TonyManAtArms

Answered about cutting off my nose here.

The one that wasn't me, I was working on a film production and the producer showed up a week in advance in a very expensive suit and probably $2,000 shoes. He walked in my workshop as I was forging his pieces. I explained to him that it's dangerous and he shouldn't be there.

I put the red-hot metal over to the side of the forge. He walks over to a work bench and picks up a razor-sharp knife I made and runs it across the ball of the thumb cutting it to the bone while asking if it was sharp.

I take him to the first aid center, and bandage him up. He walks back to the workshop, picks uip the blocks of metal I had just forged for his production, fusing it to his hand. He shakes off the metal that's fused to the skin of his hand and immerses it into a big plastic tub of what he thinks is water.

It's actually a phosphoric acid pickle used for cleaning the metal. So he's cut his thumb, burned his hand and immersed it into acid.

Shop etiquette: when you come into the shop, assume everything is hot, sharp, poisonous, and offensively rude.

I started cutting gemstones and making jewelry from 7. At 13 I started cutting rocks professionally. At 15 I met the creator of the Conan swords, Jody Samson, who I pestered until he was willing to critique my work: a knife I made.

When I was 17 I went to a renaissance fair. Saw a guy making armor. He was using a railroad track as an anvil and modified hammers and chisels. He wanted $5,000 and a year's wait for a suit of armor. So I watched him work for a few hours, went home and replicated all his tools to make my own armor.

I was working as a machinist making stonecutting equipment in my early 20s. The business adjoining the shop I worked at was a prop house, and they saw the work that I created: the weapons, jewelry, leatherwork, and they commissioned me to make seven sculptures for Disney World, Epcot Center. That was in 1987. That same company referred the movie Hook, Michael Jackson's tour, and everything else.

Well the favorite build was Gimli's Axe, as I mentioned above. Pattern-welded steel.

My second favorite would have to be Raphael's Sais. The bladesmithing, the forging of it required a lot of skill.

My least favorite would have to be Captain America's Shield: due to time constraints it didn't come out as perfect as I like to make my work. I'd redo it correctly if given the chance.

Probably the vikings. They were using pattern welded steel in the 7th and 9th century, and it created a very strong, durable sword. It's one of the better uses of pattern welded steel.

Poledancing for sure.