ThomasPowers

I don't see a hyphen just typical "damage" anvils get on their sides over the years.

Is it stamped Mousehole? As has been mentioned in these forums before there were over 200 english anvil manufacturers and many of their anvils resemble either Mouseholes or PW's as the people who started their own anvil making business often were ex Mousehole or PW employees. Still a great Older anvil either way!

I had a run in with an inspector over a railing at our last house---I was restoring the porch to the original configuration as shown in a 60 year old photo of the house. The rail was just a single horizontal 4" round piece of wood. The inspector said it had to be filled in under as the porch was too high off the ground. As I needed to regrade the yard anyway I asked him what was the allowable limit---and he couldn't tell me! He knew it didn't meet the code but couldn't provide the cite. About once a year we went through this till I moved. The new owner tore down the restored porch and put up a vinyl clad one, removed the slate roof and replaced it with composition shingles, etc. I sure hope he left the light fixture in the attic which was a combined gas/electric fixture and so original to the house!

Always leave it with the jaws in the closed position---this lets the screw stay mainly in the greased up screwbox. I like the mod from the fellow that installed a zerk on the back end of the screwbox---keeps weather out and greasing it pushes the old grease *out*. Don't forget to grease the pivot joint and the thrust washers on it too. In general I don't do much with the rest of the vise than wirebrush any loose rust off it. Hot steel is hard on paint....burning paint is hard on me....

Or how to get your customers to cowboy up and accept products built to code---perhaps if you told them that not to code stuff costs 50% higher to pay for your liability insurance...and use the extra for that!

Is that "Bing cherry red" or "Pie cherry red"? (not the canned stuff but actual pie cherries that are on the tree and are more an orange colour!) A lot of people get in trouble in blacksmithing as they think of Bing cherries which were not well known when a lot of the smithing books we work from were written. Pie cherry red is much hotter than bing cherry red. Pie cherries were known all over way before the Bing cherry was developed in late 19th century NW America (See how ridiculous things can get if folks are not sufficiently precise? Or take into account history)

Think of it like the difference between a push mower and a riding mower, yes you can cut 2 acres with either one; but *one* will be a lot faster and easier on *you*!

It might be a function of fuel, I never had much trouble with mine for a decade or so of use. Charcoal was mainly ash. Did have a bit of clinker at times with good coal that I just tapped off when cold and having a stout ramrod I could clean off any drips into the tube by rapid oscillation (not osculation!) of the ram rod in the pipe.

Delivering it and letting someone else install it might work too unless there is a bad fitness for intended use clause in the local laws...

Look at the new price; don't have food or liquid in your mouth when doing so!

Yup, when I found a PEXTO 982 stake plate at the local scrapyard recently I was jumping for joy---especially as the boss man was out so they sold for me at scrap rate they get at the big city yard by weight! All my finds including the stake plate for US$10. You got a great stake and plate for a very good price! As you noticed stake prices are quite high unless you can find them used cheap or make them.

My thought exactly! Now if you are just not familiar with the material mentioned: Vermiculite is often sold at garden centers, it's an expanded mica product used to lighten soil and hold water. For annealing it acts as a good fireproof insulation and we want it DRY DRY DRY---it should be kept dry too! Other materials used as insulation for annealing are: dry lime powder, Kaowool, dry sifted wood ashes or my favorite---bung the piece into the gas forge at the end of the day, let heat up and then turn off the gas forge and block off the opening to let it cool slowly over night. In general you would like to stick the piece in the annealing insulation say at 7pm and have it still faintly warm to the touch at 7am. Most times I don't achieve that; but still get a good anneal. If you have many small items you can sometimes group them together to provide the heat reservoir---I was once consulted on how to anneal some modern made traditional nails being used as rivets on a viking boat project. I stuck them all into a stainless steel creamer in bunches, and stuck the whole thing in the insulative material.

This is an on-going task too as there can be surprising differences in prices for even the same item; so it often pays to call around *every* *time*. Don't forget to mention if you can use off sized, short or rusty stock too! Usually get a substantial discount for that and since we will bung it in the forge most times we don't care! Hmm this looks interesting! (I searched under pipe and metal sales Dallas) "If your needs call for used steel, please give our metal processing yard a try. It is a "self-serve" type operation, so bring a hard hat (or borrow one when you're there) and have a look for exactly what you need. Being a metal processing facility, the material is not inventoried, so it is a look and see type transaction. You will find them in Dallas on Irving Blvd, in between Mockingbird and Regal Row. Ace Iron & Metal 4603 Iriving Blvd. Dallas, Texas 75247 Phone # 214-631-2256 "

No I just jammed it on and ran the set screw in to hold it. If your metal was steel it will not melt. I think mine was closer to 2" and I drilled a lot of 1/4" holes in the top 1/3rd of the pipe. (I've used the ramrod as a ramrod in my 2" bore falconette...) My first forge had an electric blower ($1.40 of irony aluminum scrap from the scrapyard...)and so way more air than needed and so I didn't notice much linear difference. Of course long fires were generally for heat treating and so they were gently blown to cut down on oxidation. Like most "junkyard" equipment it was built and tweaked to use what I had to hand to keep costs down---I used clay from the local creek mixed with sand for the infill for example

Besides the bolting down holes---different stakes! lots of different stakes out there for example http://shorinternational.com/silversmith.php or http://www.piehtoolco.com/contents/en-us/d823.html

then don't forget your cardio; takes a lot of umph to swing a heavy weapon in a long battle!

Note that some steels will air harden in thin sections when the alloys are often thought of as oil hardening. Also thin section steels may not have enough heat for a typical anneal and need a larger "helper bar" also heated up and placed with the original piece into the annealing material to make sure it cools slowly enough. (Knife makers in cold climates learn this one through experience!) How, exactly did you anneal it?

Over at anvilfire they collected stake taper angles and found out that in general there didn't seem to be an agreed upon standard so it's quite possible your stake won't fit one exactly. As they were designed for light sheetmetal work this wasn't too much of a problem---heavy forging may result in cracking of the holder and in fact that is fairly commonly found in older stake plates.

I remember a cast ancient chinese mace that imprinted the symbols "long life" on the recipient. And Sam, I'm *hurt*; here I am trying to get you to have *using* weapons for the great zombie uprising instead of wall hanger fantasy things! Have you tried a double tap with that one against a fast zombie?

I think you are backwards on the welded face part as anvils tended to go from many parts down to few ones as you get closer to "modern" times---so they started with the face composed of several slabs forge welded on, then to a single slab, then to the top half of the anvil being a single piece.

Can you install a jib crane(s) or other lift points in your new shops *first*? May not need them to unload but sure will be handy in the future!

Water cools fast but unevenly---which is why it tends to crack many steels and yes this is due to the steam jacket which is heaviest for plain water. Slow cooling does NOT "the lattice structure is in turmoil and cracks the steel" Slow cooling is how you anneal steels and make them very soft with a very relaxed "lattice structure" with minimal dislocations. BTW Feel free to discuss this with a metallurgist. S1 turns out to be used to make pharmaceutical punches for making pills. There was a fellow that had a couple of 5 gallon buckets of them that had finally broken the tips and was asking what to do with them. I advised him to take them to a conference, put a decent price on them and rake in the dough---which he did. I got a dozen of them and forge several punches and a slitter to use in my screwpress from a couple. They have held up well even when I was slamming the slitter through 1" square high carbon steel. I looked up the heat treat in the ASM handbook and was surprised to note that normalization was not suggested for this alloy. Especially in knifemaking I have run across so many misconceptions and "urban legends" from "skilled" people. Often they start with a grain of truth; but then when folks try to figure out the *why* they come up with something totally bogus and start spreading that around. The high alloy steels like H13 or the S series make tools that will do stuff that mild won't even come close---like slit though 1" sq high carbon steel in one heat using the screwpress where a mild steel slitter would rivet itself in the bottom of the kerf! You do need to work and heat treat them correctly! (My first go with H13 I ended up cottage cheesing the end by over heating...) One reason that journeymen used to journey was to learn from different masters who had different viewpoints on things so they could get a variety of views and make their own decisions as to how things work. This forum serves much the same as such journeying. (However I will say that when someone thinks that all the books written for the last hundred+ years must have got it wrong I'd be wondering about that---Now books older than say 200 years have often some fairly wild ideas---"Sources for the History of the Science of Steel" has some amusing renaissance conjectures on quenchants for examples and of course Theophilus in 1120 had the "urine of a red headed boy or a goat fed ferns for three days" suggestion as a quenchant---which comes down to a weak brine solution---yes a better quenchant than pure water but you don't need to go through all the effort to pen your goat to get it!)

High Carbon? Tool Steels? A36?

What does the bottom look like? Also is the underside of the heel smooth or faceted? To my eye that anvil might possibly hail from Columbus OH and not Brooklyn NY. Either way a top notch anvil (I've got both kinds and use them both!)

Course if you come out this way (New Mexico, USA); you could also take Frank Turley's blacksmithing course and so be ahead of the game in that area!