[TheForge] Books Books Books

[Sean]

Hey Awl,

e-mail at home is no good so I'm just now
getting caught up from the weekend.

Anywho - didn't mean to start anything
just my two hundredths of a dollar and
so forth.  But like some had said,
from what I'd  seen/heard/read around
the 'net and at one or two BSing events
Bealer is oft referred to in hushed and
reverential tones, and I had not heard
anyone who held the same opinion as me - yet.

So when someone committed what some
might see as heresy, I jumped on with
him.  BUT, as I said, I am a BEGINNER
and so experience and write from that
perspective.  From that p.o.v. - McRaven
and CoSira and so on were just what I
needed.  

I do like Wygers' book too, altho at times
his illustrations are almost like heiroglyphs
with all the arrows and circles and so on.
But his approach is exactly what I am about
doing the best I can with what little I got
and for as cheap as possible.

Speaking of cheap - you can sometimes
get these books "used" at Amazon for very
little - I paid $2.00 for my copy of McRaven
not including shipping. There's one
Bealer for $6.00 there as I write this.

I don't own a copy of Bealers book
and so have requested one from the
library.  When it gets here I can
"show" you what I mean, but until then...

I found Bealer, a lot less than what I
needed especially when compared to
Wygers and McRaven.  It's sort of like
the difference between reading a Roy Underhill
book and Eric Sloane's books.  Sloane's are
neat too look at, but he occasionally infers
something - about how a tool is used or why
it is made this way and so forth, or he 
uses a name for it that is far less common
than what most folks do call it.

Whereas Underhill actually USES the
tools and show you how with plenty of
photos and tells you how to make stuff
and perhaps best of all - tells you

repeatedly that

"there's more than one way to skin a cat".

He (Underhill) has a whole story about 
grind stones and what direction you should
turn them when sharpening and so on, and
it ends with him being "all wet".

Anyway.  The fella with the Beautiful Iron
site is no doubt a skilled man capable of
producing excellent work, but he really has
a problem with brake drum forges and I'm
sorry, but that is often the ONLY option for
some of us.  If it works, it works.  It may
not be the best, but some times it's what
comes to hand or what you can afford.

These guys:

http://sofablacksmiths.org/documents/bahrainblacksmiths.pdf

they are "where it's at" for me...


	
		
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