ThomasPowers

Really depends on what *YOU* will be doing with it. Big work---the big anvil. Smaller work the smaller anvil---but 275 is really a good sized anvil anyway. Many a smith has worked their entire professional career on anvils that size or even smaller. Will *YOU* be moving around a bit in the next years? I picked up my 407# anvil from a fellow who got tired of having to move it all the time. Traded him a 125# anvil, screw and screwbox for a postvise and US$100 for it; so about 50 cents a pound... Don't let "anvil envy" drive your purchase do what's *best* for you! If you are doing a lot of work that would require that big an anvil you should be investing in a powerhammer! Of course I use a 500+ # anvil as my main shop anvil myself and love it...(but one of them 750# anvils sure would be sweet.....)

3/4 of 112 is not 75 it's 84 pounds. At least US$1 a pound as it's a cast steel anvil it should repair well with welding. I'd suggest 100-150 due to the friendship.

I think Peyton dropped his anvil

One "trick" I have at SCA events: Out here we get STRONG WINDS 70mph are not uncommon. So as I scrounge free re-bar and have time I forge stout tent stakes. Then at an event with strong winds I lend them out freely to people who need them. Don't recall ever taking any home with me afterwards and some folks even tried to buy the ones I had lent out to other people as well as the ones I lent them. As the material is free and the forge time is done around other more important projects I sell them cheap and count it as pure profit. Also someone *ALWAYS* forgets their tent stakes! I also straighten bent stakes for free or a "donation" (Food and drink always appreciated!) (Also for SCA events---always bring some spare rivets for armour repairs on demand!)

I'd go with they are from "Between the Wars"; ACW & WW1 most likely.

Will you be going to Quad-State? I'm selling off a bucket of ballpeens at US$2 a piece there. I know several folks from Canada who attend especially to "tool up".

Sharp feet and fat waists good indication of Mousehole or other Old English import (there are a *SLEW* of possibilities) Wrought iron body built up in forge welded chunks with a steel face forge welded on often in several slabs side by side. Quite in using condition and a decent price for each. "American" anvils like Trentons Hay Budden's and Arm and Hammer tend to go for elongated horns and heels and narrow waists---they are "grayhounds" where the Mousehole, Winchester, William Foster, Powell, etc are "bulldogs" Fishers and Vulcans being of a different process tend to be thick too; but also in the heel. So now you have one for sledging on and one for delicate work---Good Job!

Did you leave your card glued to the bottom of the anvil just in case? We're proud of you doing what's "right" over what was easy and hope it ends up getting you showered with stuff as folks remember that you are a good 'un!

Yes if the anvil is properly preheated the mass will do a slow enough cool down just in air. (Mine was still hot when we loaded it in the truck as I recall.) Less massive high C items do profit from a blanket or other method of making sure no HAZ cracking happens.

Can you learn from books? If so I'd sink some of your start up money into ones like The Backyard Blacksmith and The Complete Modern Blacksmith. Your costs look a bit high, even buying a burner you should be able to put together a propane forge for under $150. At least here in NM I can get a tank in spec for $15 at the fleamarket. I would strongly suggest finding a local smith that can help you out every now then. I tell folks that one Saturday afternoon with someone who knows what their doing can shorten your learning curve by about 6 months from trying to do it with a book in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other... Don't get hung up on fancy equipment some of the best smithing in the world is done on setups folks in America would refuse to use! *Practice* is what makes you good. (I once did a demo on pattern welding for a fellow using a piece of RR rail as the anvil, a claw hammer and an improvised forge using charcoal sieved from old bonfires in the desert.) I've been in the SCA for 33 years this fall and used to be part of Flaxy and Steve's bloomery team at Pennsic till I moved 1500 miles further away. Now I take my Y1K forge (and my coal travel forge) to Estrella War out in AZ and Battlemoor in CO. I'm "officially" known as Master Wilelm the Smith, OL, OE, OSO, OLM, OST, OPF, EI, EI, O! Currently in the Kingdom of the Outlands. But usually I only wear my laurel medallion(s) hanging from my braided beard for special occasions and usually end up at laurel meetings grungy from the forge---my laurel scroll is a carved runestone my wife says will be my gravestone! (We had a crown of the Outlands where the Queen was a smith and ducked over to my forge once to have some fun before she got dragged back to the throne...) I started taking a forge to events around 1981 IIRC. A well known Israeli smith uses tungsten carbide tank penetrators found in the desert from the 6 day war as material for punches and drifts. DU however does NOT work the same---pyrophoric for one thing. That tank is just *covered* in anvils that are a whole lot better than what the medieval and renaissance swords were forged on! Do think about getting some scrap metal to use in a pattern welded billet to make a remembrance piece from later. Keep Safe and feel free to PM me for my e-mail address if you want to discuss anything privately. I'm on generally during the week and in the forge on weekends.

Quite true, Mea Culpa, and I still can't edit posts here alas

Choose an appropriate alloy, choose an appropriate size/shape, forge to that size/shape, heat treat for that alloy and usage. All steel has pretty much the same springiness; it's the yield point which differs! Which is why we often use mild steel for replacement post vise springs. We can design it so it doesn't get close to the yield point and so is fine in that use.

One extra tip: if you are making a commission piece that uses an oddball size stock be sure to include the cost of the unused metal in the bid rather than having all your profit tied up in steel that just sits on the rack for years because it's a size/shape that you don't use for anything else.

So the sparks sound like wrought iron for the leg and steel for the face of the jaw.

I know a number of beginners who rough out with an angle grinder and then file to close and then go to silicon carbide paper on a hard block for finishing. Filing can be very meditative it also teaches you to forge as close as possible to finished form and the necessity of good hammer control---once you can see how *1* bad ding from the edge of the hammer can cost you an extra hour filing you *make* the effort to get it right!

Well in my egyptian metalworking book they show blow pipes being used by a number of people; however fairly soon after that there is archeological evidence for side draft forges using various early types of bellows. Much later we have good strong evidence during viking times as the finding of bellows stones indicates the use of side draft. (a flat stone with a hole in it for the air to go into the fire through. Some are carved so that the hole is the mouth of a stylized head. All the masonry forges of medieval, renaissance and the early industrial revolution were side draft---check De Re Metallica for the 1500's and there is a clear picture of how one is built in Moxon's Mechanics Exercises published in 1703 I can dig out more info when I have access to my research library; but tonight's Bad Movie Night so I won't get to it till Wednesday at best I have several books on archeological metallurgy that I can probably cite some finds between the egyptians and the vikings to help fill in.

What were your starting alloys?

Look at what's done with pattern welding of steel. The same techniques apply.

David Einhorn's book on Civil War Blacksmithing contains a section on selling at ACW events and the types of things that sell at event's and how to make them---got a Birthday or Christmas coming up? I can speak to SCA events as I've been a member for going on 33 years. One tip: you need to make things that sell rather than things you *think* ought to sell. (this is a hard one for all of us!)

Note if you are getting started you may profit from finding a middling sized ornamental iron company and bringing in a few trinkets for their office staff and asking about their scrap. When I lived in Columbus OH there was one close to where my day job was that would let me have as much as I wanted *free*! All nice new stuff (save for the odd bit of real wrought iron that came in when they were repairing an *old* fence hit by a car) All nice sizes to get started with. (and nice lengths too as steel usually goes by the 20' stick here and so hard to transport!) Buying online is often the most expensive way so why??? Here in rural New Mexico I can buy steel at 3 different places in town (9,000 people and the largest in the county!) I generally get mine from a local windmill repair and construction place as it was cheaper than at the lumber yard (which was still way cheaper than at a big box store about 50 miles away!) The Windmill place gets a price break for quantity orders and so is usually happy to sell me some steel or piggy back an order with theirs. Knowing what they keep in stock means I don't have to buy ahead for projects I can just get it when I need it. Of course when I need metal for a project my first go is a couple of small scrap yards where I see if I can find what I need for pennies on the dollar. I spend a bunch of time hunting and jawing with the owners (and getting better deals that way too!) and often find other stuff I can use---like smithing tools discarded as scrap!

Great Deal! Need a place to hide out till the hue and cry dies down? Hope you left your number in case anything else turns up...

A Q&D method of turning a round hole to a sq one is to drill it oversized and then drop a piece of Sq structural tubing in it and weld in place---probably take less time that making your tools with a outrigger. A good weld at the top and bottom should do it, no need to get the middle as well.

Does the underside of the base have the archtypical hourglass of the HB? (where the sides are brought down a bit proud of the center of the base---may be worn almost flat on old ones) As a "using anvil" it may have been cleaned or or re-dressed several times in it's life and so lose it's markings.

Not knowing where you are makes it difficult to suggest; but there is always "blacksmith's mail" If you are going to a big conference like Quad-State you might be able to arrange for some one close to the seller to pick it up and deliver it to you at the conference. (Some companies will be on-site and you might be able to arrange to pick it up in person from the company at a conference too) I was part of a Blacksmith's mail chain taking some industrial workshop lights from OH to AZ. I did the OH to NM leg.

I'd put it on a stump as it's pretty light and that stand looks fairly bouncy too for doing blade work. Lovely condition and those turning cams can be quite useful if you like to pre-bend a blade before hammering in the bevels!