[TheForge] Re: ABANA conference program problems

[Mike Spencer]

> I watched your demo in '84 and still remember the crab! How's that
> for your fandom?

Yow!  Better that I ever expected.  I'm completely charmed.  I still
wonder who, if anyone, went home with my naked model -- a preserved
atlantic crab that I left out of my luggage to make room for Wisconsin
goodies.

I agree that Ripley & DePere were a good size.  The last one I went to
was '90 in Alfred.  I had a good time but somehow that one didn't work
for me near as well as Ripley.  Although I have to give credit to
Carbondale in '76 for getting me wound up enough to set out to find a
big shop and get out of the 9x12 woodshed.  (The work bench was
outdoors, some of my gear was in the kitchen and I had never used the
power hammer that was under wraps in the yard.)  Carbondale lit my
fuse and I think there were 900 there.

> In the evenings we sat under a tree with folks like Judd Nelson and
> heard about adding carbon to a piece of steel by cooking it in the
> forge with chicken bones.  Who talks about that any more?

Yeah, that kind of thing.  At Carbodale I sat up late drinking Jack
Daniels with Pancho Peterson (anybody know where he's got to?) talking
about Slim Spurling's demo. (And if you wonder where Slim's got to, just
google him up.) But maybe I'm just getting cranky.  I never much liked
crowds and I seem to like them less every year.  On the other hand,
you want to drop in here and yarn about chicken bones, that Dorset
ewe/hydraulic ram cross that grew steel wool or whatever, yer welcome.

BTW, I just came back from a slide show with Porfirio Ricardez at
Chris Huck's and Laurie Fisher's shop.  Porfirio flew out here after
Seattle.  Demo and workshop tomorrow.  I gotta see how he does those
lovely, tidy welds of square rod on the diagonal.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^