[TheForge] Saturday's meeting- CBG and NEB

[Phlip]

OK, guys, as I had promised, here's my take on the very pleasant smithing
meeting I attended Saturday. It was a joint meeting of the Connecticut
Blacksmith's Guild, and the southern branch of the NEB at the South County
Museum. in Narragansett, RI.

Please forgive my lack of names- I'm still learning who is who.

Meeting started out with general business and such- I was able to let people
know about the SCA metalworking event this October, and got names and addresses
of several interested persons. Most aren't on email, so I'll be needing to make
them up a flyer, and turn their names over to the Event Steward. As it stands
now, I'll probably be in charge of smithing classes, but it isn't official yet
because we want to make sure that someone else doesn't object ;-)

After the business, Bill Scheer did a demo on making hearts for ornaments, but
since I'd seen most of it before, I engaged in quiet conversation with others in
the back of the building. Lunch was a rather nice corn chowder and carrot cake,
then more chit chat, and some hand-outs, including a sheet with a listing of
junkyard steels and their probable types, and a hand-out of the afternoon's
demo, showing the steps to produce a rather nice dragon foot finial. I was very
interested in that, but unfortunately it got burned up (it happens) but he had
one he'd finished to look at, and he did get far enough along that it was
possible to understand how to do it yourself.

I very much enjoyed the entire thing. I don't think you guys realize how much I
enjoy being in an area with an active group of smiths, but one of the bummers of
where I did live was that I was so far away from other folks that it was hard to
spend time with other smiths, SCA or otherwise. If I could only manage to see
them once every 6 months, I felt like I'd hit the lottery ;-) Seeing people
every month is luxury I'm having trouble getting used to ;-)

In short, I had a great time, learned some good things, and met some nice people
;-)

Phlip, doing a Happy Dance ;-)