ThomasPowers

How do you get to Albert Hall? Practice! Practice! Practice! Also when working the edge you need to either align it along the edge of the anvil so you can work the very edge down with your hammer blows with the hammer face 1/2 way off the anvil so you are pinching the very edge down. (The blade should be held at an angle on the anvil so you keep the bevel in the middle instead of flat on the anvil so you get the bevel only on one side. Another method is to use a hammer with a quite domed face so you can put the edge (at an angle) on the middle of the anvil and essentially hit the anvil right next to the edge pinching the edge with the domed face of the hammer---a domed hammer leaves more hammer marks to deal with than a slightly rocker faced hammer though. But many people find it easier to deal with that than to hold the anvil right on the edge of the anvil and hit it half off and then reposition the blade and hit it again. As mentioned by Steve: we sort of expect you to get good with tapers making S hooks and things *before* you start down the blademaking path---and as tell my students they should make their weight in knives before they get into swordmaking so all they have to learn is the more complex mechanics of the swords rather than trying to lean the basic, intermediate and advanced parts of smithing all at the same time!

The late 19th century top brand american anvils tend toward very elongated examples of the london pattern with long horns and long very thin heels. Very handy for much ornamental work but not as good for hard heavy hammering on a business basis. They also tend to ring loudly due to the tuning fork effect. If one was choosing an anvil for one's shop you might want to decided what type of work you will be doing and get the style that's best for that---or do what I did: I bought a Large Fisher and Large Trenton and just use the one that's best for the part of the project I'm working on! (even so I have a 93# Arm and Hammer next to the 515# Fisher as there are things that having an extremely thin heel to work over is handy and I prefer that to a bridge.) My HB has a HARD THICK face on it. Students don't seem to dent it---and they have tried! (On the other hand I believe it has dented a student or two when they miss the workpiece and ricochet the hammer off the anvil...) If you look through the 19th century catalogs you will be amazed at the large number of specialized anvil shapes that were commonly listed in them. "Double Pike Coachmaker's anvil, Chain Anvils, saw makers anvils, farrier's anvils,...; and many manufacturers did custom work as well.

We're all well aware of tenon mounts as an earlier form. Frank was looking at one I brought to one of his talks on post vises fairly recently. He told me it most likely was pre-1800 and as it was small, 3.5" jaw and light duty vise it probably came over from England as part of an immigrating tradesman's baggage. (I picked it up at Quad-State 3 years ago for US$20; but I did have to build the mount and spring for it---I did a tenon mount for it and still use it with my "old" smithing demo set up, (not the Y1K one though...)

yup it hot steel gets "slippery" under the hand...

It would depend on how well it was done. There are examples of lathe turned billets out there. I'll see if I can dig up a couple. Note that battleship driveshafts used to be made by forge welding wrought iron into large enough pieces to turn on BIG lathes so the forge welding process itself doesn't seem to be in question...

If you make your tool holders sturdy enough you can use them as handles to move the stump around. In general I claim it is not a good idea to try to pick up and move both the anvil and stump at the same time for systems where the anvil just drops in---had a couple of college kids try that and ended up dumping my 134# HB onto it's nose on the concrete shop floor. No damage to the HB but the floor will have that divot *forever*.

To add to John's suggestion if you fuller in a groove and then another a couple inches further out and heat and compress the area between them a bit and then cut and work the last couple of inches you can get a nice "flower" on the end of the pole, do it for both ends and you get the pole securely "trapped" for sideways motion

Well, especially for the low grades, the striations shown by weathering are a dead give away---how I recognized the 1" dia x 4' long bolt at the scrap yard. I also look for forge welds and items treated like wrought iron---there are some design differences used with it. Also look for the green stick fracture of real wrought iron---many scrap yards will let you hacksaw a corner and break it off. Can you see the striations in this piece: Last time I looked around in the UK it was awash with real wrought iron---found pieces in my hosts garden where rubbish had been discarded 100 years ago. Much more common than in the USA where we didn't have nearly the population during the early industrial revolution! Another way of recognizing WI from CI is what it's used for. Just like CI and mild steel are used for different types of things nowadays; WI and CI were used for different types of things back then---you don't find cast iron Wagon tyres---they would break the first rock they hit!

Doesn't do anything for me.

The more "recent" Trentons used a cast *steel* base that was arc welded at the waist---so that's probably the original manufacturer's weld. Good ring means it's a "sound anvil" I'd not even worry about that crack on the horn; but you could weld it up if it would make you feel better. Do you discard your vehicle the first rattle it gets? That anvil will outlast *both* of us!

The wagon wheel hub bands you show are often wrought iron too. They are often useful in their current form to make things from. Test the anvil to see it's carbon content on the face and on the bottom.

The one that works best for *them*? Long slope is better for working the flats and short slope is better for working the ends for *me*.

Indeterminate until you provide more information on how it will be used and in what climate(s). *BEST* is *always* totally dependent on the details! (eg: Ti generally makes a lousy knife; however in certain circumstances it *is* the best choice!)

Don't think there would be enough face left if you ground/milled it. You might think of saving this anvil *for* texturing stock and come up with some designs that make use of it---like the fellow who forged a picture frame on a granite cobblestone to get the texture he wanted. Otherwise it's hours of welding/grinding.

Talk to armour makers about hatchet stakes out of the clay spades.

When I was younger I kept looking for bigger and bigger anvils; now that I'm on the downside of the double nickle I'm picking up more small ones as they are easier to load and haul when I teach---OTOH I sure wouldn't turn down a 500#+ anvil at a steal of a price...

It's a charcoal brazier, I have a similar one and have had similar thoughts about it.

Google it: The Germans thought a different town had kidnapped an officer; so confused by similar names they rounded up everyone in Oradour Sur Glane and killed them: men, women and children burned alive or shot trying to escape the flames. Most of the responsible soldiers later died in battle; a few were prosecuted after the war. It is a monument to the atrocities of the war. I wouldn't touch that anvil if you soldered good bricks to it!

I've had real fun forge welding the legs on the ones for the big pots as they are long enough I have to stick the leg up the forge chimney to get the join in the fire at the correct spot and then unwinding it from the forge and getting it to an anvil fast enough to weld...Of course the heavier stock helps. I generally test out the big ones by standing on them---250 pounds. The other typical trivet I make is made with 3 sections of strap stock where I weld the ends of two pieces together to make a leg/foot and then weld the third piece to the other end of one and then bend everything together and weld the last two ends into a leg/foot and get a 3 legged trivet

Having nearly lost my life to certified professionals *twice* I am a bit gun shy of people who wave a certificate but don't demonstrate expertise. (One was an installer who installed a 110 VAC dishwasher during our remodel on a live 220 VAC circuit; the other was an endodontist who after doing a very pricy root canal handed me a couple of pills and told me to take them when I quizzed him *twice* to get exactly what they were I found out they were something I was deadly allergic to---as was stamped on the Front of my file in large red letters!) Smithing is such a broad field I would think it difficult to have one certification cover it all; as I tell folks: "my grandfather could point and set a plow for the soils in his area---well enough that he ended up with 960 acres (about 388.5 hectares) of land there. I can't do that. On the other hand I can forge and heat treat a pattern welded knife and He could not do that! Which one of us is the smith?" I well remember the start of the ABS and their certification program; *many* folks that were masters of the craft were upset that the ABS "grabbed the rights" to call folks Master Smiths in Bladesmithing. Some of them refused to have anything to do with the ABS because of that. Many of the "new" bladesmiths don't know about this history and so their interpretation of the status of earlier ones may be a bit off. I did an apprenticeship: I worked 6 days a week in the shop for no pay though I did get two meals a day with the family. Anything I made on spec was priced by the master and he took the shop's cut right off the top---my first blade he sold for the scrap rate of the metal...I only spent a year with him as I got married and had to support a family and so my smithing became a hobby. I have no certification and will just have to live with that. (I do have two college degrees though BS Geology and BS Computer and Information Science)

Screw looks to be in quite good condition for that old a vise. You will probably get more from a collector than from a smith though.

"Marry them Both!" (Big Trouble in Little China) see if a local rental place would give you the money you spent and twice as many used/broken ones so you would be stocked up and reimbursed. My favorite hardy was made from the broken off end of a jackhammer bit, all I had to do was to forge the broken stem down to fit the hardy, been using it for about 20 years now and a *lot* of beginners and all I have to do is to hit the end with the angle grinder now and then to refresh it.

Don't get hung up on symmetry, I'd like to see a business card holder like that with sort of a dying sine wave look---big first loop and then a series of ever smaller loops...

Smithing equipment tends to be high out here as there isn't much of it!

"Turkish Delight"