Talk:machine shop

Machining:blacksmithing more than just new:old

It is an oversimplification and rather a distortion to say that "machine shops […] are the modern equivalent of a blacksmith shop"; however, to explain how the two overlap and don't overlap is more than a dictionary can do. I can't think of a succinct alternative at the moment, so I am stetting it for now; but we should think of a different way to link the two. The development of the technologies of machining, forging, metallurgy, and heat treatment have created various "apples" to the "orange" of the traditional blacksmith shop, which still exists, although only for certain specialized purposes (for example, hobbying, architectural ironwork, horseshoeing). Mere new:old is the wrong schema; an average machine shop of today would have a partially-overlapping-Venn-diagram relationship to a blacksmith shop of yore. Lumbercutter 18:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)