>> ^Lann:

I find glass to be much more expensive. Then again, it depends on what you mean by "smithing" if you are talking about a blacksmithing studio then yeah a small lampworking set up will be cheaper but still more expensive than the basic start up tools for metalsmithing. Glassblowing however is extremely expensive requiring an annealer, glory hole (no not THAT kind for you dirty minds), and a furnace that runs all the time so it takes a great amount of glass. Coldworking tools are also very expensive. It is understandable why studio cost for glass students are always WAY higher than for metals students.
>> ^Porksandwich:
Glass and smithing are two things I'd like to at least say I'd made something from, even if they looked like crap. Glass is probably the bigger one because it's something you could more likely do at home and on a lower budget. But they are both one of those things where I think you need a apprenticeship in to keep from doing stupid things that could potentially kill or maim you bad enough to screw you up for life.



Honestly don't know enough about either to say one way or another. Glass seemed like it would be cleaner and something you could do without a full production setup, where as blacksmithing would be something you have to go full bore on to do anything worthwhile.

I know they have some metal like substances people use for jewelry and such now that only require a small oven. They are like some kind of clay-ish substance that you mold by hand how you want then bake it to get the metal like look. And I may even be half informed on that as well.

Although I can think of one type of glass creation that I've always wanted to make and keep, where you find a beach and stick a metal rod into the sand to capture the lightning formation as it heats up the sand to glass at the end of the lightning rod. Nothing really man created about it, just kind of coaxed.

I find glass to be much more expensive. Then again, it depends on what you mean by "smithing" if you are talking about a blacksmithing studio then yeah a small lampworking set up will be cheaper but still more expensive than the basic start up tools for metalsmithing. Glassblowing however is extremely expensive requiring an annealer, glory hole (no not THAT kind for you dirty minds), and a furnace that runs all the time so it takes a great amount of energy. Coldworking tools are also very expensive. It is understandable why studio cost for glass students are always WAY higher than for metals students.


>> ^Porksandwich:

Glass and smithing are two things I'd like to at least say I'd made something from, even if they looked like crap. Glass is probably the bigger one because it's something you could more likely do at home and on a lower budget. But they are both one of those things where I think you need a apprenticeship in to keep from doing stupid things that could potentially kill or maim you bad enough to screw you up for life.

Translation:

Farmer: "They got their worm medicine yesterday, and the blacksmith was here, and now they can go to the island freshly prepared."

Narrator: "They are going to the natural reserve island of Barther Oie. Excitement among the one and two year olds, because they have to get onto the transporter. (Pause, Flip) Something like this has never happened in the past 10 years. But it looks worse than it is, without any serious injuries they are now going to the island, 20 kilometers away."

Farmer: "Wunderbar"

Oh and *quality!

Translation: (not sure about the name of island, anyone know what it is?)

Farmer: "The got their worm medicine yesterday, and the blacksmith was here, and now they can go to the island freshly prepared."

Narrator: "They are going to the natural reserve island of Baarthe Oy(?). Excitement among the one and two year olds, because they have to get onto the transporter. (Pause, Flip) Something like this has never happened in the past 10 years. But it looks worse than it is, without any serious injuries they are now going to the island, 20 kilometers away."

Farmer: "Wunderbar"

>> ^ctrlaltbleach:

Another Texas sifter! Im actually less than an hour from the festival myself and I hardly ever go but always plan a trip in my head. You think there would be a lot of dirt about the eccentric owner on the web who fancies himself king of the area and supposedly he lives in a castle. I don't know how much of that is hearsay but eh whatev.


You should make it out there this year. It is a must see/do experience. Over 50 acres of things to do and see. Live jousting, music, magic, animal shows (the falcon show is awesome), things for kids, lots of beer and cleavage, great fair food (smoked turkey legs are a must), even live blacksmithing and glassblowing. There are a lot of people dressed up in period garb and everyone is generally pleasant. It can get crowded and if there is any rain there is mud galore, but it really is a trip back in time.

You may even catch a medieval wedding in the old chapel or the royal procession making its way through the streets, fake king and queen with a full court in tow.

My wife got "abducted" by barbarians one year. They just grabbed her and threw her over their shoulder. I had to "fight" a big, shirtless barbarian with two-handed swords to get her back. Random, but very fun.

Hey Ghark, thank you for posting the english lyrics for that tune! I know it was a year ago but it's never too late to say thanks!
In reply to this comment by ghark:
These appear to be the english lyrics:

The blacksmith said, "I'll wait"
The blacksmith said, "I'll go"
The blacksmith said, in his confusion
Standing at the door of the barn
That he was going to go courting

Chorus (after each verse):
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Fingal's bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Fingal's bothies

I'd knock spots off the birds
I'd knock spots off the hakes
Little lythes of the sea
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

I'd knock spots off the birds
I'd knock spots off the hakes
Little lythes of the sea
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

The blacksmith said, "I'll wait"
The blacksmith said, "I'll go"
The blacksmith said, in his confusion
Standing at the door of the barn
That he was going to go courting

Thanks Lann, that's just the kind of answer I was looking for. I didn't even think about schools. But Fine Arts makes a lot of sense.

In reply to this comment by Lann:
No actually this is at my school. They have a Fine Arts program in Metals that ranges from coppersmithing, silversmithing to blacksmithing. Blacksmithing has used machinery like this since the industrial revolution and some of the old anvils, tools and machines are still used today. Blacksmithing today is mainly for architecture (gates ect.) and sculpture (some sculpture programs use blacksmithing equiptment)...I hope this provided some information.

In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
I actually didn't know that anyone was still manually blacksmithing (maybe semi-manual, or manual-assisted?)...except for those few fanatics/purists/hobbyists you find at renn fests. Is this a full-time job (I'd assume so, given that piece of machinery), or more of a hobby, @Lann?

Either way, it's a fascinating glimpse at an activity I am/was completely clueless about.

No actually this is at my school. They have a Fine Arts program in Metals that ranges from coppersmithing, silversmithing to blacksmithing. Blacksmithing has used machinery like this since the industrial revolution and some of the old anvils, tools and machines are still used today. Blacksmithing today is mainly for architecture (gates ect.) and sculpture (some sculpture programs use blacksmithing equiptment)...I hope this provided some information.

In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
I actually didn't know that anyone was still manually blacksmithing (maybe semi-manual, or manual-assisted?)...except for those few fanatics/purists/hobbyists you find at renn fests. Is this a full-time job (I'd assume so, given that piece of machinery), or more of a hobby, @Lann?

Either way, it's a fascinating glimpse at an activity I am/was completely clueless about.

I actually didn't know that anyone was still manually blacksmithing (maybe semi-manual, or manual-assisted?)...except for those few fanatics/purists/hobbyists you find at renn fests. Is this a full-time job (I'd assume so, given that piece of machinery), or more of a hobby, @Lann?

Either way, it's a fascinating glimpse at an activity I am/was completely clueless about.

These appear to be the english lyrics:

The blacksmith said, "I'll wait"
The blacksmith said, "I'll go"
The blacksmith said, in his confusion
Standing at the door of the barn
That he was going to go courting

Chorus (after each verse):
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Fingal's bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Island of bothies, of bothies
Fingal's bothies

I'd knock spots off the birds
I'd knock spots off the hakes
Little lythes of the sea
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

I'd knock spots off the birds
I'd knock spots off the hakes
Little lythes of the sea
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We got nothing here
We would take a while hauling them in
If our hand lines last

The blacksmith said, "I'll wait"
The blacksmith said, "I'll go"
The blacksmith said, in his confusion
Standing at the door of the barn
That he was going to go courting

10 years ago I was fourteen and was living on a ranch with my mother’s parents. It was the year I learned to snowboard, got my license, and quit smoking (tobacco). As a painfully shy tom boy, I didn’t have friends (besides my older brother and his crew), or a date (brother beat up the nerds I liked ) The next three years of high school were spent in the TINY town of Circle Montana. At 16 I got a best friend who I would spontaneously takes road trips across the state with. It was though her I got my first boyfriend the summer I turned 17. That summer we ran away to West Yellowstone and felt free…

At 17 with family problems on the ranch I moved to Billings (largest city in Montana). I finished my senior year there while staying in an apartment right across the parking lot from school. I worked washing, fueling, and parking UPS trucks to pay the rent. I almost got married at 19, broke up and moved in with my father’s parents. I started school at MSU as an Environmental Science major. After a year I decided I needed change.

Summer of 2005 I moved to Cookeville Tennessee to go to school at the Appalachian Center for Craft. To afford school, I took a year off and worked in the factories. I was an auto airbag inspector, assembler and typesetter…*yawn*. I finally started school again in the fall of 2006 in the glassblowing program. After a semester of glass I changed to metal. I started in Blacksmithing then shifted towards Metalsmithing. I just started working in clay a year ago and picked that up really quickly. Now I just got to finish my senior thesis this spring and get the fuck out of this place.

I have been down and lonely...but things have really changed for the better.

Blacksmiths have been doing this for over a hundred years...it's also not exclusively an American tradition either...although I can see why some Americans keep up with it.

I'm bored so I'm going to post here. Well I'm new here (kind of) I was a lurker since a few years ago, I had a different sift name but I forgot what it was or what email was used so I came up with this one. Lann is my artist name, it's how I sign my work and show it (kind of A-sexual).

I just turned 24 in June. I had to spend most of my life on a 12 section cattle ranch in the remote regions or North Eastern Montana with my evil grandparents. When I was 17 I escaped to Billings, MT to finish high school. I did a year at MSU-Billings until I though I needed another change.

In 2005 I moved to TN and worked a year in the factories to get residency an money for college. I am now a senior at the Appalachian Center for Craft. After I'm done I plan to get the hell out of this god for saken state and head back to the northwest somewhere for grad school.

I'm a Metals major and love casting, blacksmithing, and ceramics. I've done also done Glassblowing, Printmaking...and other stuff...I guess I'll shut up now...

I found salvation when a friend explained to me Jesus wasn't actually a carpenter - this is just what they want you to believe.

He was actually a blacksmith. Read the bible with this in mind, and it all makes so much more sense.

It's not Jesus of Nazareth - it's Jesus the metal smith.

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

"O! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."

"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"

"Pip, sir."

"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"

"Pip. Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself - for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.

"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"

"There, sir!" said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."

"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?"

"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."

"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with - supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"

"My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir."

"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:

"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a-keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.

"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"

"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.

"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.