Good morning and welcome to another For the Honor Forge blogpost. I'm your host, Stephen and today I will talk about staying up too late and not being able to focus on what I want  to write about.

I'm joking, but seriously I have been staying up way too much these past few weeks. My school schedule keeps me very busy. Anywho, tonight's, or this morning's, adventures in staying awake when it is dark out came about from my earnest desire to fulfil orders from my Etsy shop. Over the past 3 months I have  completed 10 online orders. I have 3 more orders to send off as soon as I can. I have already painted them and they are drying. I will need to check the paint job to ensure they look good in the light of course.

This brings me to my next topic: popularity of products. A few months ago I sent out a survey asking what you my dear readers would like see more of. Bows and armor were your answers. I am sorry to say I still have not completed my steel spaulders.

As fun as plastic is to work with, I am a blacksmith, I work with fire and steel. I wan to show this in my product lines. Friday night I finally got back to my forge to practice some basic metal moving techniques to keep from getting rusty. I ended up experimenting with making spearheads. I'll load up some pictures when I can.
If you go to my Etsy store you will notice that I do have one of my steel products for sale, a sword. That blade took almost a year to make. Not because of constant work but because I was too busy to finish it. Well, it is finished now and some brave soul may purchase it.

​Besides the sword, I am also adding another new product that I am very pleased with, Wooden Shields. This particular on is the first from the line and I plan on making not only wood shields but plastic ones and, of course,  steel. Steel shields will of course be on a custom order basis for now but hopefully soon I will build up a stock of those and wooden shields. I recently picked up materials for the plastic shields. I need to experiment a little in how to efficiently make them but I promise you these will be exciting.

I know it's been a while since I last posted. A lot went on. I went to a family reunion in Colorado, had car trouble while there, had to wait for the car to get fixed, and took a day long detour to a National Monument that was further from my route than I at first thought.
Soon after getting back I watched a bunch of crazy birds and other animals for another half of my family. After getting back from that I had a lot more to do before school started up again.
And then school started, which brings us to today.

My classes started last week and I am getting a handle on my schedule.

Somehow through all this I found time in all of that to work on more prototypes, jigs, and finished products. I hope you will all be pleased to see that I now have a new addition to my PVC line: Bows. 

At this point in time I am not offering arrows. I don't know if I ever will so please don't ask for them. Likewise if you purchase these for you children, please note that these can shoot an arrow a good distance with some degree of power. If you don't want arrows punching holes in things you would rather not  have resemble a cheese grater, don't allow the aspiring archer access to arrows. I know this is easier said than done. 
There's an old saying goes something like, "Whereth there existeth a will to do a deed, forsooth there existeth a way by which to GET-R-DONE". 
Or something like that. 
There also another saying, "It's all fun in games till somebody gets their eye poked out". A resourceful child can take both of these saying to a whole new level.
  

Besides all the above I have been working on other things as well to grow my hobby business. I recently spoke with some one about making blacksmith puzzles. It is an interesting prospect and I am already looking into it. Of course I want to do a little historical research and writing on the subject too.

Please stay tuned for more products in the coming weeks.

Oh, and I want thank my wife publicly for all her support, including informing me that I was missing a number in my contacts page.
Thank you!


Speaking of my wife, it has been a while since I did a shout out for her business.
If you are in the SoCal area and need a videographer please do not hesitate to send her a message. You can find her at www.forthehonorproductions.com

If you are interested in purchasing my wares, please check out my Etsy page which is easily accessed by clicking on this convenient button I have placed here for you pleasure: