1/ Had this conversation w my blacksmith instructor Carl once. Have to tweak the question a bit: tools don't exist JUST to do thing X, so have to analyze the thing with: I made A using B which I made using C which I made... My chain depth is shallow (3 ?)https://twitter.com/random_eddie/status/1001495831281897472 …
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3/ There is a SECOND topic (and, actually, now I'm seeing that this may be where Eddie was heading, and I misunderstood) of "how tall is your infrastructure pyramid?" I actually intend to write an essay on this for the farm book. >>>
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4/ As you do more things for yourself, it turns out - expectedly - that your infrastructure grows in size, and - paradoxically - that your dependence on others grows too. I liken this to a pyramid. Imagine you live in a studio in Manhattan or SF. You own 50 things.
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5/ (yes, this is a news.ycombinator kind of topic from 3-5 years back). You eat every meal takeout or frozen. You own 1 fork. You own 5 shirts. Etc. You depend on others for: * meals * replacement forks * water * laundry machines
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6/ If you become a homeowner, your infrastructure pyramid grows 1 taller...but footprint goes from 1 unit square to 2 x 2 = 4 units square. Now you need a lawnmower blade sharpening guy, a gas station, etc.
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7/ One more level to "well equipped homeowner". Pyramid height = 3, footprint = 3 x 3 = 9 units. Gotta buy replacement grinding wheels for your bench grinder to sharpen lawnmower blades to mow the lawn...
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8/ I'd say that I'm at pyramid height 4 or 5. Have a rivet spinner and an Oregon chainsaw sharpener to touch up my hand filing on my chainsaw chains I use to cut my firewood to keep warm in winter. vs level 1: "rent with heat included is auto-debited"
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9/ So, what's the LONGEST chain I have? Hmm. Welder and chop saw to build steel shelves that hold tools to maintain tractor and rototiller to plant pumpkin patch to grow pumpkins to feed pigs to get pork to make bacon to have breakfast ?
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10/ EXACTLY! We are 900% agreed on this topic. https://twitter.com/klaatu/status/1001508181762297856 …
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11/ So, there is an old blacksmith tale, traced to Jewish smiths, that God made the first set of blacksmith tongs.https://twitter.com/heatpacker/status/1001508078922223616 …
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13/ The idea being that bootstrapping is hard / impossible. With a set of tongs, you can make more tongs (cite: me ; I've made several pairs of tongs). ...but how do you make the first pair?
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14/ Hammers, btw, are easy. Piece of rock lashed into a stick with some vegetable fibre. But TONGS?!?
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15/ My thought is that you bootstrap with crappy tools, including very wet sticks. Blacksmiths still use wooden hammers (soaked through) to straighten nearly finished products. When I did some glassblowing we likewise uses wooden (and paper!) tools.
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16/ So my thought is that you could make a just-barely-passable set of tongs using nothing but a boulder (as an anvil), a rock-and-stick hammer, and maybe a wet stick or two. With that crappy pair, a better pair. And so on.
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17/ Great point - if you can smelt iron, you could make cast iron tongs. https://twitter.com/LibertyFarmNH/status/1001510098370473984 …
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18/ Heck, you could maybe even use brass tongs on iron. For that matter, iron has such a low thermal conductivity, that you can forge iron without tongs - one end in the fire, other end cool enough to grasp by hand.
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