ThomasPowers

Does this cover the Spanish and French as well as the English "Early American Ironware" ?

I saw one at Quad-State one year that had the same sort of prosthesis for a broken horn. Wonder if it's the same one as this was in OH, right? Might be an Armitage Mousehole as a common english brand to show up in the USA. Look over the following and see if any might fit what you have: From Postman's book on the Mousehole Forge "Mousehole Forge anvils can be dated from their logos: (These are all cicra - about - dates and the words would be stacked): 1780 - 1795: MOUSEHOLE 1795 - 1820: C&A MOUSEHOLE 1820 - 1835: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE 1835 - 1854: HENRY ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE 1854 - 1875: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE FORGE 1878: BROOKS & COOPER MOUSEHOLE FORGE SHEFFIELD WARRANTED (with the outline of a mouse and HOLE for the first time) 1879: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE FORGE SHEFFIELD WARRANTED (mouse) HOLE PATENT 1880: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSE HOLE FORGE (mouse) HOLE WARRANTED 1895: M&H ARMITAGE (mouse) HOLE SHEFFIELD 1896: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE FORGE SHEFFIELD WARRANTED PATENT (mouse) HOLE 1911: M&H ARMITAGE MOUSEHOLE FORGE SHEFFIELD ENGLAND WARRNANTED (mouse) HOLE PATENT 1927-1933?: OWEN-THOMAS THE OLD FORGE SHEFFIELD ENGLAND Notes: - C&A = Cockshutt & Armitage - M&H = Morgan and Henry - Mousehole Forge is the only known manufacturer to use dots/periods between the weight numbers, such as 1 . 3 . 14. Sometimes all which remains of the logo is the dots. - Weight markings are in the British stone system to where the first represents multiples of 112 (1/20th long ton), the second multiples of 28 and the third remaining pounds. Usually off from scale weight a bit. - Mousehole Forge was one of the last British anvil makers to change from the old style to the modern (more blocky) feet. They did so cicra 1895. - The origins of the name of Mousehole is not certain. The square handling holes in an old anvil are called mouseholes. In England a bend in a river with a deep spot is known as a mousehole and Mousehole Forge was located at such as spot. There is a coastal English town named Mousehole and it was well known as the site of a brief French invasion about the time the forge was started. - Mousehole Forge contined to use water power (heave or tilt hammers) long after other manufactures switched to mechanical hammers. All Mousehole anvils are pretty well 'handmade'. Source: The Mousehole Forge by Richard A. Postman (with John and Julia Hatfield) "

As Phil said---if the screw and screwbox are good then it's an acceptable price for that area.

Nice natural look; I really like that the railing top also has some ripply character to it.

Pattern welding is a Solid Phase welding process----the stuff doesn't melt! If you are melting one of the alloys you are more into a brazing than a welding. May I commend to your attention "Solid Phase Welding of Metals" Tylecote; if you live in the USA you should be able to ILL it at your local public library. Note that you can bond some metals by creating a eutectic of lower melting point where they touch---look at historical granulation work in gold for an example.

Very embarrassing when an item with your "visible stamp" ground off has a hidden stamp proving them lying when they claim it was theirs for *years* and the grinding off of one stamp is evidence of intent instead of confusion over an item.

I think Tim's answer was rather telling myself: if it was possible to do it in a cheap and easier way; would not they have done so considering all the various hard, difficult and expensive ways they tried? But if you have the time and resources go wild with experimentation! Back before the internet I tried to forge weld thin high grade cast iron to wrought iron plates as that was one suggestion on how early steels may have been made. Quite exciting as the cast iron was liquid at forge welding temps for WI and *splashed* when hammered on. Soaking at temp to allow for carbon migration in a piled format would have worked better in my opinion. I have made blister steel from wrought using my propane forge and even taken it too far and got it to cast iron carbon percentages. And no most bonfires do not sustain high enough temps in an oxidizing way---you can see examples of cast iron slumping in hot fires; but none was able to be reheated and forged back to shape in my personal experience. However it comes to mind that both in India and China they used to decarburize the surface of cast iron items to make a steel surface layer. IIRC "Metal Technology in Medieval India" mentioned this---I'll check my copy tonight. You may want to research how they did it; but note they didn't decarb it enough to be able to forge the item afterwards just to give it a steel shell over the cast iron core. Also window weights are usually about the poorest cast iron alloys you can find, lots of trash in them as they were often the clean up pour at the end of the day. Trying to find a high grade cast iron like bathtubs or radiators where thin sheets had to withstand pressure and hold water/steam might be a better choice to experiment with. Beware of high lead enamel on bathtubs or paint on radiators!

And every year 10,000+ of them meet at Cooper's Lake Campground in western PA for the Pennsic War...

Thanks Tim---you put it nicely and about that Carry-on; I was in my 20's and a whole lot dumber about my back back then

3/8 plate and 3 pieces of pipe and you could have a stand and be working on it whilst waiting for the thick stuff to show up. I ended up giving away the 200# stand my 165 PW came with. It was loud and hard to move. Replaced it with a stump for many years till I got a 3 legged pipe&plate stand at an IITH.

And for the rest of us: Do you have a way of positively proving an anvil or postvise is *yours*? Stamping in a easily seen location with a backup stamp somewhere "hidden" is a good idea.

Well I have bought several Vulcan's over the years---and generally sold them on to new folks, often the same day I bought them. I actually own *one*; but it's strictly a display of how low quality they can be and sits on my "wall of shame" dedicated to abused "anvil pieces"

Sorry all I could see was the plumber's tape holding it on---not a problem to remove and replace for a blacksmith---shoot a smith might want to do a nicer hold down anyway. Most bathroom scales go up at least to 250 and you can always use 2 with a board spanning them and so get to 500, which is more than that one weighs. Or as you mentioned "farmer" most any feed store will have a scale that goes quite high and if you ask nice will weigh things for you.

Have you checked for any pirate groups loosely associated with the SCA? Last big event I went to out here, (Memorial Day weekend) there were three groups of "pirates" attending.

The very low step between the face and the horn and the blocky shape (thick heel squat horn) made me guess Vulcan too. While they are on the low end of the "real anvil" quality; they do have the virtue of not ringing and so as a quiet anvil they are nice for areas where you don't want to annoy the neighbors. I'm not up on anvil prices IN YOUR AREA; but Vulcans should be on the lower end of the range for "real anvils". Can you talk the price down any? Do you have the cash? Do you *need* an anvil ASAP?

I once talked with a smith that had some anvils cast using armor plate from a ship right after WWII as the source material. We're not the only generation to get the idea of casting our own anvils!

I see it a bit differently; as a gedanken experiment: if you ever have a sick child would it be OK for the Pharmacist to raise the price of the needed medicine just to see what you are willing to pay at that moment? After all "it is what the item was worth at the time, if you aren't willing to pay that much then don't buy." Auctions are engineered to try to get you to pay more than it might bring in a regular sale---that's why they have them.

I had a cast iron forge crack the first fire after it stood outside all of a cold winter. Temperature stresses.

Get the book; I did and really liked it.

Chris; I guess you have never been to an auction with a couple of shills planted. I stopped attending auctions by once company as I grew to recognize his workers by sight and noticing that they were bidding up stuff---and if they "won" it; the same stuff showed up later in the auction...

Sorry took the forge on a 4 day campout, Friday to Monday

What David is too polite to tell you is that the complete plans and instructions to make an accurate ACW blacksmith forge/cart is in the book he wrote---the one under his name "Civil War Blacksmithing". Such a pretty wagon tongue vise really could use a proper wagon to go on....

And unfortunately human memory is a slender reed to base things on. I have personally seen a lot of "family anvils" that dated quite differently from when they were "supposed" to.

Welcome! Nothing teaches a person more about weaponry then making them and testing them---especially if they try to replicate the ones that "worked" historically and then work there way out to the fantasy ones---doing so will tend to help you not make slick grips; or guards and pommels that injure the *user*---and only the opponent from laughing so hard they fall over. A plea for clarity and being careful with the Jargon We don't find many folks specializing in the weapons used in Mele in the Province of Genoa in the Italian region Liguria! Or was that supposed to be Melee? We do have a marvelous world wide group of talented smiths here and I'd bet that we could turn someone up who knows a lot about Ligurian blades of the XYZ period; but that would be a lot of work thrown away if you really wanted the melee weapons info.

A lot depends on what you plan to do in it. Knifemaking can be done in quite a small shop; but if you think about doing ornamental iron---well lay out your shop on the yard and then take a 10 to 20' length of steel and start swinging it around your proposed equipment.... I was doing some stakes to hold wattle panels during the campout I was just on and just making a 5' long stake with some fancy bits on one end I kept running into the tarp and the poles that hold the tarp up---the tarp being 10' wide and 7' high. (The stakes hav a doubled back on itself section for hammering on, then h_o section with the o turned flat to hold a solar light and the h section to fit over the wattle panel and hold it in place.