Joshua, I made a comment earlier RE: your "apprenticeship". That was not meant as sarcasm, but as genuine appreciation. The comments and info you have mentioned in the above post and others gives me hope that the machine shop tricks, secrets and general knowledge that I learned over 35 or more years may continue to be passed along to yet another generation.
I’m really enjoying learning another metal Trade!
When I was teaching welding I would occasionally have a student who was a bit more thoughtful, than the others. I would explain to them that electric welding as we knew it was only about a 120 years old, and that acetylene had only been discovered in 1836. But that there had been forge welding long before that. That our trade was old.
I can trace my blacksmithing educational lineage back through the smiths I have worked with. That line of training goes back to the old shops of Europe.
I tried to explain to these students that when I was teaching them how to file a weld toe on a pipe, so that it would pass inspection, that that set of skills had been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Some of them would just roll their eyes. But others have taken it to heart, the idea that we practice an ancient craft, that has adapted and changed with technological advances, but is in fact very old.
There are some really talented young tradespeople out there. They are mostly learning the new ways. But for some that will only spark their curiosity to learn about shaping metal in the old ways.
One of my ex welding students has become a talented blade smith. He came by recently to thank me for a few deep conversations we had about bladesmithing materials and techniques. All I did was point him in the right direction. It’s what I like about this forum board. All the pointing we do!
