ThomasPowers

Business card holder?

Well you can take a sledge hammer and hammer on your table or bench for a couple of hours and see how it does for *Blacksmithing*. (Generally just the shaking of the bench causes annoyance as all the stuff on it rattles around and off onto the floor. The height is usually wrong for use too..) If you don't change the temper of the fork lift tine then you don't need to worry about it. Note that mounting it vertically so that the mass is directly under the face is a big help for *Blacksmithing*. Note that the ring has NOTHING to do on if it's a good anvil or not. Fishers are a great anvil and have NO RING which has saved the hearing of many a smith in their time.

The basics are: Something to heat it, something to hit it with and on and something to hold it---and something to hit of course So solid fuel or propane (or NG or induction)? Look into all the prior posts on improvised anvils Get a couple of nice hammers at the fleamarket and dress the faces---don't go to heavy at the start, or too light. You can start with long pieces you hold in your hands or use visegrips, pliers, or get a set of tongs that fit your needs. I suggest starting with a good automotive coil spring cut down opposite sides to give a double handful of pieces that you can work with till you learn how *that* alloy works as you can experiment with heat treats and forging temps with the alloy the same.

Not that's pretty much spot on for a log marking tool. Highly unlikely to be a modified auto body tool

Model, molding board, work crew, ???, could be a lot of different things. I don't recall it every being explained anywhere.

I like take an open end wrench that fits the propane fittings for my forge and forge down the opposite end into a grotesque face---my favorite is my "tyrannosaurus wrench" Makes it easy to find the right one and the right end and I like to have little things like that with my demo set up for people to "discover".

looks like a forge for heating soldering coppers

Well lets see you need a shovel, some wood, matches and two rocks, also your metal to forge. Basic set up. Now if you can narrow down your question and provide some parameters we might be able to suggest a set up more suited to you...

Has he thought of getting them anodized? I have a friend who has promised me his Ti knee when he's gone---and now won't eat or drink anything I give him...

HB's like most american made anvils are marked in Pounds no need to confuse the issue with CWT.

Might think of sinking a pipe and mounting one out by the patio semi permanently for doing work where a lot of umph goes on. When I had one left outside in OH I welded over the mounting bolts so it didn't go walking off---cut the bolts off with an angle grinder when I moved.

I know a smith that found a post vise totally missing it's leg and mounted horizontally onto a table to hold vertical pieces that can then touch the ground for heavy upsetting on it.

Thanks Thomas; I used to live near the salt river and had a brain-fingers' fart.

Amazing how much "better" can be compared to "good". I have a chunk of mine timber that I need to sink when I move my 515# Fisher out into the forging shop. Got to get the layout solidified first though as my apprentice starts growling and grinding his teeth when I mention moving it around till we like it.

In northern TX you should keep your ear open for Salt River Valley stuff in OK too. *Great* Group and not that far for a conference...

The scrap stream can be scarey! The radioactive rebar was only found when a truck went in the out gate at a facility that does have Geiger counters on all their out gates. Turns out that some was cast into fast food chairs too. Makes me wonder about some of the anvils cast from old ones we see here often being sold as "antiques" (a cast PW "style" with a mold line right down the face and horn---antique, *right*)

Think of doing say a 100' fence using no straight lines and no repetition. Hand sketching would probably be faster than a cad program. Think of doing basically a fab job with lots of straight pieces and a repeated ornament. Cad would excel. You need both!

I think it holds the fullering tool in place; but could be used for a range of tooling designed to fit there. This is an excellent example of getting started without needing a london pattern anvil and the washtub forge is pure neo-tribal!

Perseverance is a major blacksmithing trait and one I look for in students. Instant gratification is not a smithing trait!

Lets add in 90% coin silver---though the exact percentage ranged wildly depending on where and when the coins were made. My grandfather has a massive book listing coins by country and date and their silver content as he used to buy silver at fleamarkets.

I wasn't referring to plated. A lot of sterling cutlery is very thin layer of silver sheet over another material so the bulky table knife handle may have a non-metallic composition inside it and very little silver. Forks and spoons tend toward more solid silver save for those whose handles are done like the knives I mentioned.

What English lacks in precision it makes up for in ambiguity; start throwing jargon around that may be region specific and Babel here we come!

First thing you need to do is to nail down what it's made from. I would suggest the spark test on both the face and the foot. Casting of steel is incredibly harder and more expensive than casting of iron and I have only heard of a few shop classes that did cast iron; so most of us are probably thinking it's cast iron. If it's cast iron then heating and forging it is not a possibility. If it's a mix (cast iron body and steel face) then likewise. If it is steel you should be able to heat and beat and then re-heat treat it. HOWEVER as mentioned above, the chance of messing things up is greater than the chances of making things better. Why not find a chunk of broken forklift tine and clean that up and use it for a flat hammering place and leave the family heirloom alone?

Is it a 100 pound one? Vulcans tend to have the weight/10 on one foot. Vulcan's are a quiet anvil and so good for neighbor issues. However they tend to have thin faces so *any* previous clean up of the face is a danger sign. I consider them in the lowest bracket of "real" anvils.

I agree to both parts of Tim's post.