Short Stories:
My big Fisher (515#) came out of a RR shop and had been used as the anvil for a Blacker triphammer. When the shop closed down it followed one of the workers home until I bought it years later.
My big Trenton? (410#) came from a copper mine in AZ and had been abused in it's later life, air arc gouges and crush injuries. I traded a 125# PW, a postvise screw and screwbox and some cash for it. It's seen the plastic surgeon and had a face lift and is looking much better now thank you...
My Hay Budden came from an *old* HVAC/plumbing company. I talked with the Son of the owner who told me that they had moved it to the "new" building in the 1930's. (He was retired and was selling off the business because none of his kids wanted to run it.)
My Bridge anvil was used in the old oilpatch to sharpen cable tool drill bits and like most of those they considered it a consumable. It's language would probably calcine the mud on a roughneck!
My Peter Wright I got off a farrier in Arkansas who found that 165# was a bit much for a travel anvil and she was right.
My Arm and Hammer is mute---though it rings like a bell; it shows years of work but is in good shape and at 91# gets a lot more exercise as my travel anvil than many of the brutes left back at the shop. I brought it home to Columbus OH where it had been made; then drug it out to NM with me---it was in the first load I took out to live in our new house for 6 months before anything else was moved: my camping equipment; my clothes and a propane forge, bucket of tools and that anvil.
And then there is the "wall of shame" anvils badly damaged remnants of once proud tools:
My 1828 William Foster was seriously abused with heel and 90% of the face plates gone; it's tale would probably make me wake up crying at night. Picked it up for $5 maybe a nickle a pound for the wrought iron and the 1828 piece of steel that's left...
An unknown base of an anvil, weight stamps said it originally weighed over 100# but everything above the waist is missing now
My "loaner anvil" weighs over 100# but is missing the heel, good flat face, ok horn cost about 33 cents a pound and the name on it starts POW just like my name...
Finally the remains of a totally trashed smallish vulcan anvil a gift from the fine arts metals teacher when I found her a swedish cast steel anvil to replace it---for free! Most of the face worn through and almost a ridgeback to the cast iron, bad slices from an angle grinder and one student broke off the horn in class, (nb: *VERY* bad casting flaws in the anvil; but still...)
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Thomas
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