Took fifty years tho, and the emergence of a group who didn't care about money to accomplish that. Obviously "lost" knowledge and skills can be regained but it's not going to happen in six months just because some drooling old bastards in washington decide they'd get some votes by spouting a bunch of balderdash. The very same old bastards that cut the balls off those skills and knowledge thirty years earlier, may we note ... You need an actual long-term did I say long-term plan with actual resolve or grit, tenacity, persistence, planning, perseverence, sticktoitivness, wilingness to look farther than next quarter, whatever.
Whatever it is, something that has not been on display in the US for a long time now, except for hippies and other edge-dwellers who do not care about money. Finance is a cancer. Or at least the kind of finance that we have had for a long long time, pulling all the strings.
Finance ruined manufacturing, because all it cared about is money. I tend to agree.
But how, exactly, do you get the idea that the current generation of blacksmiths "dont care about money"?
I have met hundreds of blacksmiths in the last 30 years or so. I am personal friends with dozens. The vast majority of the serious ones run businesses. And, believe me, they "care about money".
I know at least a couple of dozen guys who have had full time businesses with 3 to 5 employees for 20 to 30 years.
If a machine shop only has 3 employees, is that a sign that they dont care about money?
I know a half dozen shops who do high end ornamental work, for 20plus years, including mine, with full time employees and project budgets often ranging from 100k to a million. does that count as money?
I know a guy who has singlehandedly revived structural riveting, and he gets paid to work on things like historical bridge restorations. He just built a really cool overhead hung deep throat structural riveter, and believe me, his hobby gigs as a bass player didnt pay for that.
I know two shops who manufacture cookware, mostly frying pans, both with employees, both of whom are usually backordered. Again, resurrected tech, restored old machines, rebuilt new machines, and they make profits.
A dozen high end knifemakers, whose knives sell for a grand to 3k or more. Several with employees.
A guy who started a musuem and school, running now since the late 70s, he retired from it but its got something like 20 full time employees now. Every day he worked there, money was the number one thing he had deal with.
Another close friend manufactures mokemegane, the mixed alloy metal stock used by high end jewelers around the world. He sells to the top jewelry supply companies, who, in turn, retail it. He has to care about money to buy gold, silver, and other alloys to make the stuff. He also has a knife he made in the collection of the Victoria and Albert museum, in London. He got paid for it. In money.
I know a couple other guys who started blacksmithing schools, and the students pay to attend, in money, which they use to pay the employees.
I could go on and on.
All the men and women who reclaimed the "lost" skills of forging had to earn money to do it, and most started businesses and employed people, and then sold the work they made.
kinda like how a machine shop works.
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