Well, I'm back. The marathon journey of the last four months is finally over. Four weeks at Chris Gavin's shop in Baltimore, two months at Touchstone as the Resident Artist for the Blacksmith Studio and lastly two weeks at Penland as Mark Aspery's Assistant. Money is low and it's time to try and make some :-) Luckily I have plenty of handyman work to fall back on. (sometimes I think I should just do that, as the standard rate around these parts to $30-35 an hour. But I like the iron too much to ever stop.)

Ok, except for the last part of yesterday, all in all, it's been a pretty good experience. However, the bike ride where I was clipped and catapulted over my bike by a old lady and her car, was not so good. I came out remarkable good for having been hit by a car. I think it was only her mirror, as it was all busted up. I remember thinking: I'm hit, helmet*, get out of the road. Other then the expected aches and pains of doing a sudden flip on pavement, the only (I hope) injury I sustained was a bashed and tore up left elbow. It was enough to prevent me from using the arm for anything but the most limited of activates. With that limitation, I came home. I'm hoping to go back Monday, but unless the arm starts healing fast, I think I'll be out of heavy work for the next week. That's ok, I can catch up on my paperwork and some letters I've been meaning to write.

I've started to fulfill my Journeyman's experience. OK, I know that there aren't apprentices and journeyman anymore (more the shame), but I wanted to do it anyway. So I've been slowly sending out e-mails to folks and offering my services for short term work. I'm hoping to work at several different shops in the next couple of years. After a bit of fishing, I finally got a bite and have just finished my first week as a journeyman at Chris Gavin's shop. It was quite the eye opener. As I do most of my work by eye, I've grown use to being very casual about measurements and fitting. Not so at Mr. Gavin's, everything must be spot on. I was feeling a bit of stress trying to be that precise, but managed to get through the week with only a couple of correctable mistakes. This is going to be a good learning experience for me. Along with the forging area, he has a well equipped machine shop. Three years ago, I took a machine shop class, but never got to use it. Now I'm getting a chance to develop a small level of skill in that area.

Good Day
Here's a couple of the fireplace doors I've done in the past year. The first is in Wintergreen, Virginia and the second is at Telluride, Colorado.

The Telluride was quite fun. I put more on my plate this year then I could handle, sort of like a small child at Thanksgiving. As result, I was way behind schedule. After several delays, I promised I would have two set of fireplace doors and two fireplace screens done before Christmas. Well I got them done, but with no time to ship. I left Thursday afternoon, arrived Telluride Saturday noon, installed and returned back to Afton, Virginia on the evening of Christmas Eve. Total miles 3129. Bloody hell, I'm tired. Sorry for the poor quality of photos, I really need to get a better camera and learn to use it properly. The size of this door made it quit interesting, 74 by 45 inches. Doors started to get heavy. They're made out of 2 1/2 by 3/16 inch flat bar with 2 by 1/8 flat bar in the back to sandwich the mesh. Frame is 3 by 2 by 3/16 angle. Bending the curve was the hardest part. Four inches at a time in the fire. :-)