I'm up in Auburn Maine at the New England School of Metalworking for Randy McDaniel's class on forging welding. It's a sprawling town next to Lewiston, where Bates College is. An old mill town with tons of waterways and streams, it runs from charming to aging industrial depending on where you are.

 After a morning of lessons and demos, we were doing faggot welds on flat stock to build up mass for a hammer and working on making chain. Randy McDaniel spent the morning demonstrating and teaching then in the afternoon we tried to duplicate it.

Randy hits to set the weld above and below my attempts at the day's work. All this was done in coal.

Photos to follow...

And yes, Ben, my welds are holding...

Update: Photos added on 9-13-2010