This week at IASTUDIOS
Hello Everybody,
This week has brought a bit of a change to the forge. This change has come in the shape of some students renting space in the forge for the month of July, taking advantage of our very reasonable workshop rental prices. It has been an interesting experience having different blood to the normal in the forge this week. All I can say about it is that it has definitely reinforced the stereotypes of “if you ask 2 blacksmiths the same question you get 3 different answers” and “every blacksmith will believe that their way is definitely the right way”, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dan has been working on building a barbecue for customer that features 3 old wheels as the hearths for the barbecues. I think that the concept of this could perhaps get pushed a bit further in some creative ways. We shall have to see if it’s something we revisit in the future, but I think there is some potential there for some pretty cool if a little bit mad max-esque styled barbecue models.
Elliot has been working on a new stand for the belt sander in the forge to both improve the the safety of the person operating the machine but also to improve the use of the machine itself. The stand will allow the sander to be bolted down in one position providing a sturdy base, but it can also be unbolted and moved around should we ever rearrange the workshop.
Joe has spent all week messing with the back end of the website and fleshing out a potential new booking system which may go online next week. Well, that’s what I would say that I’ve been doing, the others would probably say I’ve spent most of my week swearing at the computer and threatening to throw it though the window of the office. Honestly I wouldn’t blame them for that view, it has not been easy work and at almost every stage where you think there would be a convenient button to make life easy, there isn’t and you realise that you do, in fact, have another 3 hours of work ahead of you. Or perhaps you’ve just spent an hour or two tweaking settings and then your window crashes and all those tweaks are gone and you need to do them again. Give me a hammer and an anvil over a keyboard any day. Anywho, rant over, this should hopefully release next week unless it all implodes and I do actually chuck the laptop out the window.
None of us are entirely sure what the students have been up to. but they have been beavering away working on their course projects.
We had a big group of people on our introduction to welding course this weekend. All our welding courses are taught by our in-house welding expert Dillon. The welding introduction course takes the students through how to properly work and maintain a MIG welder and also teaches the most common basic welds that they are likely to require out in the wild. It really is a brilliant starting place for anybody who would like to have some guidance in welding before working on any projects at home.
Cheers to yet another horrendously hot and sweaty week,
~IASTUDIOS
