Hello from Belarus | Introductions Come First, Right? | Forum

Andrew,
Welcome aboard! Bruce MacMillan

Andrei Piatrovich;7417 wrote: Thank you Bruce. That it is better to be among like-minded people? Am sorry for my English.

Andrei,
''Like minded'' might be a bit of an overstatement, but we all have metal on the mind!
I googled Belarus and it looks like a beautiful country, turbulent past, but beautiful.
What sort of smithing do you do?.............bm

Andrei Piatrovich;7562 wrote: To Bruce.
My business is construction. Forging recent years has become part of my life. It was like a hobby, but now it's part of the business. I'm doing a lot of interiors in the style of the country (French village). In my interiors of many of my works on forging.
http://gaspadar.by.com/page-si.....__bra_.htm

Welcome Andrei, you do very nice work. When I was a teenager my uncle had a "Belarus" tractor it was a big old 4 wheel drive, I loved that tractor. It sort of looked like this http://img86.imageshack.us/img.....330nf0.jpg I think the most people I ever had in the cab was 9, driving cross country in a snow storm. I'm in the prairies of Canada and many people from your area settled here, the biggest group would of been from the Ukraine. We have a chap from there that has just set up shop here in the last year, he also does some nice work, but is having a hard time with the language. We are doing our best to help him out, I think he will do well.

Andrei Piatrovich;7583 wrote: Hi Daryl. And in what part of Canada are you located?

Canada is an interesting country. I'm curious to know how the blacksmiths in Canada.

Andrei:
I can figure out google maps, but I'm in Saskatoon Saskatchewan Canada. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....skatchewan

We don't really have a history of blacksmithing, other than sharpening plow shears and shoeing horses. There is very little architectural ironwork that I have seen, but in the last 10 years at least a growing interest, most work is security fencing. The type of work I do is small objects and sculptures. We have an active group of hobby smiths in the province and less than a half dozen people making their living as smiths.

For some reason Saskatchewan has a very strong Craft community, we hold a large craft collaborative every two years and although it is mainly people from North America it also includes people from around the world. On average about a hundred people working for a week just making stuff it is a lot of fun, I consider myself lucky to get invited. http://www.emmacollaboration.com/ This year we worked without power, it was fun to see what we could do.

Andrei there are only a couple commercial shops in my area and they are mainly fabrications shops, not blacksmithing. Roman the chap from the Ukraine is trying to set up a shop both fabrication and blacksmithing, and the blacksmithing community here is trying to help him as best they can. The blacksmithing community is mainly hobbiest certainly none with Architectural Ironwork background. Roman is having a very hard time finding enough work to keep busy and food on the table, workshop space is also very expensive. So far he has stuck at it, if he can keep going a couple of more years I think he will gradually get more business. Architectural is not part of the culture so it takes a long for peoples taste to change. Or they may like the work but feel it is too expense for them. they would rather have a new car than a nicer home.

I donated a piece blacksmithing to a charity auction last night, and several people wanted to know if I could actually make a living at making useless things. I'm lucky I have a clientele that do by my work but it took a very long time.