Alex Bealer Award Congratulations to Jack Andrews who was presented ABANA's Alex Bealer Award at the Ozark Blacksmith Conference last weekend. Jack joins a prestigious group who have been honored with ABANA's highest award for service to blacksmithing. BAM hosted about 140 people at the conference. Thanks to those who attended. Jim McCarty ************************************************************ ABANA'S Video Contest ABANA is trying to generate good quality videos of demonstrations and conferences for lending by the ABANA library. Borrowers will be permitted and encouraged to copy these video tapes. Because of legal considerations, contestants must register with the ABANA office. With your registration will come rules for the contest, a video release form and a model release form along with instructions for both. As a bonus for observing the legalities, you will receive two booklets that may give you an edge when it comes to improving the content and technical quality of your videos. Tapes will be judged by three ABANA members appointed by the Library Committee. For this first videotape contest, judging will focus on the following criteria: The overall "watch-ability" Technical Quality Educational Value All videos must be received at the ABANA office, postmarked no later than April 30, 1996. For those producing commercial quality videos, please contact Tal Harris c/o ABANA office. Winners for this contest will be announced at the 1996 Conference in Alfred, N.Y.. ABANA P.O. Box 206 Washington, MO 63090 Phone and Fax (314) 390-2133 ************************************************************ Haverhill Update Just a quick note about the doin's at Haverhill. I want to thank our demonstrator, and new member, Roger Lorance for a great weekend! All who attended went home with a few finished projects and a wealth of new ideas and techniques. It was a very busy and fulfilling weekend. I also would like to thank Roger for his very generous auction donations that we will all have a chance to bid on at Baraboo this summer. Roger also donated much of the iron, including some wrought iron, that was used during the weekend. Many thanks to Gene Pippin for the numerous trips he made transporting nearly every item from his home shop that didn't say "Little Giant" on it for our use. Gene also gave a very detailed tour of the museum/shop and took us on a Friday night tour of Lennox Industries in Marshalltown. Thanks to Richard Cross who, though he was off playing in Alabama, supplied all of the coal for the many forges burning at the conference. Finally, many thanks to all who attended and supported this event, hope to see you all here again next year! Steve White ************************************************************ UMBA Profiles Mike Rocca is currently a senior machinist at the University of Iowa and works in their hydraulic laboratory. He has been in that occupation for the last 15 years or so. Originally, Mike was the self-taught owner and operator of his own welding and machine shop. After about seven or eight years of running his own business, he took a job with General Electric in their tool and die department. He received further training from G.E. and later moved on to the U of I where he is currently employed. He hasn't always worked in the hydraulic laboratory, for a while he was building parts for space ships!!! Mikes interest in the metal working crafts started when he was a little kid, somewhere around 8 years old. There was a blacksmith shop in Iowa City owned by a man named Hoot Gibson. "He would set me up on a stump and say "now you watch this Sonny"(he always called me Sonny) and I would spend all day just watching him work. He did horse-shoeing and general blacksmithing work. "I remember him showing me a brand new oxy-acetylene torch that he had bough.: He said, "Sonny, they say this can do better work than I can do with my forge. They are Crazy!!!" Mike said that "I often got in a lot of trouble for coming home very late or even missing dinner completely!! If my family couldn't find me they always knew to look in ole' Hoot Gibson's shop, because that is where I would be." Mike's father was a baker, and never did understand where he got his mechanical aptitude. Mike has always enjoyed working with his hands and still considers himself a newcomer to the blacksmith's craft. He experiments a lot, making whatever he can for friends and family and even managing to sell a few pieces now and then. His main interests are ornamental housewares and hardware. Last year he took a 3 day class with Dan Nauman and considers it to have been a "great learning experience." Currently, Mike has no hand stamp or "Maker's Mark" that he uses. The name of his shop is "Mieber Welding and Machine" The name is a combination of his name. MIkE and his wife's name BERyle (as in the gem stone). Someday soon he may finally decide on a mark and have a stamp made, but not yet. When asked what advice he would give to someone just getting started, Mike replied, "Join UMBA or ABANA or some similar group and read and learn as much as you can. Get as much information on the craft as you can find." Mike Rocca resides in Tipton, IA ************************************************************ Shop Talk Last issue's questions was a request for advice on how to start your own blacksmithing business. UMBA has many members who are professional, full-time, artists and blacksmiths and several mentioned a desire to respond to that question. Unfortunately, by press time I had received no submissions in answer to the question. I did locate an article written by Nol Putnam on the topic and have reprinted it here. The question still stands, however, and I hope one of our professional members will have an opportunity to respond to it by the next issue. How does one get started in the blacksmithing business? I started smithing in the fall of 1973. Six months later I did my first street fair was confronted with a business decision, pricing. I know what I know from on-the-job training, with help and advise from friends-and some of it was even good. My early years were spent learning my craft, feeling my way into it, letting the knowing seep into my body. Today I often seem to work by intuition, by the way I feel, by the chemistry between me and the client, rather than some definitive knowing. That is how I learned to be a business person. It was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. I hated business; denigrated business folk, decried General Motors, laughed at capitalism, the free enterprise system, market economies etc. etc. Then I realized that if this was to be my livelihood (and it is), I had better figure out how to make it pay. I advanced in stages: The first few years were spent simply trying to learn which end of the hammer to hold; then how to hammer and make a little money; what about advertising; should I apply to fairs; would I get a loan from the bank; what kind of records should I keep. (The answer to that last is: the best that you can: it is here you will learn about your survival in the life-style you think you want.) One year $5000 looked great, the next year $7000 was better. Today I earn about what a long term high school teacher earns. I often felt if I could just do one more thing . . . never quite knowing what it was. It turned out that the one more thing was attention to all the details, attention to everything. After I began to master this craft, I could pay more attention to how to make it pay. Craftspeople are notorious for not charging what they are worth. We seem to suffer under some idea that we don't quite measure up and so shouldn't be compensated. Not to malign plumbers, but around here they often charge just to come to the house to tell you how much it is going to cost if and when they can get to it. Lawyers charge by the minute. If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will. So this leads to the hardest part of the craft/art world, and that is record keeping and then figuring how what hooks, andirons, ladles, gates, stair rails or whatever you are making. This is the hardest thing to time correctly. Especially when there are rest times between the various steps involved in the piece. But do it you must. That is the only way you will know that the fireplace broom is worth $150, or the set of andirons $600 or the hooks $2.50 each. Figure up how long it takes you to make your product and multiply that times your hourly rate. Don't forget the materials charges, and realize that you must charge more for the materials than you paid for them to cover mistakes and loss in one form or another. I generally multiply the materials cost by 50%. And there is one other figure to add. Call it profit, or fix up, or replacement, or darn-I-didn't-charge-enough-again. When I figure the hours I need to produce the piece of iron I add 20%. Some business add more and some less, but you must add it or you will never have the money you need to buy the gas forge, power hammer, or even the new shop. This may seem a far cry from doing the things that make your soul soar. In fact it is not. My self-esteem is far better knowing (not guessing) that I am charging a fair and honest price for the things I choose to make. I can document it. More important, by charging a fair price, I have time and money to do the things that make my life richer and better like buying a recording of Dylan Thomas or Yevtushenko, taking a trip to Mexico to see the copper workers or tile maker, a week down the canyon lands of Utah in the late summer, a trip back home to see the grandparents and collect some of the old stories, a chance to go back to school to hone skills or learn new ones. This is possible because you know with certainty how to charge, what to charge, and for what you are charging. I love my ironwork, and the most days I love going to the shop. But I do not enjoy subsidizing people who buy my ironwork. I work too hard for that. I have too many things I want to do and many of them take money to get hither and thither. Be not ashamed to know the nuts and bolts as well as the joys in the soul of your work. Nol Putnam