[TheForge] Re: Wannabe smith burns town

[Mike Spencer]

> Came up as dead links. Lets see if these work better. 
>
> "http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42195050"
>
> "http://wnyt.com/news/fire-remsen-street-columbia-street-cohoes-albany-county/4688797/" 
>
> On 12/7/2017 11:15 AM, Rob Fertner wrote: 
>> 
>> News story about a guy in upstate New York who wanted to forge a
>> blade like on the TV show Forged In Fire.  He ended up almost
>> burning the town down. He is an example of what not to do.

My local market town narrowly avoided a similar catastrophe this
summer.  Two contiguous building totally destroyed, two adjoining
had some damage and cleanup.

Happily, nothing to do with a blacksmith wannabe although the origin
remains "suspicious".  The entire main street -- then essentially the
whole town -- was destroyed by fire in 1899 and many of the existing
buildings date to the pre-WW I era.  The town has spent a lot of money
to upgrade the "downtown" and maintain it in competition with a big
mall across the river and the shopping plaza centered on Mordor [1]
just outside the town limits.  Real luck for the town that the fire
fighters did so well to contain it.

The reports from Cohoes are thin on details of just what the guy did
but it sounds like he was totally ignorant of everything related to
safely heating a piece of iron.  In the same category as the guy who
was stealing gas by crawling under a truck and stabbing the gas tank
with a knife, decided to have a cigarette while it was draining into a
dishpan.

Just got my Anvil's Ring.  Peter Braspennix' mind-bending "design
exercises" are beautifully executed and I love Peter Parkinson's
Dorking Cockerel.

Looking at Linda Tanner's remarks on learning from the past reminds me
that I should write up all I can remember about Bert Shaw, the "old
guy" who got me interested in smithing when he was about the age I am
now.  "Too old to do real blacksmithing", he went and got the Sonn
books from the local library and started casually knocking off copies
of anything he thought looked interesting.


- Mike


[1] Mordor: Otherwise know as Wal-Mart.

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