Just realized I've done over 500 dermaplaning services since opening my booth space. That number feels wild.

I had to choose between pure black or dark gray for a dashboard project

My client wanted a dark theme for their new admin panel. The big choice was the main background color. I could go with a pure black (#000000) or a dark gray (#121212). I picked the dark gray after making two test versions. The pure black looked sharp at first, but it made the text and colored charts feel too harsh and gave me eye strain after looking at it for an hour. The dark gray version was softer and let the other colors on the screen, like the blue data points, stand out better without fighting the background. It just felt easier to look at for a long time. I showed both to the client and they agreed the gray was better for daily use. Has anyone else found that pure black is too much for tools people use all day?

A weird forge weld took me three full days to figure out

I was trying to forge weld a simple twist bar for a gate handle, something I've done a dozen times. My usual mix of borax and a clean fire just wasn't working; the steel would look ready but crumble apart under the hammer. I spent a whole Saturday checking my coal bed, adjusting the air, and cleaning the metal, thinking it was a simple flux issue. On Sunday, I finally called an old smith friend in Knoxville who asked, 'Is your coal fresh or did you get a new bag?' Turns out, the new bag of coal I bought had a high sulfur content, which I never even thought to check. It was poisoning the weld at the critical temperature. I had to drive an hour to get a different brand, start the whole fire over, and it finally took on the third attempt Monday evening. Has anyone else run into bad coal batches causing weld failures?