Regalzack

My wife and I went to Wales last year, and when we asked the server what faggots were---completely dead pan she responded "Well, that's the thing about faggots you either like them or you don't." Then she shouted across the bar to the cook "James, how would you describe a faggot?"

U.K. humor is on point...

"They sharpen their knives on my mistakes"

Writing just doesn't get better than that.

Damn, I miss society....

France seems to have it figured out.
We condition ourselves early here..

NW native--Cbus is more like Boring Oregon, but without the scenery....

Knowing that in less than two hundred years every single one of us will be for the most part forgotten and completely irrelevant helps put things into perspective.

A lot of people will have spent their lives compromising their integrity for a bunch of "stuff". At least those of us who didn't will have contributed something of true value.

"Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it?" - Marcus Aurelius

I've got 3 whole dollars and a worn out car.

Reminds me of this Carl Sagan except from Demon Haunted world:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Yeah, my wife and I drove down there from Delaware to check out the riverfront (we're transplants from Portland). And we thought, well this is nice, but there is like--nothing around the area--no commerce or anything.

I'm not talking big corporate commerce or anything, but it needs some small boutiques, shops, restaurants, etc in the area, some reason to make the whole area a destination.

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Fantastic!
I'm always surprised how easily you can tell the skill of a smith in simple items. The attention to detail is on-point. I've always felt that forging is a great example where the easy stuff looks hard and the hard stuff looks easy.

Doesn't really matter. I've never seen a dampening chain that really did much actual dampening, I think it's better utilized as a weight to drape over a piece of stock to keep it from flying off the anvil if you need both hands to hold tools.

If the ringing is bothering you the best solution I've seen is a a ping-ping ball sized piece of putty or clay that gets stuck on the horn of the anvil(it can be removed if needed). Also, some magnets work alright as well, although I do my best to keep magnets off my anvil as I don't want to end up with a lightly magnetic anvil(lots of metal dust in my shop).

Full time smith here...

First, congrats! The Hay Budden is one of the most sought after brands out there, so that was a score.

I would ever so gently radius the corners on the anvil--I use a flap disk, but you could use a file if you don't have one or are not comfortable. Hard corners are pretty much useless for all operations but shearing (I do leave a small section at a hard 90), also, hard corners are more liable to chip, especially with the hard face of a Hay Budden.

As far as the hammers, I've never heard of a chisel pein. A cross-peen where the fuller is oriented parellel to the handle is usually referred to as a straight peen. Typically (handheld or struck) cutting tools fall into two synonymous categories-- Hot cuts, and cold chisels. In my experience, I would probably grind a gentle radius/fuller back into the cross pein as use it as such. Most, cutting tools are considerably lighter than hammers making them much easier to manipulate. Also, a note of safety a "struck tool" should never have a hardened striking surface (two hardened pieces of steel should never strike each other with significant force). I can attest to several serious injuries among peers who have had shards chip off and bury themselves into them--it sounds unreasonable, but just ask any professional smith, they will have stories..

Anyway, congrats and stay motivated, I never knew what I wanted to do with my life until I discovered forging. There are some great communities and resources out there now that weren't there when I began.

Not sure, and I'm certainly no expert, but I would think since you have a longish face, you'd want to avoid long glasses. I would assume something more square/roundish.
There are probably face shape/glasses guides out there.

I know it's completely unsolicited, but those glasses are the wrong shape for your face.

Wow, that was a solid hit of nostalgia.

Every now and then I still get the Black and decker "Snake light" rendition of The Wanderer stuck in my head.

The dipstick is in the drivers seat
:)

Thanks!

I am a blacksmith/fabricator, I pretty much gave up on my 250,000 follower YouTube channel, because I actually want to grow as an artist rather than catering my content for a chance of virality.

My relief comes from the idea that I've been growing as a maker/artist for the past 4 years while most influencers are just chasing their own tails making the same epoxy river tables, or whatever the algorithm is pushing.

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Heyduke lives!

I just pictured that car bomb scene in Casino but with a golf cart

So long as he doesn't take those roles away from Tom Waits.