Hit 5000 hours of forge time last month and it hit different

I keep a logbook for no real reason, just habit. But when I added up the hours last week and saw 5000 even, it made me think about all the failed blades and bad welds that got me there. Anyone else track hours or am I just weird about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielw8824d ago

Saw a clip from some old blacksmithing documentary where the guy said he counted every failed weld as a lesson, not a loss. That stuck with me. I'm at around 3200 hours myself, but I've got a shoebox full of mangled knife blanks that tell the real story. The ones I actually finished are the survivors, but the failures taught me way more about steel and heat than any success did.

paul25124d ago

3200 hours and a shoebox full of mangled blanks sounds about right. That's the same way I look at fixing up old motorcycles. I've got a shelf of engines that never ran again but I know exactly why they didn't. It's funny how we treat success like it's the goal but failure is actually the teacher that sticks with you. Same thing happens at work when a shipment comes in wrong, you remember that mistake way longer than the hundred that went smooth.