bladesmithing

I am a duffer bladesmith. I have worked at it off and on over the years. Because of life changes I got away from it over the past several years. Well, now I have my little forge in the backyard and I am working at it again. At the moment I am for the most part, unplugged. But I am not above turning on my belt sander or drill press. When I get moved back out of town again I will have my power hammer. Even so I enjoy the rhythm of my box bellows. And I would rather have the skill to hammer to nearly finish size and work the blade with files and a sen than pound out something vaguely resembling a blade and grind it the rest of the way.	In my day job I work with state of the art computer controlled machinery. There is an art to this also. Designing a process, selecting tooling, writing a program requires a skill and mindset all its own. I derive a lot of satisfaction from it. But, it is a cerebral kind of satisfaction. My goal with making blades is to explore manual skills. To push the mind, body , spirit connection to see were it goes.	I like a refined blade. There are smiths who are doing great work in the primitive style. Check out Tim Lively's site or any of his forum's, Primal Fires. This guy is almost single-handily caused a revolution in blademaking circles. These guys are doing really cool stuff with hammered finishes and such. I may even try it because I do think it is so cool. But my heart is with the Japanese blades. Highly refined surfaces and crisp edges all speak of a deadly elegance to me. I practice Kendo and Iaido, two aspects of Japanese fencing. I have long since given up trying to reconcile my basically gentle nature with the use and manufacture of these fearsome weapons.
Here are some things to get us started Fuel Fire and Air Plus, a couple of bedtime stories

MAKING CHARCOAL	BUILDING A FORGE	BUILDING A BOX BELLOWS