A little more about Richard K

[Richard K]

Members,

I just wrote a long answer to the DRO on the Ewheel post and wanted to clarify my position on that matter.

When I started in this Metalshaping hobby, I became addicted to tools and "better" ways of doing processes. As my previous post shows, that can be a mind engaging and challenging experience. However, I was severely sidetracked and could not find time to practice metalshaping.

In the past few years I have stepped away from the machine interest and began to try my hand at metalshaping. I use mostly hand tools, even though I have a wide selection of recips, power hammers and such stuff. I now understand some of the advice given by Wray Schelin and others to learn metalshaping first.

The machine experience is exciting, no question about that if tools are of a special interest to you.

However, if your goal today is to be a metalshaper, practice today and tomorrow, using whatever basic tools you have, will make you a practioner in the applied art of metalshaping in a relatively short time.

The tool road is long, dirty, heavy, a space hog and expensive. You'll always need just one more, that special deal, then you can start. Maybe after the next auction?

I truly enjoy metalshaping now. I carry a few basic tools in two small bags in my car. I also have a fairly decent small portable english wheel.

My Avatar: I had the fly buzzing around for a while. It was beginning to bug me, so I let it go, so to speak. The photo of the classy man is not me. That is a phpto of Harry Miller, a famous builder of racing engines and race cars from early 1900s to 1940s.

I saw a greeting card recently. It said:

"to simply live"
"Live Simply"

[Overkill]

Glad you squashed that thing.

Thanks for the perspective.

[jhnarial]

Richard I was just the opposite, I focused on nothing but shaping metal by hand, not by choice but because those were the tools I had on hand.

My problem now is I am pretty efficient with the hand tools and can not get myself to change my ways. I have a nice reciprocating machine and I hardly ever use it because I never want to take the time to make the tooling.

[David Gardiner]

Hi Richard, I have always advocated learning to shape metal by hand before spending bucket loads of money on machines. This is how I learned. I have found that no matter how many machines I have I need my hand skills every day. Many sections are easier to make using hand tools.

David

[Chris Bspoke]

Richard so glad you swatted the fly , did my head in as I kept thinking that it was real and on my screen. The number of times I tried to flick it of the screen.
And to the point your contributions to this forum in my opinion are priceless because I believe they are very informative ie your knowledge of history of metal shaping and automobile and the fact that you will question why is someone taking a particular approach to a job . As Joe H say's ( bad quote here ) there are many roads into town ( add my twist " but which is the right one").
On a final note please don't take this as me being against Richard , Johnny and David but I have just started a thread on building a rep machine , but I totally agree that you should learn to work metal by hand . But at coming up to 38 years young both my wrist's are about f!!! every man on both side's of my family have bad arthritis in there hands/ fingers , the biggest passions in my life are my wife , daughter , playing the guitar/piano/ shaping and making things out of metal.I guess what I am saying is it's real important to know how to work metal by hand but there comes a time when you have to respect your body and work clever not hard.

[Richard-S]

In my younger years I lived in a town that fancied itself "the boat building capital of the Chesapeake". There were indeed a lot of boat shops there. I had one. I built wooden boats and did a lot of repair work.

These were the sixties and seventies, when young people were moving to the country, returning to the basics you might say, and there came to town quite a number of these and they became boat builders. A few of them actually built boats. But most, I found, mostly talked about the boats they were going to build . . . and collected tools.

I could tell a real boat builder by his tools. They were relatively few, and they were old. Whereas the "tool collectors" had every new shiny gadget you could imagine. The problem was they didn't get around to building any boats. They had a lot of fun though, before they moved back to the city and went back to work.

Richard