[TheForge] Real men dont use tongs

[Steve Smith]

Now to check out my theory...

I suspect that people who use a gas forge (or work with bronze, same 
idea) are much more likely to use gloves, because everything gets warm. 
People who use coal don't see the point of gloves.

How about it, Phlip? Coal or gas? Anyone else?

Steve Smith
Who dearly loves his kevlar gloves and gas forge.


Phlip wrote:

> Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
> 
> 
>>Ries Niemi wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This goes back to the old "I am too macho to wear gloves" argument.
>>
>>I basically never wear gloves when forging, but not for
>>any macho reasons.  I don't like the reduced tactile
>>sensation that gloves introduce.  I don't know about
>>anyone else, but I gather a lot of information on what's
>>going on under the hammer through each of my hands.  That
>>dull feeling I get with gloves is usually intolerably
>>annoying to me.
> 
> 
> I guarantee that the reason I seldom wear gloves has absolutely nothing to
> do with macho, and everything to do with safety. I don't wear them often,
> and I don't let my students wear them except under certain very limitted
> circumstances.
> 
> The difference between wearing gloves and not wearing them is the difference
> between burning yourself, and burning the SHIT out of yourself. Gloves tend
> to make you careless, and when they do smolder into flame, your hand is
> trapped in them- even if you immediately dunk your hands in the slack tub,
> that's a couple more seconds your flesh is trapped next to the heat, and
> that's what causes the really serious burns, rather than the "dammit" burns.
> 
> Similarly, I tend to wear very little when smithing, unless it's cold out. I
> still have a scar on my foot from a bit of scale that fell down my boot one
> day, in 90 degree weather, with 90% humidity, when I was wearing shorts and
> a halter top, and the smith whose forge I was using INSISTED that I wear
> boots- I'll NEVER do that again. Either wear the boots with the tops covered
> under long pants, or wear shorts and bare feet- in the first case the scale,
> etc won't reach you, in the second it falls or brushes off with a shake of
> your leg.
> 
> I'm prepared to put up with a few minor burns in hot weather, for comfort-
> I'm not prepared to put up with one for someone else's mistaken ideas of
> "safety"- I know what I can do, figure my risks, and take the consequences.
> 
> And, if you don't believe me, ask people who have smithed with me, like John
> Husvar, and the guys at the Hancock Shaker Village demo...
> 
> Saint Phlip,
> CoDoLDS
> 
> "When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
>  Blacksmith's credo.
> 
>  If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
> cat.
> 
> Never a horse that cain't be rode,
> And never a rider who cain't be throwed....
> 
> 
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