Also interested in starting

Ted

I highly recommend you contact your closet blacksmith club. Where are you located? Go to

for a listing of the various groups. Networking with other smiths near you will be a great benefit to you.

Rob Wichita, KS

Thanks, I am in Central NJ. Chas

Check with your City govt on zoning for hobbies. You can make several thousand a year from a hobby. Check the tax codes for your city, county, state, and fed to find out just how much you can take in before you 'go over the bracket'. Finally, check with the EPA concerning the type of fuel you can use. Down here in Okiehohum, coal requires a $crubber on the exhaust, but natural gas or poopane require nothing.

Happy whacking...

Charly

It has been my experience that if you are honest and go down and do that, you shoot a hole in your own vessel at the waterline. If you will be making a lot of noise, fire, smoke, sparks, and the like, you will be denied immediately, and your residence flagged so that the zoners can watch you.

The problem is neighbors. If you have good neighbors, they won't call in on you, and zoning doesn't care one whit, unless you become an obvious nuisance by a preponderance of noise, smoke, flames, or car body parts used in metal sculpture. If you have bad neighbors, they are going to call you in for everything.

Whatever you do, just go there and ask for the printed info, and try to get your answers instead of talking to a person and describing it. There may be ways you can dance through the maze legally.

As for taxes, no one makes any profit here on this hobby that I know of.................................... Do you really want to open the bag of snakes that include taxes, licensing, and book keeping? It will become a job and not just a retirement hobby.

Steve

OTOH, and I missed it if it was in your original post ...........

if you are interested in going into this as a business, DO go down and go through the process so that you find a location where you can do exactly what you want to do.

I did see the word retirement in there, didn't I?

Steve

"Rob Fertner" wrote in news:JeQwc.7346$1L4.1587@okepread02:

Blacksmith clubs are supposed to be "in the closet?"

Dang, we gotta quit doing this stuff in the yard.

:)

Hey, when you live in the city you gotta be undercover. I got my stealth forge and a silencer on my anvil. When I go looking for supplies in the local shops I just tell 'em its for an "art project".

GA