ThomasPowers

I get mine at a local scrapyard, let others deal with the possibility of RR cops and TSA! A friend who uses a lot of them actually bought a keg from the same company that supplies them to the Railroads. May I ask the background for: "I left it ruff to look more like something the settlers would use" as I have seen the stuff the settlers used was to a much finer finish level, at least in America. I'm active in medieval smithing and one thing we continually run into is the belief that old items must be crudely made---a real canard as anyone who has seen things like the Sutton Hoo sword fittings can attest! No problem with producing it as *you* like it; it can be a neat look. I just don't think it is "like something the settlers would use".

Currently we have two major fires going in NM: "The Little Bear fire has destroyed 224 homes, 10 buildings and is 35 percent contained" "nearly 60 square miles so far" And the currently 438-square-mile Gila fire. (Gets less press now as it's in a remote area compared to the Little Bear fire...) I worried more about flooding last place I lived; but we get those too even here in the desert!

IIRC even in aluminum, if solid it would be about 20 times the weight of a using sword, if the wielder is not 20 times as strong as a normal person it's a useless display piece and a pain even to carry to a con. Making it up out of sheet with a hollow core helps; but still....

Let me add in "Solid Phase Welding of Metals", Tylecote, for people who want to learn much more than one generally wants to about the process... And I hate to go against Frank; but you can sometimes find WI with returns and "knots" from where great heaps of WI scrap were busheled into new WI stock---definitely not the high end stuff; but etching the low end stuff can be pretty wild at times.

USE IT! let the collectors *cry*! With the sticker it is indeed a "young" anvil.

Dismantling and cleaning that area and greasing it helps the vise work smoothly. Do not remove iron from it though as that will loosen up the joint allowing the jaw to flop around a bit. Not much to a post vise: clean and grease the screw/screwbox; clean and grease the washers where the screw and screwbox goes through the shafts, clean and grease the pivot area and you are pretty much done---unless you need to re-work or make a mounting bracket and/or spring.

To rile things a bit more: *most* wrought iron is low carbon. I have run into higher carbon examples and have even made my own starting with real wrought iron and getting blister steel from it. I have also worked in a bloomery for over a decade and the original bloom can range from nearly 0 carbon to around 2%---cast iron. Since we usually get wrought iron from the scrap stream we need to be wary as almost *anything* might show up---Junkyard rules apply---"Test Everything *BEFORE* putting time and effort into making something from it!" Wrought Iron is a *composite* material rather than a homogeneous one.

Most anvils were welded at the waist, the earlier one were forge welded, the latter ones sometimes are arc welded. Looks like it's seen some time in a rust inducing environment that has shown the weld join quite a bit. It has a forge welded on steel face so if you buy it be careful not to reduce the thickness of that face. It looks to be a good anvil to me. Having checked the ring and rebound and if you want it, the price is not excessive---depending on where you are. (you may want to edit your profile to list your general area as many smithing questions are location dependent...)

And *that's* the secret right there! "Keep Looking"

Although in many places you took your horses to the smithy and an anvil in the barn may be for general repairs for items you didn't want to take there. (My wife used to volunteer at a Historical farm" near Columbus OH that had originally worked that way. A large blacksmith shop was just down the road but they still had a forge and anvil to do some things themselves.)

That link was to see if you are doing a proper search---if I could come up with something from another state in just a couple of minutes it would seem that you have not exhausted local possibilities. I'm sure that your area has a forklift repair place. Take a look at this one as an example of what can be done with a forklift tine: http://www.marco-borromei.com/fork.html as they scrounged the tine their cost was $25 for a 120 pound anvil quite well suited for blade work. Make sure to let them know you are looking for a damaged tine to use as a bladesmithing anvil; many companies are scared of liability of someone putting a damaged tine back in use as a forklift tine.

Being "overly safe" means that you don't have to keep on worrying about something; but can get on and do stuff!

Get another for a treadle hammer or DIY powerhammer anvil!

Note that using an original to cast fakes would not reverse the direction of the eagle. If it's facing towards the heel on the original it will be facing towards the heel in the mold and will be facing towards the heel on the cast---a bit different than in stamping where the direction flips when you turn the stamp down to apply.

The Faces are steel, the tops can be WI with the steel face forge welded on; or steel for the very later ones IIRC and the bases were cast mild and they were arc welded together at the waist in later years too. Better double check this as AinA is at home..

Wildfires are a big issue round these parts---why I was mowing down the weeds on a day that topped out at 38 degC. If there isn't enough fuel the house is safer!

Making your tools "fancy" can be handy when a possible customer comes along and you don't have anything to display. The tyrannosaurus wrench for my propane forge and the dragon headed ash dump for my coal forge means there is always something fancier to show off than the tent stake I may be working on.

The Books generally cite the exact size their charts were based on, The Experience helps modify the givens for your specific case. We often have this issue in knifemaking, only in reverse! The process cited for a 1" cube may be way too harsh for a 1/8" blade and it's well known that for such blades you usually slip one or even two suggested quenchants towards gentler so a water hardening steel may harden quite well in oil and an oil hardening steel in air.

You can also put in a sheet metal "fence" around the inner edge of the forge that extends *up*. do it out of plain sheet metal---not painted, plated or galvanized (yes it's a plating...) When I did this for a brake drum forge I bent the sheet metal into a C shape leave a couple inches of open space between the ends and then cut a mousehole opposite that was just over where the rim of the forge ran so I could run long billets all the way through the hot spot and out the other side. Note that many rivet forges have small hand crank blowers on them that really don't put out enough air to get too big a fire going---or they will if you crank like mad all the time---way more work than getting a bigger blower and fitting it to the forge that will handle a large fire with minimal effort.

I like it! I'm a big fan of whimsy in life. Now to build in a whoopee cushion into the opening device...and hope your mail deliverer has a good sense of humour too!

Fires in general were a pretty common occurrence in all buildings back when all heating and cooking was done by open fire, not to mention being roofed with tinder (wooden, often cedar, shingles). (Note that fire insurance predates the American Revolution in the USA and started after the Great Fire in London in the mid 1600's) It is possible to reharden a softened anvil; but difficult due to the size---most of us do not have practice in raising, moving and quenching large chunks of metal that throw off obscene amounts of IR radiation. Or the equipment to do so safely. Charles McRaven mentions re-hardeing an anvil face using the local Volunteer Fire Department's high pressure hose in "Country Blacksmithing". I don't recall if he mentions what a great idea it was to co-opt the very folks most likely to object to someone doing something like this. There is always a possibility that the stresses involved will damage the faceplate weld(s) or even pop it off. Also as mention just dropping it in a pond doesn't work and is much more likely to cause problems as the steam jacket makes for slower and uneven cooling. Many anvil makers used a water tower and a large diameter pipe to bring down massive amounts of water under high pressure to beat through the steam jacket and get a good quench. Tempering may not be needed for a large anvil as it may not get too hard. It's fairly well known that larger anvils tend to be softer than smaller anvils due to the retained heat "auto tempering" them. This was seen as a good thing as large anvils tended to be used roughly in industrial settings---if you have 4 guys striking with 12# sledges it's *nice* not to have shrapnel if one misses. Tempering for a smaller anvil IS STRONGLY SUGGESTED! Being a coward when it comes to my eyes I'd probably go ahead and do a low temp snap temper on a large anvil---just to be safe. If you read the old adverts you will see companies offering to repair, reface and/or reharden damaged anvils. This is probably why we don't see too many of them in such a state. I've seen a couple, most of which had the "fire rust" still on the body somewhere and only 1 that had been cleaned off and was being offered in a misleading manner. Best fast test is the ball bearing test already mentioned---details are over at Anvilfire.com; however a good sound tap with a ballpeen hammer can be a substitute test---and one you would do anyway to check for face delamination or hidden cracks. (even anvils that don't ring, like Fishers and Vulcans, will give some indication of problems with such a test.) It does help to have some idea on the values to expect---in my experience HB's are way harder than Vulcans just as they came from the factory. Note that slumping of an anvil face may not be an indication of a fire experience as several brands used top grade very soft wrought iron in their bodies that tend to "pound down" over time. One final aspect; back in earlier times the smith primarily used real wrought iron which is generally forged at a white heat and at that heat it's DEAD SOFT and so the anvil itself didn't need to be too hard and you can get things like the Roman anvil in the Museum in Bath England which has a lovely mushroomed face on it from generations of forging on it.

Great; I may wander over to the University next door and talk with their MatSci metals Prof. Did you do a 2 piece 3 piece or more? Hmm a twist might make things even more interesting if then flattened and "bar stocked" With low numbers of layers and welds might even be able to get a carbon differentiation per layer for hardness testing.

No; the solid wrought anvils did have a steel plate on top, the bases were the solid wrought part.

Probably under Tailgating on this site; it's the forum for buying and selling ; but you should also put it on the Portland CraigsList, up at the local feed store (if you have one), etc.

SMWR will fix most *anything*! As stated it's the go to rod when you don't know what you are trying to weld together but suspect the alloys may not want to play nice. (I'd love to trip over 50 pounds of it being sold for a pittance at the flea market....)