Well put. I don't possess the skills of the great "handymen" of generations past, but I get by in my job as an artificer here at the college, creating 18th/19th century scientific apparatus (both direct copies and concept pieces) for our labs. (Our curriculum is pretty archaic, based on the Great Works of Western Civilization.) They think I'm a god/magician because I can create this stuff, and often have to make the tools to do it with. What's neat though, is some students come to me to learn some of this stuff on their own time. Being young hip products of liberal urban environments, it amazes me that some of them are even aware of our "archaic" crafts, and secondly want to learn a bit of it for their own edification. (One kid had never held a gun in his life and after hearing me talk of it while working with me in the shop asked if he could go along skeet shooting sometime. Four years after graduating he now owns three shotguns and drives 30 miles every Saturday to shoot.) We owe it to the future of our hobby to not be too chary with our help/knowledge.
I'm fortunate in having the contents of my dad and gramp's shops (both machinists, professionally and recreationally) to include a lot of dusty hunks of various "old fashioned" tool steels- O-1, W-1, and S-1 (Bearcat), etc.- and a shelf full of bronze round stock which I'm steadily whittling down into small cannon barrels.
