Legal
Terms of use
Plain conditions for reading, quoting and relying on an editorial site about a physical craft.
These pages are published for people who want to understand a craft and the objects it left behind. Read them, quote them, link to them.
Quoting
Short quotations with a link back need no permission. Republishing a whole page does, because it splits corrections between two copies and the stale one is the one that stays wrong. Documents and photographs held by museums and archives belong to those institutions under their own terms.
Names that belong to other people
The Capital District Blacksmiths' Association is a real organisation and its name is its own. This site is not affiliated with it, does not speak for it, and says so on the about page and in this paragraph. ABANA, the Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America, is likewise its own organisation. Company names such as Ross Valve, and the names of museums and arsenals mentioned in the heritage section, belong to those bodies.
The limit that matters
Nothing here is training. Forging is done with metal above a thousand degrees, with tools that can throw pieces of themselves, in a fire that produces gases you cannot see. A written page cannot watch your stance, hear your hammer or smell your fire. Everything on this site is offered as description, not as instruction, and where hazard is involved we cite the body that published the guidance rather than issuing our own, as the editorial policy sets out. Learn in a shop, next to someone who can stop you.
Reaching us
Questions about this page go to the desk.