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My anvil split in half


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My anvil split in half a while ago, and i have this xxxxxx -15 pould jewelers anvil, but it's a piece of xxxx, its really small, has no ledge, and it bounces around when i work. im looking for an anvil that i can get cheap or for free, because the anvil that i have wont isnt compatable with what i do, and im 13 years old and broke.

I have a few options, i could try and get an anvil from the people who read this, or i could try and make one out of a piece of stock that i have, its part of an old rail road, and its rediculously rusted, about 2 feet long, and if you look at it from the side, its in the shape of an L , each its about 1.5 inches thick, and the split parts of the L are both about 5 inches long. If i cut it right, could i manage to fold, and flatten it with my forge and a sottering torch?

I'd really appreciate it if someone cold help me out, cause all my projects are being slowed down by my xxxx anvil.

I apologize for any typos i made, remember, im 13, on summer breake, and typed this on an ipod,. Even if you cant help, thank you for reading this, i know its kind of run-on. Good day, good luck, and god speed. Thank you

 

To start with:  watch your language or your will be banned from the site, read the rules before you post again, if you do not understand them, ask some one, because you are on thin ice

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Howdy and welcome to the site. There is allot of great reading here, I would suggest doing allot of that. An anvil doesn't have to look like an anvil to do fine work on. I'm new to smithing myself so i can identify with you, however i use a piece of rail road track as an anvil and it suits me fine for now. I can learn how to forge without damaging a good by the books anvil. Read through the anvils section of the forum and you should be able to get a very good start with very little. After all this craft was birthed with rocks as hammer and anvil.

 

Riley

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Mate at your age I would really be looking to find another smith who is near by to try and learn from as (speaking from experience) teaching your self with limited resources and tools is very demolishing and you will most likely just pack it in.

As for an anvil, Go down to your local scrap yard (bring a family member) and see if you can find a lump of random solid metal to use as an anvil, even a sledge hammer head will be ok for starting with.

The scrappy will be the best and at your age they most likely wont charge you  or at least not much, also give you a starting point to obtain materials for forging later on.

Good luck hunting

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At your age time is on your side and you've got determination.  Join the local ABANA group, get a suitable chunk of steel for an anvil.  RR track mounted vertically works well and is how I got started, then earned enough selling what I made to buy a decent used anvil.  Here's a thread that has pictures of what I did w/ mine.

 

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WHAT are you trying to do?  Medieval armouring doesn't require much in the way of an anvil; tool making does.

 

Next:  for about 2000 years and anvil has looked like a hunk of metal; for about 200 the London Pattern has been around---so what does an anvil look like: something used around the world for 2000 years or something with a limited location for 200?

 

Go to your local public library and ILL "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" by Weygers  (and if you wan to see how medieval smiths did it get "Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel", Gies & Gies too)

 

You are probably near some smiths---go to a meeting or two of the local ABANA chapter; some may teach for free or even loan basic equipment

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cill out, i appreciate the response, but you dont have to critisize what im trying to do like im experimenting on chidren. with all due respect ill decide what an anvil looks like in my shop. and by the way, medieval garage is a user name, and ya i do make armor too but if you have a bitter oppinion, be like a normal restrained civiliced person and keep it to your self. or atleast dont put your self on a pedastol as if im scrub. understand?

 

Knock it off, or you are gone. There is no reason to act like that. Last warning.

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The post that you took offense to offered you good advice. Advice that he has given to many folks in the past that moved forward in metal work as a result.

Your response stepped over the line. I do not see anywhere in his post that he acted unrestrained or uncivil. Nor do I see him being disrespectful to you in any manner.

This site has a lot to offer you but will not allow any member to abuse or be abused by another.

Post any questions you have and use the answers to help you along.

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Keep in mind that almost any smithing or other hobby takes investments of time and or money to set up. If you would look into the knife making lessons on this site there are pics of a chunk of scrap steel being used as an anvil. May give you more ideas.

And i think I paid less for my first anvil that the price of an I pod!

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Woah slow down there medieval. These guys have a bottomless well of knowledge they openly share. Telling us many times, steps they wish they had taken when they first started. I like your drive, but you have to be willing to slow down and read and learn all you can about smithing as well as hitting hot metal. Good luck and keep practicing.

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You can use many hand held devices, or even go to the school or public library and use their computers at no cost.  IForgeIron is a wonderful resource for blacksmithing and metalworking. All FREE. 

 

>What do you need to get started in Blacksmithing? is a good place to start. You will never have enough money to buy all the toys, but you can get the tools you need.  

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>What do you need to get started in Blacksmithing? is a good place to start. You will never have enough money to buy all the toys, but you can get the tools you need.  

 And once you get a few of the basics and some practice, you can learn how to make the rest. That's the stage I'm in... learning to make the tools.

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Mr Garage has tendered me a full apology for a post made at a bad time.  Shoot I make those too---especially when my blood sugar is crashing.

 

The What was to indicate that we didn't have enough information to make specific suggestions.  It's a common issue with questions on the internet---the writer knows *exactly* what they are talking about; the readers may be scratching their heads over it.  At least I didn't tell you to take off your aluminum foil hat and think harder so we could try to read your mind---which if I recall was an answer I posted once when *I* was having a bad day...

 

The other thing we commonly get is someone asking a very specific question without giving the general context where often the *real* answer is not within what they are asking.  "Can I use a Maserati as an anvil?"  Yes it will make a poor one though compared to that chunk of dozer that costs many hundreds of thousands less...

 

"The Complete Modern Blacksmith" is all about building your smithing equipment from the ground up and on the cheap; well worth doing an ILL on it  (and nothing impresses parents more than a son asking to visit the library during the summer break!!!!!!!!  Ask at the desk how to do an ILL Inter Library Loan if they don't have a copy themselves.)

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The other thing we commonly get is someone asking a very specific question without giving the general context where often the *real* answer is not within what they are asking.  "Can I use a Maserati as an anvil?"  Yes it will make a poor one though compared to that chunk of dozer that costs many hundreds of thousands less... 

I agree, If there is one thing schools and parents could teach, value, and place and increased emphasis on, it's how to ask the right questions. Far too much time is spent on chasing answers to trivial questions that requires little mental processing and can be looked up in a book or on the net. Asking a meaningful question is often harder than finding an answer. When I was a college instructor I occasionally used to set components of assignments where the student had to construct a problem that had context, depth and a non-trivial answer that they could solve. The students hated these because they had to spend a lot of time thinking and answering them. I got this idea from one of my old college professor who said "success in life is not about finding the right answers but asking the right questions"

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Yes the "question behind the question"  in my Maserati example the real question was "I need an anvil, what can I use for an improvised anvil?"

 

And then there are the questions where the answer depends on the experience, skills and equipment of the asker---who often provides *none* of that!  "Can you do patternwelding in a hole in the ground forge using charcoal as fuel and  a claw hammer and a rock as tools?"   Yes I can; probably you cannot!.  Or my favorite: questions that have a location aspect but no location given:  "Where can I buy steel"  to which I could answer 2 miles that away  which indeed is where I buy my steel...

 

There is a saying "The Devil is in the Details!"

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Every one has been a great help, i've located a local scrap yard and plsn to go there after a movie with my girl friend and a few other friends. If i cant find anything i think ill try to mount my 15- lbs anvil on the railroad tie, making it alot less bouncy so i font use up most of the energy that i generate by making it bounce. Once again i'd like to thank ThomasPowers for the way that he controlled the situation in whitch i exploded better than i did, and instead of stoping communications with me all together, and continued to help. Ill post how it goes when im done, im going to the scrap yard on the 2nd of july if i can. Thank you all. Good night, good luck, and godspeed.

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A 15 pound anvil attached to a 200 pound piece of wood is still a 15 pound anvil.  While at the scrap yard look for a heavy piece of something to hammer on. It is there.

 

Do not look for an anvil but see the possibilities of what you find and how it can be used to your advantage.  Take the big truck (grin)

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I have made anvils from wear parts of ploughs and a section of fork lift tine, they are not very heavy but they work well and are popular

 

the table on them is about 8" long 4" wide and 2" thick and is fork lift tine, the horn and body is the working park of a 'mole plough' or 'subsoiler' and is very hard, the socket in the back end takes the 20mm square stake tools I make.

 

 

Image001-4.jpg

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Medeival guy: If you'll tighten your location a little, say the town you might be pleasantly surprised at how many IFI guys live within visiting distance. Then getting hooked up with the local smithing organization will pay huge benefits. Most dn't require joining to attend meetings and almost nobody would attend meets if a fire didn't get built and poor defenseless iron/steel didn't get beating into something else. It'll be a great place to meet guys face to face and get networked into the craft. there's a pretty good chance someone may have a loaner anvil you can borrow till you build a better kit.

 

You might be surprised at how well an oddly shaped piece of heavy steel works for an anvil, I foolishly abandoned a super duper field expedient anvil on a sand bar on a bank of the Resurrection River sometime in the 80's. It was a big axle of some sort, about 5" diameter on the shaft with a really large 10 hole wheel flange. I buried it flange up in the sand so the flange was a good working height. It was a terrific anvil, tremendous depth of rebound, I wish I'd drug it out with me when we finished the job and left. <sigh>

 

The secret of a good anvil is two fold, how hard the face is and how much iron/steel is under the hammer blows. NOT how wide or long the face is and not a horn. The anvil actually strikes back in response to hammer's blow, in a compression (shock) wave that reflects from the far face and back to the working face at the speed of sound through iron/steel. It gets back to the work while the hammer is still compressing the work against the face. The deeper the rebound of the anvil the stronger the reflected energy and it's still going to get there well before the hammer stops driving down into the work piece.

 

This is why a piece of steel plate oh say 8" square and 2" thick makes a wonderful anvil if mounted on edge while a really mediocre anvil if laid flat. The applied energy is reflected back through the work while laid flat all that energy goes into flexing the plate and making noise. PFT.

 

These are just some things to keep in mind while you're looking and don't wait till you get to a scrap yard, keep our eyes open at all times. The "It Followed me Home" section of IFI is rife with examples of someone finding a delicious smitherly goody laying in a ditch, abandoned in a field, the local illegal dump site is always a good spot to look around. sometimes someone just wants all that OLD RUSTY junk hauled off.

 

A lot of us old farts have blood sugar issues or sometimes just wake up cranky. If we're snappy it's probably not you, we may not have our nice vocabulary on when we type. Happens to us all, don't take it personally, a thick skin is more helpful than a quick come back. Of course, there may be times when you or I deserve a sharp reply, that happens too. We all have THOSE kinds of days. If I'm lucky I realize it and hit delete rather than post. Oh yeah, most of us old farts don't know modern "text speak," LOL, IMHO and such really basic abbreviations are the limit for lots of us. And I tend to be windy and run on. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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