ThomasPowers

As I recall this is a cast steel anvil and so if you can get *proper* heat treat for it afterwards; you can pretty much go wild working on it----be sure to observe proper pre-heat and post-heat if you weld on it. Lot fewer issues when working with an anvil that does not have a separate face forge welded on where you want to maintain it's thickness as much as possible and you run the risk of delamination if you abuse it.

I'd call it "A Twilight Walk" as that is when we see them things here in NM!

Welding on an anvil is a last resort. Welding on a cast iron bodied one is a step lower. If you are not already an expert and so not needing to ask---I would not try to weld on an anvil. Shoot I started smithing around 1981 and I still use a real professional for anvil repairs, (he is a great smith *and* teaches welding and does it right---preheat using an optical pyrometer, right rod(s), slow cool etc. One thing to look at: is there a good "window" on the face? You don't need the entire face pristine for most forging, just a section that you can work metal on without telegraphing the abuse into your piece. Remember too that Fishers have a steel face over cast iron body so we strongly advise against grinding, milling, any other ablative method, of the face. Now: I have had such types of anvils welded on at local ABANA affiliate anvil repair workshops with good results; however I have passed those anvils on to others. A secondary warning is about anvils that *others* have repaired---did they do it right? Signs of prior repairs drops the price severely in my book! (I had a large anvil---400+ pounds---from an old copper mine that a previous owner had tried to repair. It had places where you could pop off the welds done by him---ugh. It waited patiently till my friend foolishly offered to host an anvil repair clinic BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahah) So you need to juggle the price vs the condition and see if it works for you. Think how terrible if you overpay for a bad anvil and so are not able to get a good one that shows up soon after. Start networking to see if a better one can be found locally!

Looks good! (can I have your set up after you are institutionalized after doing a 1200 pine cone job?????) Thomas

Or even worse; I once lost out on some tools because "they were going to a museum" and then bought them cheaper from the museum when they downsized their historic village display...

What I understand is that gold flashed Didymium do a fairly good job; but you have to re-calibrate your heat judgment as they skew the colours a bit. Setting things up so you are not always looking into your gas forge helps a lot too!

IR---Smiths have a problem with eye doctors that are used to arc welders that do UV damage not realizing that smiths tend to have IR issues like glass blowers do. Lots of stuff out there for UV protection lots less worry about IR. I had a good friend who was an ophthalmologist and ophthalmological surgeon who sat me down and gave me a Looooong Talk when he found out I did smithing. Also used to give me the most through exams I have ever had on an annual basis. (Nowadays being diabetic I get a full exam every year anyway and make sure to mention IR to the Dr---no problems either way so far!)

Well that should perhaps be "that 400 degree is the best temperature for tempering leaf spring steel (5160) FOR THAT PARTICULAR USE" as the *best* tempering temp depends on alloy- stated, quench-stated, end use-implied and personal preference, (for lathe and struck chisels I would do a differential temper leaving the shafts tough and the edges hard.)

So, Roo, have you thought of trying to get a crew together to replicate that scene, purely as research of course! A picture of the crew in the same moment *with* someone portraying the artist in the background would make a nice frontispiece for your thesis...

What is this "wood" you speak of and why does it pertain to your smithy? OK it's a poor joke; but my smithy's original part had *no* wood in it's construction whatsoever and the extension I am working on has only 4 pieces---telephone poles as uprights---and I am thinking of sheathing them with sheetmetal. If your "code" treats forge chimneys the same as woodstove chimneys then the code needs to be modified; but you better follow it in the meantime to assuage the insurance companies. Thomas

If you check out some of the neo-tribal folk you will see that using a chunk of scrap is considered quite proper for an anvil and there are even some folks selling "knifemaker's" anvil consisting of say 4" sq stock used *vertically*. A lot of new folk complaining about not having an anvil are too hung up on thinking they have to have a "london pattern" anvil. I've known a good number of them change their tune after they see "Living Treasures of Japan", Nat Geo, and see what the swordsmith uses, (of course then we get into the whole Nipponiphile thing, sigh)

Find out if it rings! Looks like a cast steel one to me and should ring well; if it doesn't then there is a hidden problem! Funny how the drawing with rear hardy hole and shoeing clips doesn't look like the anvil at all to a smith... Also sounds like some swages were retrofitted to it; not a problem if there is enough good clean face left to use.

Rob; since you say it's small I guess that it's about the size of a coffee can and a bucket sized bellows will be plenty. You must remember that we have a wide range of folks here. A friend here works where 6" diameter stock is small and 40" diameter stock not unknown (and the tongs have wheels and engines and you get to ride them!). Another does miniatures and considers a bean can forge to be a "large one". Note that the flexible gasket puts force on the sides when it gets to the small end and most folks making such bellows are trying to reduce all drag as much as possible rather than add some in. I was bellows thrall at Quad-State when Ric did his "3 ways to make steel" demo and used his home built rectangular box bellows. It was very nice but I found I still preferred the european double lunged bellows myself

The first time Mr Moore went to Quad-State a couple of years ago he had to buy a trailer to ship home all the anvils he bought, got another 30 or so the next year from Quad-State too and I don't doubt I'll see him there this year as well. He did open his collection to a visit from the local ABANA affiliate, SWABA, recently too. He is a nice guy even if we hold different opinions on some things... As for cycling things back through look at the Lynch Collection! (I have even bought some lynch hammers from the estate of a smith who bought them back when the Lynch collection was sold off)

Bruce Wilcox shows up here every now and then; just retired as an island smith and has done a lot of stuff for boats over his career I bet! His anchor forging is well known. Welcome, my parents spent 4 years in Naarden and so I was able to visit there a couple of times.

How big a forge are you trying to make; what do you want to do with it? 5 gallon bucket is way too large or way too small or just right depending on that information. BTW most of the buckets are tapered and you want straight sides for a piston bellows set up. Look for large PVC pipe.

REMEMBER THOSE ARE LOOSE SUGGESTIONS! Exp: jackhammer bits are NOT S series! Machinerys handbook lists S series as being good for jackhammer bits; but it's not used because of the expense---stainless steel would make a great car body---how many cars use it? Better to learn spark testing of steels---most welding textbooks will have a chart on spark testing.

What a coincidence---San Antonio New Mexico is just 10 miles south of me on I25! Or did you mean that TX place or the one in Nevada, Colorado, or California?? One method of selling would be to take it to a local smithing conference. If you are in TX then the one we're having in Las Cruces NM Feb 13&14 would probably be too far away for you. If you are in NM I'd be happy to haul it down for you; we're trying to encourage folks to bring stuff for tailgating! That looks like a real nice swageblock you have there!

Well while they are not being used; they are not being abused either. Nice dry clean storage here in NM. When I was younger this sort of thing used to annoy me a lot; as I grow older I realize that *someday* they will come back into play; shoot sometimes even *museums* will sell off part of their collections! Even in anvil poor NM I have been able to locate anvils at about 1/2 the price he wants to sell at so I'm not tempted to buy any from him being "anvil'd up" from back where they were cheap and plentiful. But if you have to have an anvil they are there!

My experience with slate would indicate that "it depends" Had slates that were very fire safe and other that crumbled when heated---we used to cook chestnuts on a roofing slate in our fire place... But as mentioned if the stone is away from the hot zone not much of a problem...

Actually you should draw temper on a file before making it into a knife as it's too brittle at file temper; so pop it into your oven and draw it to the temp you like your knifeblades at and then keep it cool when grinding! Many knives get hardened by heating with a torch to critical and then quenched. Real chunk charcoal and a blow dryer will work too. A forge can just be a hole in the ground!

Over at swordforum we had a member that was doing a lot of really cool alloying using the thermite reaction for heat; till he posted his "last project" as it appears he is going blind due to IR damage to his eyes; the goggles he was using were not enough it seems. I do not believe normalizing of pure iron works to refine grain size; it was the more modern steels that have alloying that allows you to refine grain sizes by normalizing. (Old steels had much more problem with grain growth than modern alloys!) Remember that dissolving can take place even if you would think it would just float. I don't know the AlO-Fe system to know how much an issue that could be. I do know that Al was added to steel to kill it during refining. Railroads use very engineered thermite processes to weld rail together with material of a good composition---2 years ago they demonstrated this at Quad-State. Some people have tried forging sprues from thermite rail welding and have gotten interesting patterns that way. Some people report being able to harden it and so not being able to harden it.

Bathroom Scale should tell you the weight. Lots of life left in that anvil---I would had preferred that the person with the grinder had stayed away from it though. If you are in a damp area of the country that grinding doesn't look 20 years old to me...when I run into that sort of thing I always tell the seller that the grinding *dropped* the value of the anvil just in case they get another one to sell... Anyway *I* would have bought that one and I;m nortoriously cheap!

epoxy isn't that big of a deal usually you can figure a way to pop it off and then be able to work on it without the knife causing problems. Riveting is another matter...

What He said! I've seen an anvil where they threw it up on the mill and "cleaned up the face" ending up milling completely through the steel and into the wrought iron because the base being hand forged on big open hammers was not parallel to the face. So IF YOU MUST do this, clamp it down face down on the table and then mill the base parallel to the face and then flip it over and just kiss it. Not knowing how worn the face on your anvil is makes it kind of hard for us to tell you what you *might* be able to get away with---like me asking you how much I can trim off my fingernails without bleeding! However generally smoothing a face with a belt sander is sufficient---smooth is often much better than *flat* as a shallow sway allows you to true up items easier. And remember old smithing books advise you to take any sharp edges on your "new" anvil and dress them back to rounded. "Sharp" edges seem to be a modern perversion! I also have a friend who had an anvil that was milled clean and flat, it was then too thin to use and so he kept it for years until we had an anvil repair clinic at a meeting and a professional welder spent 6 hours building it back into being a usable anvil.