Thanks, rockstar.esq.  Ironically, I coined that phrase after working a couple of months alongside of several PhD's :o

(not a smear of the venerable title per se, just the ones I was jammed in with....)

"Some people hit it and watch where it goes; I know where it's going to go before I hit it."  George Ernest, an early California smith:

 

 

"Make 50 of them; throw 45 away." Peter Ross

If life were easy, everybody would have one. 

If you smell something stupid burning,let go of it, its hot!

If it was easy someone else would be doing it

Karl Pilkington from "An Idiot Abroad" once said: "Moths are annoying, If you're going to be blind don't have wings".

 

I think that sort of applies to doubter spectators.

 

Whenever I read a post asking for suggestions on what to make for sale I think of this one; 

 

Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

And his patina recipe where one waits for a rooster to lay an egg...  thingmaker3

"If you make something ugly out of steel, it's going to be ugly for a long time."
-Jerry Culberson

Now you get that fire hotter than Dutch love---my grandfather

The number of people who do not need more books I can count on the thumbs of one foot....Thomas Powers

I don't much enjoy getting burnt, and a safety one I always keep in mind is this one:

All that glitters is not gold; all that's black is NOT COLD!

(It's not original; I read it somewhere. True though - we tend not to burn ourselves on red hot steel, always the black stuff!)

DON'T GRIP THE HAMMER, Let the hammer grip you

 

(sarcasm for the day is out there)

From my Dad:

 

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right."

 

"The right tool for the job."

 

"It's easier to do it right the first time than to redo it to make it right."

When it's time to move, that's go time. It's NOT "I don't know" time---my old boss

Pain is your body's way of telling your brain it did something stupid.

Hand forging. "First, you finagle it; then you finesse it."

                             Frank Turley

You can watch things happen, you can make things happen, or you can wonder what happened.
Captain Phil Harris

My forge never starts if there are spectators around telling me what to do.

You can't clear the water up till you've got the pigs out of the creek. Ten Hammers

Some of my teaching sayings:

"Hit it where it's hot; not where its not!"  

"Don't take a piece out of the fire until the anvil is clear and your hammer is to hand"

"Don't waste heat!"

"Think with your piece in the fire"

"Talking while cranking the blower will get you more pieces in the fire than you put there!"

"Any hammer in a storm!"  (I have my favorite hammers; but when I teach they sometimes wander away from the anvil and so I will grab any hammer so as to not waste a heat---also shows the students that it's not the hammer---its the skill!)

"Take your piece out of the forge if you are going to wander off and do something else"

 

And one that was given me when I was learning to do billet welding 30 years ago:  "Don't look at it, *HIT* *IT*!"

bitumen has been known to well "stick like dog-do to a pick-nick blanket" ianinsa

Cream rises to the top. Unfortunately, so does pond scum. John McPherson

Common sense is like deodorant.  The people who need it most, never use it. - anonymous

 

"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." - Rene Descartes

 

"Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors" - Ernest Hemingway

 

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools in the world...  it's that lightning isn't distributed right" - Mark Twain.

Spit first,THEN cuss. John McPherson

 

What sells best? Anything that looks good in a double wide and costs $20 or less. Bill Epps

I often offer to hot shoe hecklers!
I tell them it's the last set of shoes they'll ever need; cause they wear like iron!
If they ask me if it will hurt I tell them "No; I've got industrial hearing protectors *and* earplugs, won't hurt me at all!"

 

Thomas Powers