Honestly this whole thing reminds me of a writing group I was in last year. We had this one prompt about a locked room and a ringing phone, super basic. Half the group wrote gritty crime thrillers, the other half wrote weird sci-fi meet-cutes. The discussion afterwards was chaos, but in a fun way, because nobody went in with the same idea. Sometimes not knowing the genre is the whole point, it forces you to pick a lane yourself.

I always figured coal forges were just messy and old fashioned. But that part about getting a fast, precise heat on thick stock is exactly what I found too. I borrowed one to fix an old gate hinge and the control was totally different, like painting with heat. It made me rethink a lot of my old assumptions.

Yeah, reminds me of what @sanchez.mary said about Arizona, stuff just dries out so fast there.

Honestly, I went the other way. I got sick of lugging a miter saw around for small trim jobs. A good hand saw and a miter box is quieter, creates no dust, and honestly just feels more precise to me now. The change came after one too times of setting up power just to cut two pieces.

My uncle had a big willow oak cabled back in 2008. The hardware looked solid from the ground, but when an arborist went up last year, the cable had actually started to cut into a new layer of wood that grew over it. The tree just swallowed part of the support. That new growth isn't just weight, it can change how the whole cable system works over a decade. You really need someone to check where the metal meets the tree, not just look at the cable itself.