[TheForge] anvils ring letter

[Aaron Silver]

At 06:44 PM 2/28/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>i'm surprised that no one has mentioned dave mariettes letter to the 
>editor in the current ar. anyone care to comment?
>
>as to his first point on the 'women do iron' i agree. about time someone 
>said something.

Ok... My take on women blacksmiths is that we should always have some 
examples at hand of female blacksmiths so that we can hold them up to the 
public and show them that this is not a male only field. After all, while 
most of us are familiar with at least a few different female smiths and 
their works, much of the public isn't. That doesn't mean that we need to 
beat the "This is a Female Blacksmith and her work" to death.

>on his second point i am a little conflicted. i am anything but a 
>traditionalist who believes everything should be forged according to a 
>certain set of rules but.....

OK... I'm still a novice at blacksmithing, but from my looking at the 
picture of the 2001 Fall AR, I think the railing is a very fine piece that 
I would love to be able to measure up to, and that's an example that I'm 
glad to have. If I could make my arc welds look half as good (even after 
grinding and cleaning!) I'd be very happy. If I could forge leaves and 
stems and make them look as organic, YEEHAW!

As for educating the customer, I think the picture does a wonderful job of 
it that. This definitely does not look like something tack welded from 
pieces imported from India. The welds look very nicely cleaned up, and are 
done so that the organic feeling of the piece is not disturbed. The pieces 
welded together do not appear to be cast, and in fact look very nicely 
forged and finished. People argue about True Path, but since when did 
non-forge welding become False Path? As long as the method works and is a 
quality job, why should we care? Because arc welding is easier we see more 
examples of bad but serviceable workmanship, however I've got an example or 
two (or 10) of magled forge-welds that the only reason I'm not ashamed of 
them is because they are my first ones.
>anyone else interested in discussing this?
>
>i did think it was an excellent issue of the anvils ring.
>
>bob

Aaron Silver