ThomasPowers

Last time I sold I put out a piece of canvas, poured out a bucket of ballpeens on it and put a sign saying $3 each and a can for money and went and watched the demo's; emptying the can at lunch dinner and before going to bed---I'd always put some ones in it so folks could make change---had one fellow chasing my vehicle as I was headed out as he still owed me a couple of bucks and was horrified I might get away before he had paid me.

I love broken anvils as they are often GREAT workers at *cheap* costs They are especially good for working with untrained strikers---very relaxing to not be worrying about a sledge on the heel! (Going to be working with my pastor to forge down some RR spikes for "large nails" picked up a blade from a piece of dirt equipment that has nice sq holes that fits the HC rr spikes to use as a header too. We'll be working on my 130# Powell that used to be 138# before heel loss,,,

Does that formula work for metric? Angstroms? What are the units! My 410# Trenton is much longer and taller than my 515# Fisher Anvil dimensions are very dependent on the style of anvil with short squat english anvils being quite different than elongated american anvils I once started collecting all the dimensions on anvils I have owned but gave it up as a loosing proposition as they didn't seem to correlate---like my 195# swell horned farriers anvil with a 3" wide face vs a 93# london pattern with a 4" face...

How about a blown forge? When I was using a friends set up around 7000' here in NM he was running a blown propane large forge at welding heat I know because my 36" of 2.5" sq stock was sitting in the forge and another person slid a chunk of 3/4" round stock against my piece and we had to hammer it off---no flux, no force just two pieces sliding together!

Just think of all those millions of dollars wasted on research into weatherproof finishes when nasty old motor oil would have worked! If you want an outside item with no maintenance required you probably need to use stainless or monel or corten steel

Don't forget the Hospital itself if it's old enough! I once talked with a fellow who was an orthopedic smith during WWII making custom braces and splints in a Columbus OH hospital---his old anvil was still there in a sub basement when I moved away (I talked with a janitor about it...)

Why not make them to be the best height for *YOU* rather than some arbitrary length someone thought would would sell. You could even factor in the greater height of modern populations!

Small forges like that were pretty much made by every large hardware supply business at the time and so with out markings it will be very hard to lock down a maker unless it has some oddball tweak that might identify it in a catalog. Keep an eye open for patents too!

Yes and those tin cups were made out of tin plated steel and you can do your own plating! It will be a much heavier plating job more like when you re-tin the interior of a copper pot. You basically clean the inside very very well heat, flux and swirl/wipe melted tin. Practice helps---at least for pans it does---but even my first tries were usable just not as pretty.

When I use my propane forge I have two 10'x10' roll up doors on opposing ends of the shop open. The shop also has the gable ends open An enclosed space drastically increases the amount of CO produced as the forge can re-run exhaust through the burner(s) When I live in a colder area I built a miniforge run off a plumber's torch and small bottles and used that in the basement---100 year old house with a VERY leaky basement airwise.

I would think the personal style of hammers would make a big difference---if you like to heavy fuller your hammers you would start with a different ammount of steel than if you just used a plain straight body.

I'd suggest using TIN not solder of any type. Rotometals will sell you 99.99% tin for a reasonable price

rotometals is where I buy tin and flux on-line for re-tinning copper pots

OK you are wanting to heat the middle of a 3' bar in your forge---how are you going to do that? I think the sink will be heavier and more unwieldy than needed.

Unfortunately you can get steel that's been mis-labled or has flaws in it due to manufacturing defects; this of course is your fault as you would have been possible for the steel mill running a piped ingot. Sorry doesn't hold true in all cases. As for A-36; it what we generally get when we go in and ask for "cheap hot rolled mild steel". It's most important spec is that it's yield point is 36K psi which is around 248 MPa so that is what I'd be looking for along with "as cheap as possible" A better material for tongs is sucker rod, the rod used for "donkey engine" oil well pumps. It's usually a medium carbon and as it's replaced and scrapped on a regular basis it shows up for re-use fairly regularly in the oil producing states of the USA. One of the problems with higher carbon tongs is that if they get overheated, (especially a problem in a gas forge), and quenched to cool them they can harden and so be brittle as glass---the next hammer strike on the work piece will often cause them to self destruct. Why lower carbon steel is a good starter material.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating"; so use tests should indicate if it's hard enough/too soft/too hard, tough enough, etc. When working on a heat treat for a steel new to you it is common practice to forge a bunch of simple blades and test to destruction for differeing heat treat processes.

After reading "The Mills of Medieval England" the first though that comes to mind is "when was its last flood?"

so about 5 kilos in weight as a solid shaft. Fast work with it will really stress the joints. I'd still go with the pipe with end plugs and fuller rounded rings on the ends, sharp edged ones will be rough on the hands.

With the projecting letters it's a cast anvil, now is it cast from Steel, ductile iron or cast iron?

What's the diameter and length? I might go with black pipe and end plugs myself...

Some of the fancier tongs are made from medium carbon steel so they can be lighter and still strong. However there are a lot more ways to fail using MC; which is why I suggested mild steel (and pretty much all the *old* ones were low carbon wrought iron anyway)

Make them; though some folks start with wooden file handles and drill them out for the shaft

Silicon Bronze is one of the forgeable alloys

Starting out you will probably want to use "hot rolled mild steel" which will probably be A-36 in reality. In general you want the cheapest stuff they have, I often ask if they have any "damaged" pieces selling at a discount. Don't know about down under but here they sell steel in a 20 foot stick (~6m?) and charge to cut it dow to size---so I take my 30" hacksaw and do my own cutting to fit it in my vehicle (I cut it into lengths I commonly use or multiples of those lengths)

what period? Having some sort of a water wheel narrows it down to about 1000 years...