[TheForge] Grants?

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Jonathan;
May i respectfully recommend a low-buck , incremental approach.
There are a number of cheap ways to cobble together an enclosure with a 
dirt floor that's good enough to work in for a while.
As a smith in a time of inexpensive scrap metal, there is a wealth of 
available materials.
For example;
One wall of my shop consists of govt surplus 1' X 20' galv roofing that 
i bought cheap cause it was all jammed together, they are bolted to 
discarded telephone poles. Another 2 walls are salvaged framing covered 
with 4 x8' galv panels i salvaged from an old, WW2 walk in freezer. All 
the wood for the roof framing came off the beach when a lumber barge 
lost it's load in a storm. We winched it up scattered cliffs by hand and 
dragged it across the sodden fields to the truck. The plywood on the 
roof was salvaged from bridgework concrete forms...cost 2 cases of beer 
and a whole lot of chipping.
The windows were salvaged from tear downs and some of them are held 
together by silicon glue mostly. And so on. Not fast or all that easy, 
but cheap and no mortgage.
Shipping containers can be had used for not too much and are an instant 
temporary shop.
Garage doors can often be had for free from the places that replace 
them. Flawed or wrong sized windows are often real cheap from big window 
shops as are old ones.
If you are a bit creative, pay attention and are willing to grunt and 
sweat some, you can get in and functioning until you have the bucks to 
do a proper job of it.
And what the hey, you are just going to turn it all black and gritty 
anyway...pf

Jonathan Barnhart wrote:
> Seeing as you are trying to help the disabled and I'm not disabled, there's no way that I could ask for any sort of help from you.  I could never take away from a program that was meant to help the disabled when I'm still very able bodied and working a job already.  Thank you for your time and your input and God bless your endeavor.  Hopefully you'll get things worked out and will be able to help many deserving people.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- On Fri, 3/6/09, terry l. ridder <terrylr at blauedonau.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: terry l. ridder <terrylr at blauedonau.com>
>> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Grants?
>> To: blakkpawss at yahoo.com, "Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
>> Date: Friday, March 6, 2009, 2:51 PM
>> hello;
>>
>> On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, Jonathan Barnhart wrote:
>>
>>> I've been trying for a long time to set up a shop,
>> but something
>>> always happens financially to keep me from moving
>> forward.  Someone
>> i know that feeling all too well. thankfully that is no
>> longer the case.
>>
>>> suggested that i should start looking for grants.  I
>> tried looking
>>> around on the net and so far they mostly seem to be
>> for non profit
>>> organizations. Does anyone here have any experience
>> with grants and
>>> if so is there any such thing as grants for individual
>> artists these
>>> days?
>>>
>> i have learned a lot about grants in the past three months.
>> not from
>> applying for them but all about the legal and tax
>> implications of
>> grants. i am still in the process of setting up a
>> foundation that will
>> be helping disabled people develop their talents in
>> metalworking or
>> other artistic/folk art/craft areas. currently the help the
>> foundation
>> is giving is called 'gifts' to the person or
>> organization receiving the
>> help. the maximum 'gift' is $10,000.00 usd per
>> year. this is the federal
>> irs maximum limit on gifts before the 'gift tax'
>> comes into play. there
>> are reasons to call the help being given 'gifts'
>> because some types of
>> grants are considered taxable income. my goal is to help
>> people not
>> place them in a position where the help causes them to pay
>> federal
>> income tax on the help. this year's 'gifts'
>> have all ready been given
>> out. this year's 'gifts' were given to people
>> that i know of either
>> through the va medical healthcare system or local
>> community.
>>
>> currently there is no way to apply for the foundations
>> help. the logic
>> being that if you apply for the help it is no longer a
>> 'gift' and starts
>> to smell like a 'grant'. i hope that the accountant
>> and the lawyers can
>> eventually get everything straightened out. i am hoping
>> sooner rather
>> than later.
>>
>> the help the foundation is offering to people is not so
>> much to start a
>> business or even purchase a business it is to help that
>> person develop
>> their talents in metalworking or other artistic/folk
>> art/craft areas so
>> that they have a feeling of purpose in life and that they
>> do have
>> something to contribute to family, neighborhood, church,
>> etc.
>>
>> far too many disabled people are in the situation where
>> they are not
>> employed, may never be employed and are not given the
>> opportunity to
>> thrive and bloom in a hands on learning environment. they
>> do not have
>> the financial resources to pay for classes. they do not
>> have the
>> necessary transportation to get to classes. they do not
>> have a home
>> setting where they are able to have a craft room or metal
>> shop. this is
>> what the foundation is attempting to address.
>>
>> in some ways setting up the foundation is frustrating. you
>> soon realize
>> that no matter how much help you provide it will never be
>> enough. you
>> also realize that there are those out in the real world who
>> are
>> professional 'victims' . they know the system so
>> well that they play the
>> system for everything that they are able to get. they are
>> the ones that
>> feel that i owe them something and that they are entitled
>> to help from
>> the foundation no matter what. those people drain resources
>> and the
>> desire to even try to help.
>>
>> anyway if you want contact me off list.
>>
>>>
>> -- 
>> terry l. ridder ><>
> 
> 
>       
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