used for long term smithing as it's made from cast iron and is soft and fragile.  I think you meant an "improvised anvil" made from a solid chunk of steel, it may not look like a London pattern anvil; but it can be used as an anvil pretty much forever.

Improvised anvils are anvils, anvil shaped objects are trash!

My parents spent 4 years in Naarden and I got to visit them several times.

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Yup; I had a 150 mile drive just to see a Doctor lately, New Mexico is a large state, 314,900 km2 with few people, 2.35 million, while the Netherlands  has 33,500 square kilometres with 17 million people.   I've worked on several international projects where we had various Europeans visit on business trips and planning to visit one of the USA's tourist attractions; not realizing that it would take all the time they had allocated just to drive there and back.    We do average 280 sunny days a years so if you ever get to visit; bring your sunscreen!

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Welcome aboard Deimos, glad to have you. We have a number of members from the low country aboard, maybe within visiting distance. Then again we think of an hour drive as almost in the neighborhood. Alaska makes New Mexico seem crowded. 

Anyway, were I you I wouldn't be looking for anvils popular in America, I'd be looking for: Swedish, German, English, etc. anvils. Ones from your side of the Atlantic and the NW side of continent should be much more common and reasonably priced.  More selection of pattern as well.

Iforge has a whole section about good learning projects, from beginner to advanced eye candy, like: furniture, ornate gates and house jewelry. There is a master smith in Russia currently posting pic of spectacularly beautiful work and he's intimidatingly fast too.

Frosty The Lucky.

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To pick up my anvil i drove to Belgium, so if i need to drive for 1 or 2 hours to get to see someone work i will gladly do that. 

Most anvils i could find over here are either 100lbs, or 400 to 500lbs, since i am working in a small shed i need to be able to move her around.

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Hundred pounds makes a good travel anvil; I have a couple that size I've done a lot of work on.  165# makes a good "shop" anvil most folks don't need anything heavier; but blacksmiths tend to suffer terribly from "Anvil Envy" and so a lot of hobby smiths are using what were originally "industrial" anvils. (I  have a friend with a 750# anvil.....unfortunately he's armed and keeps his shop locked...)

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I thought as much "mine's bigger then yours". Some factory's i worked in the past had some pretty beefy anvils, pretty nice if you can bang a 15kg sledge on them, but what use are they when you just start making you first pair of thongs.

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Also heavy forging should be done in the "sweet spot".  That is the part of the face that has metal from the face all the way to the base. It's also the area where you are least likely to damage an anvil even using larger hammers.  We were using a sledgehammer on my 156# HB recently with no problems as we were staying in the sweet spot---Actually I was playing human triphammer and would just hit the same spot over and over and allow my student to work his piece under it.  When I start students off I have been known to take a piece of chalk and mark the sides of the anvil and across the face to show where the sweet spot is.  (English anvils tend to have larger sweet spots than American anvils of the same weight as they tend to have fatter waists.)

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And i thought everything in America was bigger...

I wish people over here had the same passion about forging as they do on the other side of the pond. Anything related to working with your hands and getting dirty is frowned upon here. 

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You may have to wait for the next big cycle of folk arts to go through...tool up now while things are cheap!  (Hopefully NOT coupled to a rise in Nationalism like an earlier one was!)

There are sociological aspects too with "blue collar" type of jobs traditionally being seen as lower status than "white collar" jobs.  Most of us doing it as a hobby don't care though I see a lot more pickups than jaguars at smithing meetings. I always make sure I have business cards when I travel internationally as in some cultures those who have such cards are "engineers" while those who don't are "technicians" and are treated differently.  At least the suit coat and tie culture has waned; especially out here in the south west USA where someone wearing blue jeans and boots may be a millionaire!  I'm not that far off the farm; my Father was the first person in his family to graduate from High School, got a scholarship for college and went on to be an executive, hence the 4 years in Naarden as VP of Technology in a joint venture with Phillips.

I remember I was demonstrating at an Arts Fair once and someone came up and pointed me out to their children and said, "See what can happen if you don't go to college?"  It was amusing to tell them that I had 2 BS degrees and just did this for *fun*! (I've worked in both fields too...)

There are some folks doing great experimental archeology in in Europe and participating in various reenactment groups.  Slanting yourself towards the "artist" might help as people seem to accept that "artists" get their hands dirty even if they are "upscale" people.

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Since i graduated as a welder there has been a very hard decline in crafters, we graduated with 20 welder, about 15 millers and 6 mechanics, 4 years later all they could deliver where 3 welders, at the moment the education has moved about 30 miles to team up with other welding classes to get at least a handful of new welders every 2 years.

Since i now work a desk job i don't get much lip about my position on the market, but when i was just working in factory's i would just ask them if they could bring all of their degree's and certificates. Next day they would show up with their one or two pieces of paper, never seen smirks disappear when i placed my 4 degree's and about 21 certificates/diploma's.

Some people just refuse to stop learning.  

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Back when I was an engineer that kept a 50+ million dollar software development and testing lab running (1990's); I ran into some people who treated me quite badly until I pointed out that I had 2 degrees from US Universities and was responsible for a lot more than they were and knew a lot more about this stuff than they knew.  One in particular needed an adapter for his computer to hook into the lab machine.  As it was a different system from what we used in the USA I asked him for the pinout needed and if we didn't have one I'd build one.  He told me he didn't need the pinout all he needed was a silver adapter!  So I went and picked out about 7 silver adapters all with different pinouts---none of which worked.  Took a few days but when he could give me the pinout required I had the correct adapter built for a non-standard system in about an hour.   (I did international field support as well and when I traveled I took one of every type of gender bender adapters we had; almost always left some of them "retired in place".)

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Pretty much sums up my experience with lots of people. Most of the time i got my respect after things broke down and i was able to fix it faster then most of the old guys.

Or by just being a jack of all trades, working as a electrician and also being able to build hydraulic systems or (during the summer holiday when the welders/fabricators are gone) making new parts for machines. 

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During the dot com bust I held on a lot longer than some folks because I could keep things going with my other skills, I put bedframe brackets in an off sized cabinet so we could mount equipment in it rather than buy a new cabinet, scrounged extra long power cables from the recycle boxes in the factory, or my best was when a high dollar, long lead time, computer housing got gunched by a forklift my Boss asked me if I could "hammer it so it would work"---I used some large C clamps and some pallet boards and *GENTLY* pulled it back into shape so the circuit packs would fit in their slides and the system booted!  Luckily the circuit packs were shipped separately.  When the company I worked for was spun off in the dotcom boom we had 135K employees; I was laid off in the downsizing that took us under 35K, lasted a long time  before the axe fell.

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pffff, 100k gone. I cant even grasp numbers like that, biggest company i ever worked for had maybe 200 employees. And when the last economic crisis started i had just changed from being a welder to being a mechatronics mechanic, those times where pretty hard.  

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The big company that spun us off had several times that number of employees. I had originally planned to work there till I could take early retirement. Then in Feb 2000 I was diagnosed with Diabetes and laid off a couple years later.  Early retirement was no longer an option; next job was 9 years long and then 6 for the one after that, (It was a great job, I crossed the border to Mexico every work day to start.) Now I'm on my last job and hoping it will take me to 65 and medicare.  Of course I'll be living on a lot less than I had hoped to have.

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I have found that people's paradigms are upset when they encounter someone who mixes "professional" and "blue collar" skills or expertise, a software person who can work on hardware, a pilot who knows his or her way around an engine, a manager who knows which end of a wrench to grab.  In my case, most people are taken aback by my being both an attorney and a blacksmith.  The usual reaction is, "Wow, that's an unusual combination."  Even amongst blacksmiths it is unusual for someone to have a legal background and when I'm with attorneys they find it unusual/odd that I am a blacksmith.  And when I throw in my geologist and military background they have absolutely no idea of how to classify me.  And what a long strange journey it has been.

People like to fit other people into their preconceived categories and when someone doesn't fit they are thrown off and sometimes made a bit uncomfortable.

It also happens with gender stereotypes.  When a man or a woman has a skill or knowledge that typically is assigned to the other gender it will throw people off.  When a woman can tear apart an engine and put it back together without parts left over or when a man can sew or do something "feminine" people can be thrown off their stride.  I have always thought that everyone should be able to do pretty much everything well and short of biological restrictions there are no "masculine" or "feminine" roles or jobs.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” -Robert Heinlein

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."      

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21 minutes ago, George N. M. said:

they have absolutely no idea of how to classify me.

A worthy goal indeed! On the other hand being able to rapidly classify things is a strong survival trait. As is keeping the opposition guessing. 

Being confronted with evidence something you believe is wrong can give you pause. It's called cognitive dissonance. Something else I like to instill in the mundane world. When the state finally got desk top computers, replacing the 20 years outdated main frame with desk terminals and dedicated phone lines to connect to Juneau, (An utter waste of time and money) I, the lowly driller's helper was the ONLY one with any experience with PCs so I keep getting called to the office to help the guys figure the comps out. 

I got called into the head guy's office and told, I had work suitable for a laborer and to stop disrupting the office. "Yes sir, will do," and I went back to the shop. I DID have work to do. The phone was ringing when I got there, "Sorry, Head Cheese told me I was spending to much time in the office I was to stay in the shop." So, there I am not getting work done trying to coach the guys on the phone, "NO do NOT save a blank screen!! You're replacing the file you didn't want to lose with the blank screen, a EMPTY FILE. It's a fast way to erase files." Told almost everybody that one at least once. 

A few days and Head Cheese called me personally to ask if I'd come to the office and help folk with their computers. Not quite a Corvid brunch but that wasn't what I was after. 

Heck, I didn't know how to run the new PCs but I'd been working with PCs enough to figure out the manuals and the help files. The office was full of smart people, most smarter than I but they weren't afraid to ask the blue collar guy for help. It was a great group, even Head Cheese, he was just a recent appointee and didn't know what made what work. Once they got the hang of figuring things out I was able to go back and get things done. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

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4 hours ago, Frosty said:

most smarter than I but they weren't afraid to ask the blue collar guy for help.

This is what makes people smart, asking other people for help when they get stuck. Seeing your own limitations requires a lot of skill and intelligence. Only dumb people think they now everything.

I notice that at my current level also, since i have experience in almost anything i get a lot of questions by other engineers (the ones who had money to go to "smart people school") about designing electrical cabinets. On the screen everything will always fit, while trying to bend a fat 3 awg into a space hardly bigger then a stamp while laying flat on your belly and having your fingers torn open by cable ducts is something i like to avoid.  

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Deimos; not to mention allowing for "bend radius" on cables and fittings.  Had a lot of trouble getting that through to the assembly line that fiberoptic cables could NOT be bent sharply to make the assembly look pretty!

My stepson used to drive a forklift and program in his spare time.  His division found out that he could write the code for a change for their systems in 6 hours instead of a 6 week turn around time from the "computer department".  Ended up doing sql while being paid as a forklift driver, (no certificates or degrees, alas). Of course when they had layoffs he never seemed to be included in them...Finally was hired as a computer jock at a good increase in pay.

Nowadays have multiple skills can be a lifesaver with iffy jobmarkets and generally the more you can stack them the better. (I have a BS in geology and a BS in computer and information systems. Current job: IT work for the Earth and Environmental Sciences department...)  Last job: writing BASH test scripts for testing the assembly of high end custom computer systems in Mexico; sure wish I could send a thank you to my old Spanish teacher. Previous to that: testing software for a large Radio Telescope array being built in Chile in conjunction with European partners---German and Spanish!

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One of the things my parents told us till we were sick of hearing it, "You have to have a fall back," is as true as it gets. The one trick ponies of the world are on the street when tricks change. The more you know how to do the less likely your employer can afford to let you go. 

The lack of deductive logic and critical thinking in school tends to turn out folks who don't know the difference between an idea and a plan or that good intentions are the same as actions. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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