[TheForge] Working alone in shop

[Andrew Vida]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 16:38:42 -0800, Mata Iaia <mata1@sbcglobal.net> wrote:


> Here is what I am experiencing:
>
> I am very safety conscious, perhaps to excess but given my passion for 
> hot
> molten metal and hammers  I don't really think it is excessive.   When 
> I'm
> forging it is so hypnotic and wonderful, but I also sometimes feel afraid
> when I am working alone.
>
> Have/do any of you ever experience this?  Any thoughts?

	Never.  Almost all of my work has been done alone.  I've burned the
	hell out of myself, ripped my fingers open, etc.  At no time has my
	history given me any cause for fear.  I was alone one night in 98 or
	99, just before xmas, in the shop when I opened up my right
	index finger on a piece of machinery.  It was not an insignificant
	injury, in fact bad enough to where I thought for a moment that I'd
	amputated the finger.  I went and got myself stitched up and in a
	day or so I was back at the forge doing what I love to do.

	What is it that you become afraid of?

	-Andy
-- 

	Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
          That's an easy thing to say,
          But if your hopes should pass away
          Simply pretend,
          that you can build them again