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Searching for an identity

Joe B - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 9:49am

How come I keep getting HTTP error 404 messages when I try to type in comma separated words in the tags field?
That's not the subject of my blog. I am searching for a name for my decorative ironworks business. A name is an important thing when it comes to people's perception of who you are and what you do. I do fine hand forged ironwork, using traditional blacksmith tools and techniques. The term blacksmith is one I am proud of, but it carries a lot of baggage and connotations that are unhelpful. Most everyone immediately thinks I do horseshoes even though I bill myself as an artist blacksmith. I have used the name Cocorico Forge in the past. This name has problems because no one knows how to pronounce Cocorico and some customers have even shown anger when I say it is a French word for what a rooster says each morning. So I'd like a name that is easily pronounced, lacking in foreigness, lacking in political or religious connotations, and reflective of the work I do. Perhaps I should create a symbol for the blacksmith formerly known as ?

» read more | Joe B's blog | 1 comment

New Chopsticks

Stephen Fitz-Gerald - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 3:29pm

chopsticks

Finally found my cheap, dumb CAD program!

Rich Waugh - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 9:03am

design | drawing

For years now I've been using an old legacy CAD program to do my mechanical drawings and job sketches, but it won't run on Windows 7 64-bit at all and is badly wonky on 32-bit. Over time I've gotten really comfortable with it and all the other CAD programs I've tried out had too long a learning curve for me, so I had to set up a separate computer just run that old program. Until now.

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Rowing the Atlantic

Giusseppe - Saturday, February 11, 2012 - 5:05pm

fountains | gates | lights | railings | stairs

I am planning to row the Atlantic solo in 2013.
I want to fund the row myself and use the 3000nm trip to raise money for fresh water wells in countries where the need is desperate.
The only way I can raise the 100k needed for such an adventure is to do what I do best ...make metalwork.

Clean Slate XIV

byJohan se - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - 4:13am

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hello and question about who buys this stuff

Joe B - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - 4:01pm

Artist Blacksmith

Hi gang,
I hope I'm posting to the right place. This is my first time using the forum and unsure but here goes.
I am an artist blacksmith residing and working in Knoxville, TN. I've been a blacksmith off and on since 1979 but mostly as a hobby except for a while during 2000 to 2004 when I tried making money at it. Now I have jumped in the deep end of the pool and hope to make a living from it. I have hooked up with a bunch named SCORE which is a group of retired business people who donate their time to act as mentors for people like me. I understand the basics of business because we ran our own electronics design consulting business for six years. What I don't understand is how to advertise and market my fine hand forged ironwork. We know that craft shows are not necessarily the best way from previous experience. But galleries seem to charge large amounts (in one case 60% !) for selling my work and they get a commission for anything I sell within 100 miles of them.

» read more | Joe B's blog | 9 comments

I can't melt 1oz of Sterling

Byzantine - Saturday, February 4, 2012 - 2:33pm

Casting small silver ingots at home

Hello, I joined the forum because I cannot bring 1 ounce of sterling silver scrap to a flow point so that I can pour a 1 ounce ingot of silver.

Items used.
1. 32 g of acid tested sterling. The silver was cut into small pieces.

Temporary Possible Loss of Entries

webminster - Friday, February 3, 2012 - 12:41pm

OT: Sandbox YAK yak

The ArtMetal server has been moved to a VPS account. Due to the move from one server to the other, we may see loss of entries, whether blog posts or comments, not appearing on the new site. This should only occur over the next 2-3 days. So if your posts are really important, please wait to next week to make them. I will add to this thread once the transfer is complete. Although, this thread may not appear on the new server so it may actually disappear.

Its that time again

Jim Laney - Friday, February 3, 2012 - 8:23am

Since last post: built new studio with included apartment; built new house and moved in (still working on interior finishing) and have recently returned to studio to experiment with new tools and methods.

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Is ArtMetal going down?

webminster - Monday, January 30, 2012 - 2:14pm

OT: Sandbox YAK yak

Is ArtMetal going down? I sure hope not! But we are having some problems. Seems that our current isp is threatening to disconnect ArtMetal for too much usage of the CPU. I received a disconnect email a couple of hours ago stating ArtMetal had been disconnected. Some of you may have experienced this. Luckily, I kept my calm and asked nicely why such an abrupt disconnect when I was trying to correct the problem. Maybe they decided to temporarily turn us on again.