ThomasPowers

I don't recall *any* original seaxes with ricassos. My take is that they probably didn't sharpen the last little bit near the guard very much after assembly.

I generally associate pictures like that with the die off of the craft---no apprentices to clean the shop every day and having to put in a hard day's work to make a living, no time/energy to clean up the place. And it happens so slowly you don't notice it...

I've seen a number of repousse hammers used for doing quite large scale work---think Statue of Liberty here in the USA---where striking tools would not be as effective. (though nowadays such work is sometimes done with air powered tooling!) The hammer with the palm swell I generally call a chaser's hammer or an engraver's hammer.

Reminds me of buying an "electric forge" from an old fellow who advertised it in a local nickle paper back in the 80's. Never having seen an electric forge I went over and it was a nice rectangular cast iron forge table with round fire pot and an *electric* blower for $60! He showed me an old champion RR forge---large heavy cast iron forge that the firepot was damaged a bit where he had burnt a piece of RR rail in two when he left it and ran in to get the phone and told them to call back he had steel in the forge! I asked him if he was willing to sell it too and he said sure but as it was bigger he would need more money for it---$80. I ended up with both forges.

Yoga has surely helped me a lot---controlled slow stretching of pretty much everything! Of course if you get into a "death March Yoga" class it can hurt you too. I have a great instructor that is used to working with a lot of older folk with various issues and nobody in the class is trying to compete of show off---we all have positions we can't do and others we're ok with.

Start exercising with a hammer so you will be back up to speed by class time!

It's a cast steel Columbian anvil. Not an unknown pattern for them I knew a smith in his 80's that had a 400# double horned columbian and back in the early 1980's would have been happy to sell it to me for $2000!

"235 lb Blacksmith Anvil. Been in a covered barn area. $500.00 obo. Similar sizes selling for $900-$1,000." with the tail broken off at the hardy? A new anvil right from the store may be getting those prices but an abused old anvil---I think this guy had mistaken the price some folks are asking with the price that anvils are actually selling for!

I'd use it; but not abuse it. I've seen a couple of ATHAs at the fleamarket in Las Cruces and then did seem to have face damage. I was wondering if it was because they were made from cast steel? Or if it was just an age and use thing? (the big one I looked at was marked cast steel)

The holes were made with a punch and as modern testing has shown riveted maille is about 10 *times* as strong as butted mail and so most modern maille is much heavier than the original stuff!

What is your tuyere like? I have never seen a brake drum forge where a blow dryer did not produce too much air and that includes one made from a Semi truck drum!

I use a dome headed RR bolt (not a spike!) that fits just perfectly in the tool holder of my screw press. As you said tough stuff! One of the things I use it for is to make indentations on round stock where I need to put bolt holes through it for mounting ornamental ironwork to posts with lag bolts. Looks like a great set---do you have a domed dishing hammer to use with that dish? Weygers has instructions for forging one out of a ballpein in "The Complete Modern Blacksmith". L have a couple of anvils with 1.5" hardy holes and making tooling for them is a lot of fun without access to a powerhammer; one thing I have done was to take some top swages and forge the eye section down until it will fit the large hardy holes. If I ever want to go back to using them as top swages I can wire wrap a handle or just drift out the eyes again.

I had one student that's read a lot on the recent work on Wootz and thought he knew far more than me---until I mentioned that I had worked as Al Pendray's assistant at his Quad-State Demo---besides reading all the same stuff... One student I really had strong feeling's about (and not good ones!) was a fellow who was having massive difficulty just hitting the workpiece instead of the anvil. Finally I stopped him and asked if he was using his dominant hand to hold the hammer. He told me "*no* he wanted to build up hammer skills on his off hand"---didn't care if he dinged up *my* anvil face doing so! (or took an hour longer than the rest of the class on a simple project and produced something that looked like scrap *I* wouldn't pick up!) Almost hated to tell him that he was banned from taking any more classes with me; I guess he will have to learn off hand skills on his own now... Then there was the two who thought they were being smart and tried to move the anvil and stump at the same time when we were loading after class; so they picked up the stump by the large handholds and then stood there and watched as it turned turtle on them (no wrist strength) and dropped the anvil off on it's horn making an impressive divot in the concrete floor and then stood and watched as it fell over on his foot. First lost time accident in 28 years of teaching! I learned to pull my foot out of the way when something heavy dropped before I was in grade school! This is at a top rated engineering school!

Looks like an oldie with the small horn and the face was definitely a multi piece weld up. However it's still a good usable anvil! The face that's left is flat and right over the sweet spot and the horn is still usable. Another good beginners or travel anvil for a reasonable price. If I drive my pick-up to Quad-State I'll take along some really damaged anvils to display---one is missing not only the face but everything above the waist! Another had the horn broken off and is ridgebacked and mostly faceless to boot and then there is the 1828 William Foster that is missing 90% of the face and the entire heel.

I take it a step downward and tell students that they have to be smarter than their *materials*---of course I'm often teaching college students at a well respected Tech school and so many of them have no "hammer skills" at all; (but some think they know it all from book learning...and video games).

Bad news indeed; he was a leading proponent of *clean* *smooth* *light* knife designs and will be missed with the flood of 2" thick un-tapered ugly knives I see at the fleamarkets from China, India, and Pakistan.

I believe that Quad-State is the largest *annual* smithing conference. Even better you can camp on site and so save your $$$ for the wonderful tailgating of blacksmith stuff. (there are local hotels as well) And it's *cheap* to boot! The only time I missed it when I lived in OH was when I was out of the country. http://www.sofasounds.com/conference2010/2010index.htm Come on Down!

My wife was quite upset with me at PoC #1---when Orlando brings in the presentation sword, (which would have never been forged in "the colonies"), and they are getting all sappy about "folded steel" I burst out laughing. Finally I whispered to her that that was the days of shear steel and so the cooks knives were probably "folded steel" as were everybody's pocket knives, etc... How about the smithing and smith in "How to Train your Dragon"? (one of the best things about being a grandparent is getting an excuse to watch the kid's movies and to introduce them to the "classics"!) And a fellow who used to hang around the blacksmithing forums some time ago Ernie Leimkuhler was the smith in "The Postman"; but most of his scenes were cut from the final film...

Isn't that a line from Atli's very thin book of wisdom "if you can't be smart you had better be tough!" I can hardly wait till the grandkids come out to visit and we can play with fire!

You are going to Quad-State in Troy OH, Right! I'm driving in from New Mexico to attend---it's really that good! Also SOFA, that puts on Q-S, has had anvil repair clinics before where they will repair a damaged anvil CORRECTLY! Well worth joining up. When I lived in Columbus OH we would carpool 2 hours to SOFA meetings stopping at a fleamarket along the way. I'll be the guy in the disreputable red hat and weather willing will wear lederhosen and an aloha shirt on Friday at Q-S in honour of RAH and PPW.

But most likely only near the pritchel hole, the sweet spot probably never got overheated what with all that mass to help keep it cool.

I was reading the journals of Madeleine L'Engle the now famous and respected author and she mentioned an entire decade where she didn't sell *anything* she wrote; it was all rejected including "A Wrinkle in Time" that was rejected by such a large number of publishers that she had given up on it. Finally a friend convinced her to submit it one more time to another publisher who accepted it but wrote to her saying that they accepted it because they loved the story but "don't expect any commercial success". It went on to win so many awards and sell so well that when she ran into an executive at another publishing house he complained that she should have sent it to them---and she had to dig out documentation on their refusal as she *had* sent it to them first... In her journals she came to the conclusion that she was a writer and so would continue writing even if she never sold a story---writing was part of what she was.

"Charmed, demented or smidged. Is there a significant difference? Remember we're a bunch of guys who like to play with fire and hit things with hammers" But only the toughest of us will have a face off with a great white birch! (I love the scene in young Frankenstein with the hermit---"Fire is our friend!")

Move van as close to final resting place for anvil as you can. If *real close* run 2x12 from van to stump and use rollers. if not too close dump anvil on ground---sticking a piece of pipe through the hardy hole can help lever one over, a piece of sacrificial plywood can help protect the bumper, etc, of the van from damage though the really fussy will place a piece of carpet upside down over the area before the plywood. WARNING when the anvil tumbles off you do NOT want a piece of pipe in the hardy hole! It will swing through an arc with great authority, far greater than puny human flesh! One on the ground place some 2x pieces on the ground and use rollers to move the anvil to it's wanted location right next to the stump then raise it by lifting one end and cribbing under it then lift the other end and crib under it until you get to the correct height and then walk it over to the stump. (I use a come-along to lift it using a roof truss HOWEVER I first put up a re-enforced bar and two lolly columns to help the truss out---we don't need no stinking structural failures!) Largest anvil I have moved this way is 515#; but I have also moved/loaded triphammers using the same techniques---by myself. Every shop should have a bucket of pipe pieces for rollers and a large stack of cribbing---I like 2x6 and 2x8 pieces from construction sites where they have to trim a bunch of them to size---a cold 6 pack will generally get you permission to fill a pickup bed with them! Or the BFMI method---hold a forge meeting at your place and after the demo get a bunch of burly blokes to lift the anvil using a pole/pipe chained to it securely and carry it in. My big anvil had a hardy hole at each end so we used a pipe through each one and then 8 folks to lift and carry it---I sure wished they had waited till I had the shop door unlocked and open before they lifted it though---I guess that was the MI part...(Brute Force and Massive Ignorance)

Ahh just because it's tool steel does NOT mean that it is hardened the same amount all the way through---look at how shallow hardening steels actually harden! A 1" diameter bar can have a substantially softer core than shell! So if you mill off the hardened part and end up with a softer face you have NOT improved the anvil! Re-heat treating it might be possible though generally more expensive than getting another anvil---you need a source of high pressure water to beat through the steam jacket to harden an anvil face. AIR McRaven used the high pressure hose from the local fire department when he re-hardened an anvil (cf: Country Blacksmithing). Lots of details in how an anvil was made and works---why so many of them get trashed by people who don't know things like that the hardness decreases as you go away from the surface.