Back again

I'm still in school, still plugging away. I dropped a class this semester to preserve my GPA- no detailed, long winded complaining. I just thought this guy was taking off points for really weak reasons and he was bragging in emails that the average for his classes is 78%. I'll just say that that would kill my GPA. Plus we had group projects which aren't any fun in real life, but they're downright painful in cyberspace.

The above means that I had some free time over the weekend, so I cleaned up the shop area. It took almost three hours to break down the boxes that had accumulated, sweep up and throw away all of the garbage that built up over the past few months. When I feel like I have some free time, I can head on out and do whatever. I just need to feel like I can put the books down (to be fair, I goofed off nearly all weekend, just to unwind from school stress).
I don't have any immediate plans, though I'd like to start working on reproducing items from Albert Sonn's "Early American Iron Work." On Nov 7 I'll be heading over to a friend's house for what should be a rededication of his shop and he'll show off his home-built hydraulic press. Sounds like good times to me.

Don't touch the metal...

I DVR "The Woodwright's Shop" on PBS.  It's a show that holds particular sentiment for me, which I'll dicuss later.  I'm sure much of the appeal, though, is that I'm absolutely clueless when it comes to working with wood and Mr Underhill does some fantastic work in those 26 minutes.  Anyway, this last episode had Master Blacksmith Peter Ross from Colonial Williamsburg demonstrating filing techniques.  The premise being that modern smithing usually leaves a rough finish to indicate that the metal was worked by hand, up until fairly recently, the metal was smoothed, polished and otherwise had a high degree of finish work.  During the episode, Mr Underhill touched the corner of a piece that had been filed on two of the four flats and Mr Ross said that blacksmiths are taught to not touch the metal.  He stated that the oils from the fingers were enough to make the file slip on the metal.   I have a better reason- that metal is going to get hot!  There's a lot of friction between a file and a piece of steel.  I learned this the hard way and I don't touch any metal with bare hands until I'm finished.  Smithy Rule #1- if it's metal, assume it will burn you and don't touch with bare hands.

Editing for clarity...

I received an email from one of the folks at DDP and he wants to "interview" me.  Sounds good to me.  He says he'll link to the site, but the blog not so much, especially in light of my missives concerning issues from a few months back.  I assume that a little press will drive some folks to the site and by extension, the blog.  In the interest of making it look like I've learned a few things about writing, I'm going to put some polish on most (all) of the blog entries to date.  I assure you I will NOT be modifying content, message or censoring language- I'm only going to try to improve clarity.

Back at it

I've been wanting to light the fires again for a while. I can't remember the last time I was in the shop to pound metal. June, maybe, during the three days between semesters, I think. I took some time today to tidy up and read the Northwest Blacksmith Assn's newsletter "Hot Iron News" while the forge came up to temp.
I needed a project that wasn't too intensive, but wasn't something that felt like production work, either (something besides sets of hooks or leaves). I found a plan for some acorn and oak leaf napkin rings. The hard part is forging 1/2" down to 1/8" round- well, it's time consuming if not hard. But it was good to be out there swinging the 2, 3 and 4 pound hammers. Most of it was with the 2# because I need to work on my control and it's too easy to squash rounds that thin. I might have the first one done tonight, maybe. I'm not in a rush and again I'm trying to avoid feeling like I "have" to be out there or that I'm doing production.
I think I need to be out there as a way to refocus my mind. I'm finding it's too easy to waste a bunch of time goofing off on the internet (and I'm not even going to smithing sites) instead of answering the question sets for history or taking the time to write quality responses to message board posts for my English class. Now I need to balance working in the shop with homework and eliminate 90% of that aimless internetting. Only 10 more months and I'm done with the BA. Then I will likely move on to a master's program for a public history degree... but that's still up in the air.

EFC 7/21

"Engineer" hardest job in America to fill

From http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107149/the-hardest-jobs-to-fill-in-america?mod=career-leadership

“Why are engineers so hard to find? 'We have whole generations of people loving liberal arts, not going into science and math,' says Larry Jacobson, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers. "

Bullpuckey, Mr Jacobson. We are not "not going into science and math" we're being pushed out of them. If I had ONE math teacher above the high school level who gave the appearance of giving a damn, I might actually have completed my engineering degree. Not that it would have mattered in terms of this discussion, because he's talking about professional engineers and engineering school is a lot like medical school. You go for four years, get your diploma and then you do your internship (or in engineering it's called "Engineer In Training" or EIT). My understanding is that of those who finish their degree about 60% actually become professional engineers because, well, so many engineers are exceptionally hard to deal with. Your knowitall neighbor who tells you you’re doing “it” wrong, regardless of what “it” is, kinda sums up my experience with engineers. On top of that, there's the disenchantment that you've been told you’re an engineer, not a tech- you want to be working on design and checking loads and all that good stuff. You don't want to be getting a "real" engineer's coffee.

On top of that, most engineering schools are designed to get rid of students- or at least that's what I was told by every engineering and upper division math instructor I had. The worst? At UW there was a class that was a three quarter series. In order to go to the next class (i.e. to go from 01 to 02) you have to have an "A" in the class you're in. The class was an hour a day of lecture plus a weekly lab. Here's the kicker, at the end of the third semester, if you have an "A" in the 03 class, you get ONE CREDIT for the whole series but you're paying for each class as though it was a five credit class.

So no, Mr Jacobson, I didn't initially choose Humanities with a double minor in history and professional writing. I spent the better part of a decade feeling like a failure because higher education told me that it didn't want me to be an engineer. I chose this path because history is basically stories and my transcripts reminded me that I was taking Humanities classes to keep my GPA afloat so I could afford to take more engineering classes. Blacksmithing is pretty close to engineering (I get to make and design stuff) but it's more fun to do it with fire than AutoCAD. So nyaah.

It's your bed, National Society of Professional Engineers, you lie in it.

EFC 7/21