ThomasPowers

Does it warn people that American anvils are not marked in stone weight? I've run into a bunch of folks getting the weight wrong on American made anvils through trying to make them out as stamped in stone weight.

Specie!

I agree with bigfootnampa; why try to find an "OK method" for a task that shouldn't be done? I don't keep galvanized metal in my scrap pile and if something needs it I'll have it done *after* any hot working.

Well in 32 years of smithing I have run into *one* low carbon strain hardened leaf spring---would not harden even in a water quench. So it's possible to find others out there. How to tell if it's fatigued--as I previously mentioned 1: if the piece is already broken or 2L using one of the expensive commercial methods looking for flaws---that should only cost several times more than just buying a new known good piece! And George the *fastest* way to learn swordmaking is to learn to smith FIRST so that you only have to deal with the blademaking aspects rather than dealing with basic smithing issues as well as blade specific issues. If you lived in the USA perhaps you could take some of the American Bladesmith Society classes. I spent a year apprenticed to a swordmaker, 6 days a week in the shop, no pay but 2 meals a day with the maker's family, etc. So when I say that learning to walk before you enter marathons is a good idea I do have some background to base this on. Even learning to grind is a valuable skill before going on into blades. One of my students just had me go over some blades he was working on and was quite sad when I told him that one of them was past saving and should be cut up and added to a billet as it was made from a pattern welded billet but had gotten too thin as he was still learning grinding. So here he was forge welding up nice pattern welded billets but still behind on finishing skills and so wasting a lot of time and effort expended making the billet.

When Emmert Studebaker died instead of ringing the 90+? years I rang "Shave and a haircut two bits" that he had taught me to do using a light ballpein to get a stutter ring on the anvil with the last two beats on the horn.

Ahh slap a few radiation trefoils on it and you could get a free trip to Cuba in no time! (decades ago there was an incident where someone was tailgating my van as I was hauling my falconette home from an event. They did back off when the rear doors flew open and there was a cannon pointing at them with a lit fuse in the touch hole---ahh to be young and stupid again!)

Electrolytic derusting is the term you are hunting for.

Most of the older Swedish anvils made for the American Market were marked in pounds in my experience too. Note that Sweden adopted the metric system in 1889 and so not surprising that things made prior to that would not be marked in Kg...But anvil made after that time still seem to be marked in pounds for the "Holdout" America.

I smelt mine back into iron---it's the easiest iron ore to source---if you are a smith! it can also be used as an abrasive though not so hard as silicon carbide or aluminum oxide.

Will there be a problem? I'm holding a piece of metal---tell me about it's microstructure! How can we tell you about the state of the piece you have? So the answer is Yes, No or Maybe. The alloys used for leaf springs are generally good ones for swords. However we have no way of telling if the piece you have has been over fatigued. I've been driving for nearly 40 years now and have never broken a spring; yet I have friends who have broken several. You can't tell. If you worry about this sort of thing, get clean new metal of the same alloy! MUCH cheaper than to spend 80 hours on a piece and then have it fail due to a hidden fatigue issue. There are a number of commercial methods to find hidden flaws in metal; almost all of them more expensive than buying a good piece of metal. Note: "i would heat treat it when finished and anneal it also" translates as "i would heat treat it when finished and heat treat it also" Annealing is one step of heat treating that is usually done before grinding; normalizing, hardening and drawing temper are other steps in heat treating. If you are in the USA you can go to your local public library and ILL a copy of "The Complete Bladesmith" by Hrisoulas that should help you immensely in getting started bladesmithing. If you are not in the USA It would be well worth your while to track down a copy anyway! It's funny how over a hundred pages written by a master of the subject can turn out to be a lot better than a dozen pages on the web written by who knows who.

Well for that matter my file of choice for things like billets is the old black diamond from *before* Nicholson bought them and they were still 1.2% Carbon---just the thing to juice up a billet!

Now if you are moving mulch or sand you may *want* a slick base to make shoveling it out easier. I'd go ask a place that does bed liners for an old one---might ask at a dealership as they will sometimes junk an old liner to spruce up a used vehicle

Temper bluing is fairly thin and will rust or wear off with time.

you ever notice how students want to hand you the hot end of the tongs? I don't kiss my tools; my wife is already suspicious of them and refers to my anvils as my "harem"...

The "I can lift it but just barely" doesn't sound like it's over 150 pounds to me When I was looking for a large anvil my code interpretation went: "large anvil" maybe 100 pounds "I can lift it" maybe 125 pounds "I can barely lift it" maybe 150 pounds "two guys can lift it" maybe 150-250 pounds "gotta use a forklift or a tractor"---be right over! Saw a lot of "large anvils" that were under 100 pounds; yes they were larger than the 9 pound cast iron nail straightening anvils but no way near "large" for a smithing anvil!

it reads *Wrong* but the original poster indicates that they are unsure of the middle number. As it is date stamped I would guess that it's a William Foster, especially as it's in the old english style: small bic, sharp feet and fat waist. At a first guess I would go with a 0 for the middle and think it would be about 134 pounds (as the interpolated 4 might just be chisel tests scars) and it doesn't look extremely large. If so the "asking price" would be about US$2.23 a pound. A bit high for that general area but not outrageous and he said he's willing to accept offers.

If they are on the side of the anvil they should be weight stamps, (a very few anvils are date stamped, William Foster and Fisher did some and that anvil is neither of those!). As it is most likely an American made anvil it should be stamped in pounds and not the CWT system. Best way to be sure: Weigh it! (and expect the stamped weight to be off a bit than the scale weight)

What's forgivable at 2 can get you in trouble at 14!

When you go to buy metal you will want to ask for hot rolled mild steel as that's the cheapest and generally what most stuff is smithed from. (knives and tooling is different and not usually starter projects!) Hot rolled has dark mill scale on it unless it has been pickled and oiled---but that drives up the price and so since you are going to stick it in a forge and get more scale on it is usually not worth it. Cold rolled usually comes P&I and "shiny" and at a premium cost. Since the work hardening that cold rolled has disappears the first time it's up to temp in the forge and the shiny surface scales over paying extra for it is a waste! (However certain shapes/sizes can only be easily found in CR and so we do what we must) DON'T buy steel at a big box store like Home Despot! They will often charge almost as much for 4' of steel as a steel dealer will charge for 20'! So find a steel dealer---my local dealer is an old timey Windmill repair and installation company---2 miles from my shop and 1/2 to 1/3 cheaper than the lumber yard in town. They will piggyback an order too as they get a larger discount the more they buy and so are happy to help. As mentioned steel usually comes in 20' sticks and is usually sold that way. Cuts are generally charged for---I bring a 30" hacksaw and do my own in the parking lot as I'm cheap (and disreputable looking too!) If you do a lot of something try to cut your materials in multiples of the stock length needed---instead of two 10 footers you might do better with an 8 and 12 footer if your common item takes 4'. Ask about under sized or rusty metal---as a smith we are not generally overly concerned if our 20'er is actually 19' *iff* the price break covers that missing foot and then some! Also rust disappears in the forge and even heavily pitted metal can be used for decorative effect! There was an ornamental iron place near where I used to live that would *give* me off cuts (drops); with high prices nowadays you might ask if they would sell you at scrap price---making some trinkets to give to the office staff can work wonders! Usually anything rusty is forge fodder. (now some of the leaded free machining steels are not good to forge but as they are red short you will not be able to forge them.)

I'd think that the inherent vibration in an anvil would tend to crack paint over a crack like that

As mentioned to cut down on sparking: sieve out the fines and let the charcoal heat up and drive off any water before getting to the heart of the fire. Remember that charcoal needs a deeper fire to get reducing---in a bloomery the point where you get a reducing fire is around 12 times the average fuel piece size above the tuyere (Rehder, The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity) so if you just pour on big chunks out of the bag you should be making a very deep fire indeed!

A square rivet would deal with rotation issues. Also some folks charge by the head for stuff like that so a that would be a 3 head piece as it's the heads that take the time to make.

Gun racks a problem in MA---where do you store your canes and fishing poles????? Shifter knob---Mosaic Damascus of course! Bumpers: watch out for liability issues! And of course the sub-genre of VW's http://www.oldbug.com/ironbug.htm http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/artCars/photosWroughtIronVW.shtml

Looks a lot like the US civil war forge; except that in the ACW version the bellows is protected in a covered section. Actually all these types are fairly close and the earliest one was documented in a Napoleonic artillery treatise IIRC. (The artillery being the branch that needed a good smith on a regular basis while on the move, cannon being hard on their haulage!)

I think it would be fine for small stock and ornamental work. I certainly would want to break down 1.5" tool steel on it! And the idea was to show people things they could do on their own for cheap. I certainly didn't rush out and buy that thinking it was a great price! (now if it was $50 I'd take a day off work and head up there!)