ThomasPowers

Actually that looks like one opf the old Lynch Collection hammers and the pitting is most likely from being dug out of a bombed flat factory and 60+ years being stored in a barrel. Check the hardness! I've had one lynch collection hammer that had been through a fire and was dead soft---very handy actually with students abusing the equipment... They have any more like it?

An anvil is a tool; as a tool it is perfectly allowable to modify it to suit yourself---they certainly did so 100+ years ago!

Well that mousehole was originally marked in CWT and so you have at least *2* separate weighings where the scale could be slightly off. 3# out of 127 is very little "slop". Mouseholes had high carbon steel plates forge welded onto the wrought iron base to make the face. Sometimes you can see preferential wear where the plates came together and there was a bit of a decarb line from the forge welding.

Most of the folks I know trade in their propane tanks when they get close to cert time and so pay a bit more for a fill; but get a tank with more time on it that they then go back to refilling until it runs out of time...

My friends gave my daughter a miniature anvil before she was out of the hospital when she was born---about time to give it to her new son...

Blacksmiths not only do they scrounge other people's discards they re-work their own as well! (Of course I save my scale as well to re-smelt into iron as finding good ore is usually the hardest part of backyard smelting...sweeping your scale out the door just to go and drag a magnet in the local creek bed to get the same stuff seemed like a waste to me...) Or as was said about a friend of mine "One man's trash is another man's treasure; but Terry's trash is NOBODY'S treasure!"

Worn rail has a flat top; but standing it on end is a better idea. Or you can look through "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" and see how he reworked rail into anvils.

The funny thing is I do 80+% of my work with just a couple of hammers; but it sure is nice when you have a weird job to do to have a hammer just right to do it with! Having a long peened hammer to rivet down in a spangen help for example. Also since I teach I need a bunch of different hammers so my students can find the one that works best for them. (I'm going to have to duplicate one of them because I usually have 2 or 3 wanting to use it at the same time)

Bruce I am in your debt for sending that metal; the least I could do was see that you were not out of pocket from your kindness! I've been sharing it around too. Thomas

I didn't find it hard to get to Ironbridge; though it might have helped that I started from America...

I did an experiment once using Theophilus as a basis (Wrote Divers Arts in 1120 A.D.). First I tried 12 different samples of stained glass ground up---they all spalled upon cooling. Then I tried adding a bit of borax to them---even worse spalling What ended up working for me was a piece of 1930's? brake light lens found in a spoil pile near the river in the city I lived in. It did not spall upon cooling and yes I was cooling fairly slow. You may want to track down Oppi Utrecht's "Enamelling on Metal"

Connecticut is not know for it's oil well drilling. Have you tried talking to an elevator repair and maintenance company? Preferably a smaller one where you can bring in a handforged trinket and schmooze the front office?

I usually pick up catalogs from the major blacksmithing supply places at Conferences.

HB's have the sides project just a little bit past the plain of the base making a hourglass shaped indent. The old ones had this projection quite narrow and not very far, making it fairly easy for an anvil that shifts slightly with every hammer blow and bedded in with scale---which is an abrasive---to wear away leaving the bottom flat. I have one like that. The hole you see is called a handling hole and is there to have a place to grab the anvil with specialized tools when forging it. There should be more than on and their number and location is another clue as to what type of anvil it may be. Now what about the bottom as I asked before? Does it have a ridge that follows the edge of the anvil around making a stylized Hourglass? (or remains of one worn down?) And yes many brands of anvils were forge welded top to bottom at the waist and latter some brands would arc weld the two halves together.

What he said; I counted up when I moved out here and found I had over 100 wooden handled tools, (swages, hot cuts etc as well as hammers). I'm building another rack for my shop extension so I can get them all in order as the number has grown since I moved too. (not to mention the bucket of ballpeens to make hawks from...)

If you are worrying about decarb or alloys mixing lower on the C scale you can always juice it up with a nice 1.2% C piece of file in the middle of the last fold to make a san mai with pattern welded sides. I've done it that way several times when I was just fooling around and ended up with a pattern I liked but low in total C. Bruce, what for?

No I don't have a press, (well I do have a large screwpress and a powerhammer but the screwpress is nowhere near the forge and there is no power to the powerhammer yet...) That's why I use lots of small stuff to start. Easier to get the layer counts when working all by hand. Did my first billet around 1983...

Weygers mentions a Melon quench in "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" and stated that the blade ended up with a hard edge and a soft spine and he even used it to clip nails, mushrooming the spine but not damaging the blade. Quenching gravers into candle wax is also a time proven method. Gaining carbon? No not enough time at temp to do that effectively.

If you are having difficulties getting a good weld dropping back to first principles: clean material, clean deep fire, low air flow, etc is the way to go. If you are not having difficulties then you can cheat! My last billet started as 25 layers of BSB & PS, folded and welded 4 times (400 layers) and then smashed into a disk lengthwise (stood up on end and hammered down into a disk) The welds held. I hadn't cleaned the PS at all, (but it wasn't rusty). So I think I can get away with not cleaning them...

Blacksmiths as a whole suffer terribly from "Anvil Envy". BTAIM I still wouldn't turn down one larger than my 515# Fisher

I used to work in an appliance factory that still had one enamel on steel line running for hospital refrigerators. Quite a lot of work to get it to stick well and massive safety issues. As I recall it was one of the first lines to be sent to Mexico. Results can be quite nice but I can't believe it would be cost effective.

Zinc, US pennies are mostly Zinc nowdays with the changeover being in the 1980's.

Seeing the bottom of the anvil may help a lot as HB's have a distinctive indent on them---though early ones can be worn almost flat... Vise: no clue as most were not marked by any of the hundreds of places that made them.

I don't. I do prefer the ones where the material is blued rather than painted but I'll use either one in my billets.

I get mine from a local windmill construction and repair company. About 1/3 to 1/2 cheaper than at our local lumber yard and TONS cheaper than the big box store 50 miles away. Since they get a price break the more they order they are very reasonable on selling to other folks. A lot of it depends on what you are doing. Back in Ohio I had scrounging privileges at a local ornamental iron co. They had to pay to have their scrap bin hauled off and so I would visit and clean it out and up. *lots* of nice short lengths of 1/2" sq all trimmed to the same lengths and a bunch of different sized other stuff including some real wrought iron when they replaced a car damaged fence in the old part of town!