What's New at anvilfire! archive IX

In 1999 we launched the following new features:
  • iForge
  • Web-Ring Nexus
  • Emile's Hot Links
  • AnvilCAM
  • International Registry of
    Blacksmith Touchmarks

  • ABANA 2000 JYH Event
  • ABANA-Chapter.com
  • In 2000 we added:
  • CSI Members & Forum
  • Armoury Page
  • Story Page
  • anvilfire Store
  • Rings @ anvilfire.com!
    We setup our own Ringlink webring hosting system and moved our webrings to it.
  • We now host:
  • The Blacksmiths Ring
  • Steelworkers Webring
  • Country Life and Heritage
  • Architectural Metals*
  • Archeaometalurgy*
  • More to come. . .
    * New - no members
  • In 2001 we added:
  • Archives Page w/ Search
  • Anti-Spam System
  • Shop Safety Page
  • NEW Book Review Page
  • w/ Paw-paw's Corner
  • Revolutionary Blacksmith
  • Slack-Tub Pub Rogues Gallery
  • On-Line Metals Store
  • Anvilfire Tool Auction
  • Drop Down Menus
  • 41 iForge demos
  • James Nasmyth Biography
  • Victor Vera Biography
  • All NEW FAQ's Page

  • What's New archive I (12/98)
    What's New archive II (6/99)
    What's New archive III (12/99)
    What's New archive IV (1st Qtr 2000)
    What's New archive V (2nd Qtr 2000)
    What's New archive VI (3rd-4th Qtr 2k)
    What's New archive VII (1st 1/2 2001)
    What's New archive VIII (2nd 1/2 2001)

    Summer of 1999 we reported:

    "anvilfire! had 5,500 hits to the main page in May (a slow month). That's some 12,650 hits in aggregate . . ."

    At the close of the 1st Quarter of 2000:


    Our aggregate hits were up to an average of 22,150 per month. Total traffic has been doubling every six months. We are archiving over 400Kb of Q&A from the guru page every month. Double what it was in 1999. We now archive it every 7 days. The Slack-Tub Pub logs must be cleared every 24 hours. There are now 45 iForge demos, 14 posted this Quarter.

    SPRING 2001 * We have our first 50,000 visitor month!


    That is a hit rate of 10 times two years ago! This means that this year we will have as many visits as in the previous 3 combined!

    NOVEMBER 18, 2001 * We have our 1,000,000th visitor!


    That is 511,000 visitors for the year to date, 23,000 more than the cummulative visits in the prior 3 years (see prediction above)! And this was after a miserable 4 month period on the net following the spring crash of the "DOT-COMS", the 4 month slump in the economy and 9/11. Otherwise we would have had our millionth visitor in late September.


    December 30, 2001 @ 1,085,935   FINISHED updating the Slack-Tub Pub registrations. There are now 1327 registered pub users and new folks register daily. If your old login doesn't work it may be because your e-mail bounced.
    December 31, 2001 @ 1,088,800 YEAR END - 600,000 "hits" for 2001  For the second month we have had 60,000+ visitors on our counters. That is up from an average of 40,000 per month at the start of the year. We almost missed our predicted traffic of 600,000+ made in July. The summer DOT.COM slump and the 9/11 tragedy hurt our traffic as it did much of the web and other businesses.

    154 Archived guru and V.Hammer-In pages
    123 iForge demos (currently our most popular feature).
    26 Book and Video reviews
    2 On-line books.
    18 Stories on the story page (plus the two books).


    January 1, 2002 @ 1,089,000 YEAR START! *** HAPPY NEW YEAR! ***  
    Had a problem with running out of disk space and lost a days worth of guru page postings. Made space by erasing old server logs.
    Posted the last chapter (12) of Book I of Jim Wilson's, Revolutionary Blacksmith
    January 2, 2002 @ 1,093,819  Posted the 124th iForge demo. Had 33 folks logged on during the demo. It was a busy night. Expecting snow tonight in the South.
    January 8, 2002 @ 1,108,227 / 35,313  Some time on Saturday the 5th we flew by the 1,100,000 mark. That was 100,000 visits in 48 days since we passed the one million mark. Archived this page.

    Finaly posted the illustrations for chapter 10 of Paw-paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith.

    There are now 104 CSI members


    January 10, 2002 @ 1,113,263  Posted the 125th iForge demo on Hold Downs last night and archived the 155th forum archive today.

    There are now 105 CSI members


    January 13, 2002 @ 1,120,590  Our server was offline from 3:15 to 5:00 pm EST today while it was being upgraded. We now have a slightly faster processor and a larger hard drive. Hopefully this will keep us running for the next year.
    January 16, 2002 @ 1,129,611  Posted iForge demo #126 and archived the guru page. A record of 214Kb.

    There are now 106 CSI members


    January 18, 2002 @ 1,134,110  Updated the iForge instructions and demonstrators worksheets to reflect the iForge classroom. Added instructions on using the classroom.

    There have been an average of 2,500 visits a day to anvilfire in January to date.


    January 20, 2002 @ 1,140,665  Corrected spelling in the Apprenticeship FAQ posted last night. Setup a link in the 21st Century page to this new FAQ as well as to one on re-bar that I had forgotten about.

    We now have over 1400 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.


    January 23, 2002 @ 1,147,165  Edited the apprenticeship FAQ. In the light of day it looked like it was written in the wee hours. . it was.

    Corrected the Vancouver Island Blacksmith's Association link on the ABANA-Chapter page. Please keep us updated when your local chapter changes its web address.

    Posted the third iForge demo #127 from Hugh McDonald of Australia.

    There are now 107 CSI members


    January 24, 2002 @ 1,149,106  Updated Hugh McDonald's Human Leg Door Knocker with six additional drawings to explain some of the details. Updated copyright dates on the current iForge demos and list page.

    Added a photo and recipe for cooking borax from Larry Sundtrom on the borax information page.


    January 26, 2002 @ 1,153,870  Updated the local copy of the Coal Scuttle Coal Suppliers list from the Blacksmith's Gazette.
    (23,151 scuttle)
    January 27, 2002 @ 1,156,080  We now have two listings on Books-On-Line, Autobiography of James Nasmyth and Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith

    Home @ 469,495; Story Page @ 6735; Books-On-Line @ 783327.


    January 30, 2002 @ 1,163,767  There are now 108 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    We now have over 1427 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    February 1, 2002 @ 1,168,994 (noon)  Archived the guru page and V-Hammer-In. The guru page was a record 725 Kb for the month.

    Anvilfire had a record 80,000 visits this month. UP 50% from November/December and double the traffic a year ago.

    We now have 1439 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.


    February 2, 2002 @ 1,171,410 (noon)  Posted the first chapter of Book II of Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith. The new Book required a new menu system, introduction and updating the old links. Enjoy!

    Whoops. . replaced my introduction with Jim's Prologue. Details details!

    February 2, 2002 @ 1,171,730 (afternoon)  Added an all new feature to the story page, Ray Smith's Notebook of Metalworking Origins. Additions from Ray's collection will be added monthly.


    February 6, 2002 @ 1,181,100  Posted a new Metalworking Glossary page (under construction). Will add to it as time permits and the need arises. Anyone that wants to make submissions is welcome. We are looking for original thoughtful definitions.

    Also updated "alphabet soup" our acronyms page.


    February 9, 2002 @ 1,188,441  Have been having some server trouble. Not ours specificaly but the service's network is undergoing some modifications. Will probably be off-line for a few hours Sunday afternoon (tomarrow).

    Pub registrations are up to 1452


    February 11, 2002 @ 1,192,751  Updated all the iForge demos with top_index frame code and about half with site wide counters. Corrected titles and descriptions in many for better indexability.

    Setup the International Glossary of Blacksmithing and Metalworking terms. Like our English glossary this will be an on-going project. We need volunteers to provide translations and glossary definitions. If your language isn't listed just send us a message with word pairs. Preferably 'English, your language', but if you are stronger in one of the other languages already listed then use that for your comparison.


    February 16, 2002 @ 1,207,284  Sometime in the last few days we flew past the 1.2 million visit mark un-noticed. Averaging 3,000 visits daily.

    During that time we have made repeated updates to our two glossary projects, the International Glossary and the Glossary of metalworking terms English version. Last night we added a page of 27 links to translation sites all over the world. We also added links to the LANL periodic table entries to the Glossary.


    February 20, 2002 @ 1,216,414  There are now 109 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    We are modifying the drop down menus. Auction, FAQs and Glossary have been added. Alphabetizing is in progress but will be done in stages as the menu is long and need to be tested after making a manageable number of changes. This is another step toward setting up the Members version. We want to get the public versions right first. Sorry for the inconvienience.


    February 20, 2002 @ 1,217,621  Archived the guru page. There are now 161 archive pages.
    February 21, 2002 @ 1,220,954  Created a new Temper Colors Chart and linked it to the glossary project and FAQ pages.
    February 26, 2002 @ 1,233,483  Added ASO and spell checked the acronyms page.
    Rewrote parts of the apprenticeships FAQ.
    Added scarf to the glossary.
    Corrected Centaur Forge's phone numbers on the Getting Started FAQ.
    Added "Getting Started" to the FAQs drop down menu.

    March 1, 2002 @ 1,242,000 / 36,970  Anvilfire had 73,000 visits in February, down from January. Total shortfall due to February being a short month. Two more days would have resulted in equal traffic and the actual four would result in an increase.

    Posted Chapter 2 of Book II of Jim Wilson's Revolutionary Blacksmith and the next page of Ray Smith's Metalworking Origins Notebook. Also made a partial update of the International Glossary.

    Repaired problem with Slack-Tub Pub registration form yesterday. Increased security on our mail server was rejecting mail. If you registered for the Pub and haven't recieved a response then please re-register.


    March 2, 2002 @ 1,244,611  Added Capital District Blacksmiths to ABANA-Chapter.com. If you are in the Albany area of NY you now have a blacksmithing organization to join! Check them out. They are also our newest member of The Blacksmiths Ring, bringing the total member sites to 105.

    Added alphabetical index keys to both the English Glossary and Alphabet Soup, our acronyms page. This makes it easier to navigate these ever growing lists. Note that the baseline index at the bottom of the page works only in the FAQs or Glossary frameset.


    March 3, 2002 @ 1,246,916  There are now 1464 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    March 4, 2002 @ 1,248,720 (very early)  Archived the guru page and the Hammer-In. Broke up the guru page into weekly archives. Had missed an archiving in February. . .
    March 4, 2002 @ 1,249,624 (noon)  I forgot to announce that we have posted a NEW poem titled, Forging by J.M. Gerlinsky, Chokecherryforge, Wilkie, Saskatchewan, Canada on the Story Page.
    March 11, 2002 @ 1,270,843  We have 1484 users registered for the Slack-Tub Pub. We posted the 128th iForge demo last Thursday. Kiwi updated some things on the server. Had a bug in the members Php routines. Kiwi fixed.
    March 18, 2002 @ 1,290,100  Added a hardness conversion chart on the FAQs page. And we continue to update the glossary projects.

    We now have 1513 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.


    March 23, 2002 @ 1,303,300  Updated the Coal and Charcoal FAQ with charcoal making methods and links. Updated headers and counter on Kiwi's charcoal retort plan.

    We now have 1527 registered Slack-Tub Pub users. We've had 82,350 visits in the past 30 days.


    March 25, 2002 @ 1,308,900  Added a NEW review of the new Champion Blower and Forge Catalog on CD-ROM to our book review page and the anvilfire STORE!

    Updated home page to reflect additions of glossaries and FAQs.


    March 30, 2002 @ 1,321,972  I just added two more items to the FAQs page. Case Hardening and Quenchants.
    There are now 111 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    We now have 1538 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    We have had 80 THOUSAND visits so far in March! Our traffic is still holding steady or increasing slightly. It is hard to tell month to month. Long term we are still nearly doubling yearly.
    Archived the guru page (almost ran two weeks again, sorry).
    We now have 177 "archive" files not including our NEWS pages and it will be 179 on Monday.
    March 31, 2002 @ 1,324,268  Updated the Coal and Charcoal FAQ.

    Posted on the Story Page @ 8467

    • Chapter 3 of Book II of Paw-Paw's The Revolutionary Blacksmith
    • Entry 4 "Cain" on Ray Smiths Notebook of Metalworking Origins
    • "For Bruce", A tribute by Terry Fiske taken from the V.Hammer-In
    • "The Anvil Charm", A story by Jim Moran, Bethlehem Forge, Delmar, NY

    April 1, 2002 @ 1,326,000 (wee hours)  Updated the International Glossary of Metalworking Terms. This is an ever growing work and it looks like we are going to need to seperate the second chart onto another page due to the growing size. We are still looking for an Italian contributor/editor. We are also reaching the point where we will need to slow down until there are illustrations or photos of each tool linked to the page to help clarrify words for the translators.

    March traffic = 85,000 visitors


    April 4, 2002 @ 1,335,565  Updated last night's iForge demo which was an addendum to our #88 Fullers and Fullering demo. I added an image and paragraph from Hugh McDonald that I had missed while setting up the demo. We also updated demo #41 "Anvil Fuller Tool" with photos of the tool Bill Epps made to sell on our auction page and also a unique design by Jerry "birdlegs" Carroll.

    Edited the Borax FAQ (spell checked) and added it to the FAQ's page and menu.

    Nothing holds still at anvilfire! Eventually everything gets updated, corrected or improved!


    April 7, 2002 @ 1,343,686  We now have
    • 1577 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    • 169 forum archives pages spanning 4 years starting in April of 1998!
    • 131 iForge demos.
    • 112 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    • 109 Blacksmiths Ring sites (lost two due to dissapearance from web).
    • 33 Steelworkers Webring sites (with some duplication from above).

    NOTE: We had a report of a problem printing iForge demos. Apparently it is a problem in Netscape only. It was unintensionally caused by our system that forces pages into their frameset. We have temporarily removed that from our newest demo but will be reinstating it in the future. Sorry for the inconvienience. I try to support Netscape in every way but I'm not sure how to get around this one.
    April 8, 2002 @ 1,349,150  Updated the Temper Color Chart on the FAQ's page.
    April 20, 2002 @ 1,379,000  We now have 1584 registered Slack-Tub Pub users and there are 113 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".
    There are now two catalog reprint CD's in the store and a two for one money deal. More to come!
    April 25, 2002 @ 1,393,400  Edited and reposted last night's demo by 10 year old Sean Conner. This is Sean's second demo and our 132nd.
    April 27, 2002 @ 1,397,123 (wee hours)  Updated the anvilfire popup converter "Toolkit". Added Feet to Meters and rounding to reduce reciprocal conversion errors.
    April 27, 2002 @ 1,398,219  We now have 1596 registered Slack-Tub Pub users. I updated the Ray Smith Notebook a couple days early this month since the first will be mid week.
    April 29, 2002 @ 1,402,715  Updated the Touchmark Registry. Removed clients e-mail addresses to prevent spammers and e-mail viruses from using them.

    Filed Certificates of "Assumed or Ficticious" names for both DEMPSEY'S FORGE and anvilfire.com according to new local business licensing laws. This coincides with our week old application for a secure server certificate to confuse matters.


    April 30, 2002 @ 1,406,400 
    82,100 visits in April
    May 1, 2002 @ 1,409,900  Posted chapter 4 of Book II of Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith and iForge demo number 133.
    May 8, 2002 @ 1,428,572  We now have 1616 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.
    May 9, 2002 @ 1,431,783  Posted a link to Mass3j on the iForge demo cancel page last night and on the guru page today.

    Archived the last of April guru page, for the 173rd archive. We now have 1620 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.


    May 10, 2002 @ 1,433,623  In the wee hours last night I updated our ovals layout routine with an on-line Javascript calculator to replace the downloadable DOS program. The cones layout routine will be similarly updated (still debugging). These are both linked to Mass3j and the new routines will be consistant with its theme.

    We now have 1624 registered Slack-Tub Pub users.


    May 13, 2002 @ 1,442,076  Updated the Cones article with an on-line Javascript calculator. The cones article is on the 21st Century page and linked to the new Mass3j calculator.
    May 15, 2002 @ 1,446,684  We now have 1631 registered Slack-Tub Pub users and there are 114 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".

    May 24, 2002 @ 1,473,000  Posted the 135th iForge demo.
    Updated the Mass3j Polygons routine to accept area as an input variable. Tricky math. More flexibility.

    May 25, 2002 @ 1,476,410  Updated the Portable forge shop article with new photos and a drawing page.

    We now have 1651 registered Slack-Tub Pub users BUT there are about 50 bad registrations to remove from our last test mailing.

    There are now 115 CSI members not including the 5 "gurus".


    May 27, 2002 @ 1,480,298  Edited out all the records with bad e-mail addresses in the Pub registrations. Now down to 1507 registered users. That is still 100 more than at the first of the year.

    Due to the large flux in e-mail addresses we are going to start sending Pub contact mail out about every two months instead of three or four.

    Posted the first new edition of the NEWS in over a year. Covers, Fenby 2001 and Pewter Casting, CanIronII (2001) and the first Artist Blacksmiths Association of South Africa Hammer-In (ABASA). Shorts on Centaur Forge, ABANA and Kiwi meeting Klingons.


    May 28, 2002 @ 1,484,665   Added a Repousse FAQ to the FAQs page. Modified the menu bar so clicking on anvilfire FAQs reloads the list page.
    June 1, 2002 @ 1,493,855  Traffic:
    87,423 visitors in May - Thats over 2 visitors per second minute!
    1519 Slack-Tub Pub Users

    June 2, 2002 @ 1,495,638  Updated the Repousse FAQ with ViCopper's post.
    June 2, 2002 @ 1,496,049  Posted Chapter Book II Chapter 5 of The Revolutionary Blacksmith.
    Also posted a new story about pennies in the forge by J.M. Gerlinsky, Chokecherry Forge, Wilkie Saskatchewan, Canada.
    June 4, 2002 @ 1,501,700

    We passed the ONE and a HALF MILLION visits mark today!

    Posted a Bells, Gongs and Triangles FAQ on the FAQs page.


    June 6, 2002 @ 1,507,254  Posted Rich Waugh's (AKA ViCopper) Lost Wax Casting iForge demo last night.
    Archived the guru's den.
    Created templates for the ABANA conference edition of the NEWS with new CSI logo.
    Updated archived pages that had HTML link errors.
    Posted Ray Smith's next installment to his NoteBook of Metalworking Origins.
    Installed some anti spam-harvester software.

    Am I unusualy busy? No. This a is typical day. Its just that most of the work I do is hard to describe. This batch just happened not to be.


    June 11, 2002 @ 1,519,911  The WAR against SPAM and Klez.
    Previously we had replaced public e-mail addresses with an incryption system on our forums. I have recently started to replace the webmaster addresses with either incrypted links or a contact form on the thousands of pages that had webmaster links.

    TODAY all email addresses in our forum archives have had the links removed and the visible addresses have been modified so that SPAM and virus systems cannot use them. We have also setup poison pill pages to choke SPAM harvesters.

    This is an expensive, LONG, time consuming process. But we are determined to make anvilfire a SPAM FREE zone.

    Ask the operators of the other forums you frequent what THEY are doing to fight SPAM and viruses that use cached HTML pages for e-mail sources.


    June 18, 2002 @ 1,537,941  *** ABANA 2002 NEWS ***
    10 pages posted. More to come!
    June 18, 2002 @ 1,538,519  Updated the CSI description/sales page.
    June 22, 2002 @ 1,548,000  Posted page 11 of the NEWS, "More Sights and Photo Processing", and Pages 12, 13 and 14 on the Japanese Bladesmiths. MORE TO COME!
    June 23, 2002 @ 1,550,500  Posted page 15 of the NEWS, Future Events, announcing Barny's Canadian Hammer-In and the National Ornamental Metal Museum Repair Days. Also corrected the Editor link. . .

    As part of our war on SPAM we have been submitting some 50 spammers a day to www.spamcop.net. As always we are forwarding Nigerian SPAM to abuse@whoever.com and also to uce@ftc.gov.

    Updated the Blacksmiths Ring home page with anti-SPAM e-mail links.


    June 25, 2002 @ 1,554,627  Archived the guru page and the V.Hammer-In. June is shaping up to be our all time record month.
    June 26, 2002 @ 1,557,416  Posted a link to the CSI Members list on the CSI members Home page. This requires a CSI login/password to access.

    We have temporarily closed the Slack-Tub Pub Rogues Gallery due to a security issue. When we get the code sorted out we will reinstate it.


    June 29, 2002 @ 1,566,456  We have 1570 registered Slack-Tub Pub Users.
    June 30, 2002   We have reinstated the Slack-Tub Pub Rogues Gallery with a temporary fix.
    July 1, 2002 @ 1,570,000 (wee hours)  Posted Chapter 6 of Jim Paw-Paw Wilson's Revolutionary Blacksmith and the July installment of Ray Smiths Notebook of Metalworking Origins.
    July 2, 2002 @ 1,572,910 (wee hours)  Archived the guru page for the last week of June. We archived a record 754kb of Q&A for June.

    Traffic in visits for June was down (80,000) but page hits and other traffic indicators were up. That means folks have been spending more time during their visits.


    Page Counter