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I Forge Iron

A Bridge anvil for the Hardy Hole


ciladog

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Over here in the northeast we have a nor eastern winter storm blowing through and since I don’t have satellite TV I figured I would take the time to post this thread.

This fall at the NEBA meeting at Ashokan Fred Crist was the demonstrator. He extensively used a bridge anvil that he had made that fit into the hardy hole of his anvil. He also used it in the post vise. I was impressed as to how useful it was and thought that I must have one.

A few days ago, Dick Sargent (AKA Doc on IFI) came by to my shop and we decided to try our hand at forging one. It started out as a piece of 1X3X5 ½ flat stock. After about 4 ½ hours of forging this is what resulted.

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Good looking tool. What I've been using is a piece of sched 40 sq. tubing with a shank welded on and one opening ground to a bevel.

I like your's better, I'm thinking a project for the next day in the shop.

Thanks for sharing.

Frosty the Lucky.

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I've got two of them, one forged of a 2"D truck axle and the other forged from a pavement breaker, sort of a father and son in terms of size. I have used them for years, and then this year a friend and I turned over my Rathole anvil and ground on the underside of the side shelf. We sharpened one half the width and put a small radius on the other half. The original shelf end was about 5/16" thick. Now i can use the side shelf for fork tines and other hot splits. There is a length factor, though.You might bang a long hot split into the anvil, thus limiting your work. In those cases, I get out the bridge.

A nice drawing of a bridge with dimensions is in Schmirler's "Werk und Werkzeug des Kunstschmieds" on page 56.

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