I felt a funeral in my brain ...

... with apologies to Emily Dickinson.  Just over a year ago a fist sized part of my brain died. A bit of plaque traveled up through my arteries and cut off circulation to my brain. No warning, no previous history; just sitting here reading a book. In the middle of snowstorm my wife drove me over Wolf Creek Pass thinking I may have had a heart attack. Nope. Pretty serious shit. The initial scan indicated that I had lost portions of three major areas of the left side of my brain. After the MRI scan pretty sure my wife expected a vegetable, maybe broccoli or corn since they are general favorites.

But most things came back. Things were off a bit but started some minimal forging a few months later, e.g. a few hooks and squirrel cookers. 

And then my right should fell off.  Well, almost. I had one tendon keeping it all together. All my muscles that were sorta keeping my shoulder together had atrophied from the stroke.  In May 2021 I had a left shoulder reverse replacement.

So now, about a year later, I'm back to very simple forging. It happened that an acquaintance/teacher was passing through Creede and she offered me an introductory class in Higo Zogan.  I had tried learning on my own a few years ago and it didn't go well.  Nunome Zogan is Japanese overlay using various non-ferrous metals overlaid on Brass.  Higo Zogan is non-ferrous metals overlaid on Steel. In higo zogan, silver or copper overlay is about 3mil (0.008") thick. An average human hair is about 0.004" thick. 

The combination of minor forging and the delicate nature of the overlay is a pretty good combination and things are coming along.  

For now, here are some simple bits of my current work. (There is a mix of both copper and silver overlay in the pictures.) Lots of folks are forging copper spoons, but the overlay is very unique.