4970 miles

[NazarZhuravel]

Hello everyone, my name is Nazar, I am 31 years old

and I am a blacksmith.

the title of the topic is the distance from my house in Ukraine to the city of Chicago, where I currently live.

I have had fibrous dysplasia of the hip joint since childhood, this unpleasant disease has always limited me in some way

,so it happened and now, with the beginning of the war with Russia, I wanted to join the army to defend my country from the Russians, but I was declared unfit for military service due to illness.

To be useful, my friends and I repaired cars that went to the front. I sold the machines from the forge to buy things for military friends who were going to war.

there wasn't a day that I didn't want to go back to the forge, because it was my life's work. and that's what I'm good at.

there is such a period in the war that people get used to it, we have been living this way since 2014, someone is tired of hearing it all the time, and then people are not very helpful, I understand that. but the war is on, and it has not gone anywhere.

therefore, when I realized that every month it would be more and more difficult for me to help my friends, I considered it my duty to provide them with a good rear with all my strength and capabilities.

so I ended up in the United States of America, now I live in Chicago, I already got a work permit and I would like to find a job in a forge where I can make knife blades or knives because I can do it well.

the only minus is that I don't speak English perfectly, but I understand a lot, I learn quickly. I wrote this text with the help of a translator))).

as far as my skills are concerned

i know how to make mokume.

mosaic damascus. random damascus .cable damascus

I have many blade smithing techniques.

I work with leather.

I will add a photo of my work, maybe you know someone who needs an assistant in a forge in Chicago. I wrote to many blacksmiths who I found with the help of Google in Chicago, only 3 wrote back and unfortunately they are not ready to hire me. Thank you for reading to the

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Nazar, glad to have you.  That's some nice work I really like your control of the Mokume. The problem you're probably running into finding a place to work is the current economy. First the pandemic probably shut most of the shops at least temporarily, then the current economy is making it hard for folks to meet the bills so buying luxury things like beautiful knives tends to go into the someday file. 

I'm thinking you need to change job hunting tactics. Take samples of your work, enough to show it but not a large display, 3-4 blades and some damascus billets and start visiting the office of the places you'd like to apply to. Do you have a personal card? You need one so you can leave it with your job application and a couple nice photos of your work. A brochure is a good method of presentation, photos, technical information for the pictured blades , some personal information about you, education years of experience and a very brief story about how you come to be in America. Don't go into detail, keep it short, if you can make a potential employer curious enough to want to hear the rest of the story, you'll be a lot closer. Make sense?

All the best luck.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Welcome to both IFI and the US. Glad to have you. If you haven’t noticed many native speakers don’t exactly speak good English either, lol

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Whatcha talkin bout Charles?

Us okies have perfect language skills! 

even Jerry can understand us! 

[Charles R. Stevens]

But y’all talk slower than I type!

Seriously, I meet people every day with thick accents but otherwise excellent  English who think they speak poor English. Wile some troll who talked like they have a mouth full of marbles gets offended. 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Hahaha! 

Ya ain’t got as many miss understandings that way!

other people talk to fast and always mixin stuff up!

[Frosty]

I understand Peavinean because I have more than 50 words in my vocabulary so I pick something close and go with it. 

Don't sweat speaking English Nazar, yours is fine. What's going on now is pretty typical here, we're old friends and enjoy messing with each other. So, when a thread does this, don't take it personally, we're just having a good time on each other. If we have any serious problem with each other we say so in private. It's like a party.

Frosty The Lucky.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Jerry’s right we’re just messin,

Howdy from eastern Oklahoma! and welcome to the forum!

[Charles R. Stevens]

The truth it wile IFI is a peer reviewed document it is also just a few (tens of thousands) old boys hanging out on Glenn Conner’s front porch. 
know I know humor can loose something in the translation, being that it depends so heavily common culture and language, but feel free to join in, trying to explain a joke we missed will teach the rest of us something about your native culture. 
 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Welcome from the Ozark mountains. Do you have a place where you live to set up your own shop? I would say you are a world class knife maker without a doubt. There are several world class knife makers on IFI but it may take a while for them to see your introduction thread.