[TheForge] The mind 1st to go

[peter fels & phoebe palmer]

  Hi again Jason:
At 40 , you are not all that young to play that as a card,
and while i have sympathy for your grim divorce,
that was a consequence of your poor choices,
and i have no desire to soften that.
Apparently, you are not a professional smith
so the "keeping the trade alive" argument gets weaker.
  A  47 year old friend and fellow blacksmith, who lusted after my tools
Crassly urged me to write him into my will.
He died last month of a heart attack.
I've been selling his tools pretty cheap
at the tail gate sales, and out the back door.
Tool prices are set by demand, in theory,
as they always have been.
You are part of that demand, thus the prices.
If all us old guys were croaking,
they'd be cheap, just as you desire..
You had tools, and didn't protect them.
We have survived divorces too, you know.
Work hard and pay the fair price
  or trade your personal skills.
Alternately, it sounds like you have quite enough tools
to make or fake anything you need yourself.
As to" ME at Wargoth"..you named yourself.
I don't much want to subsidize " ME at Wargoth", myself, sight unseen.

Crap, i sound like bloody Ann Rand!

On 10/12/2010 12:57 PM, Jason Nass wrote:
> That's great policy Mike, guys like you are what are gonna help keep this
> trade alive.
>
> Jason Nass - me at wargoth.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
> [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer
> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 3:18 PM
> To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [TheForge] Re: The mind 1st to go
>
>
> Jason Nass wrote:
>
>> ...as for shedding tools at the swap meets...Sure, it's capitalism,
>> but it's also not doing anything to help keep our craft alive.
> What he said.
>
> I hate to sell tools. Tools, at least the old, well-travelled smithing
> tools, have mojo.  Sell one and what do I have?  Money.  Money doesn't have
> mojo, is fungible and quickly goes away long before I find another buyable
> tool with similar mojo.
>
> Okay, I guess big stuff like power hammers that run in the thousands of
> bucks -- significant in my very modest domestic economy -- I could bring
> myself to sell. But as a rule:
>
>     + Swap.  Something I can use in the shop, maybe something I've
>       wanted for years or haven't been able to find for a project in
>       exchange for for something the other guy is really overjoyed to
>       have.  I swapped a working, 100# Palmer Power Spring Hammer for a
>       non-working 300# Alldays&  Onions air hammer. Both parties
>       tickled pink.  Swapped an Acadia single-banger missing a part and
>       with a cracked water tank for a Wisconsin engine [1] on a
>       trailer, a post drill and a small forge that I fixed up and
>       passed on to my son.
>
>     + Something that's extra/redundant for me and I see another guy
>       really could use it?  Give it to him, no strings. I saw a guy do
>       an enthusiastic and successful demo, but with a helved chisel
>       that was just totally inadequate.  Well, I had several new-old-
>       stock Atha hot sets so I helved one and gave it to the guy.
>
>     + Iron in the hat.  If something has been laying around for 20
>       years waiting for me to get around to fixing it, reassembling it,
>       finding a use for it, I put it in Iron in the Hat at a Maritime
>       Blacksmiths' meet.  Somebody gets it cheap and has fun.  That
>       makes me feel good and I don't have it hanging over my head any
>       longer. Compressor I had for years, IIRC picked up for free as
>       junk, eventually disassembled to see what I had.  Then it got
>       upstaged by a nice big, working compressor.  Compressor in a
>       Basket off to Iron in the Hat.  MBA made money, guy that got it
>       was happy.
>
> Unless you're experiencing hard times, money is only money but an anvil is a
> good smoke. Or something like that. [2]
>
>
> - Mike
>
> [1] Anybody have a 50# LG (or equivalent) they want to swap for a
>      Wisconsin engine?  How about for two Wisconsin engines? :-)
>
> [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Betrothed_(Kipling)
>
>      "...a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke."
>                                      -- Kipling
>