ThomasPowers

Cast iron makes terrible anvils, I've owned one due to mischance---had my *real* anvil stolen right before a day long demo at a museum and it would dent *under* the metal I was hammering on. EXCEPT there are a couple of brands of old anvils that had a tool steel face and a cast iron body, these range in quality as well with Fisher's being a GREAT anvil to Vulcans being on the lower end. They both are *quiet* anvils as they don't ring as much as THWAP, very handy for working in a basement or in areas with near neighbors. The MOB bought a cast iron HF ASO once and converted it into a propane stove by *lots* of drilling---it was dead soft and seemed to have more graphite than iron in it! Cast Steel makes a dandy anvil; most modern made anvils go this way, and several brands of traditional anvils did so as well: Sodofors, Columbian, etc. They may suffer from edge chipping and so profit by rounding the edges if you get an unused one. Forged Anvils: the old ones were built up out of wrought iron forge welded together with a steel face forge welded onto them. Then there were some with a wrought iron base with a cast steel upper section and some with a cast steel lower section with a traditional upper section IIRC. If you really want to know the *DETAILS* go to the public library and ILL a copy of "Anvils in America", Postman and you will learn a lot of details indeed.

Try Cooks and Kitchens in Medieval and Renaissance Art "Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture: Cooks and Kitchens" I think you will be happily surprised and all the sources are documented! I've been working on the 1570's "Country/Campaign? Kitchen" one. Note that her base site is a MAJOR resource for Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture!

The town dog pound is located just beyond the boundary fence to the north of the Fairgrounds. They don't usually keep me awake; of course the neighborhood dogs always bark and howl when the train goes by near my house so I'm "trained" to ignore them...

Just make sure they haven't used mercury to extract the gold from the black sand!

Actually that IS an anvil just not a London Pattern one! The traditional japanese sword makers use a large block of steel for their anvils and they seem to do OK. The London Pattern anvil is a "swiss army knife" type of anvil with lots of features allowing you to do lots of different things; but not optimizing for any one thing. A lot of beginning bladesmiths are now using simple anvils as they are *much* cheaper to find/make as such they are getting a lot closer to the anvils that swords were forged on back when they were a high class weapon! I've forged using a broken rail car coupler for an anvil before found free! and that $900 could have bought any of the 3 commercially made triphammer's I've owned.

In 27 years I had never had a "lost time injury" teaching folk---then the 28th year rolled around---plan for the worst not the best! Gobae do you drop the price per student for multiple students as they take the same amount of time? If you teach it's good to have complete sets of equipment for students less forge/tool contention! (which is safer too)

Do you know the trick about putting a small piece of felt down in the rose and adding a drop or two of rose essential oil to it so your beautiful bloom *smells* like a rose?

Can you get away with leaving the stuff in the ground and only moving the top bits?

Mike you're a better man than I am; nowdays when it gets *real* cold I go in and sit by the woodstove reading my smithing books!

To further that analogy: because of cost you go with pine as it's cheaper, you then expend 100 times the cost of the material in labour and at the end of it you still have a low quality item. Trying it with good materials means that if it all works out right you actually have something to be proud of! Can you tell what the piece of scrap was to begin with? ISTR T1 as being an abrasion resistant alloy used for dirt moving equipment and not a good sword alloy.

Steve my prayers too (and make sure that it's not gallbladder! I suffered for a long time because young slim males *never* have gallbladder problems! When they finally diagnosed it correctly they bumped an open heart surgery to put me on the table) Tell him that there are hundreds of folks he has never met all rooting for him!

After having a fellow explain that he couldn't get started smithing because he didn't have the couple of thousand dollars for a set up I went out and assembled a beginner's set up for about US$25: forge anvil, blower, basic tools. $5 for a bag of charcoal and it could be forging! Doing will really make the lessons from the books sink in. I usually let a student burn up a piece after warning them several times (we start with an oversized piece so they can recover) I have them quench high carbon steel in plain water and see how brittle it is; etc. And of course there are always the American Bladesmith Society school with regular classes! You won't start any younger; so start attending meetings and doing rather than dreaming!

Dave you pretty well nailed it and 304 means it will be soft and gooey! OTOH perhaps an abalone dive sword if it's thick enough??? Dive knives sometimes have a chisel end and made from non-hardening but stainless alloys. Also a serrated edge for cutting cable underwater. Looks hard to choke up on the blade though. Looking "cool" is always a personal thing but to a lot of people *functionality* is the difference between cool and stupid---I once bought a used pickup truck that the previous owner had added a roll bar, lights, whip antenna and oversize wheels to. It had a 4 cylinder engine and an automatic transmission! "All show and no go". I removed the roll bar and found it was just fastened in with hardware store low grade bolts and no plates!, I removed the antenna as there was no radio when I bought it and removed the over sized wheels because when you put more than 100 pounds in the bed the fenders would rub on the wheels--a pickup that you can't put stuff in isn't cool no matter how fancy it looks! When designing a weapon think about how it will be used and misused, what maneuvers will you be making with it, what weapons will be used opposing it and how. How easy is it to use? What advantages does it bring to the "fight"? What are it's weaknesses? And then compare it to other weapons that have similiar use cases. (the classic example is to compare the M16 and the AK47 for use in Viet Nam)

Well they could have used *anything* they had and that could be anywhere from 20 years to over 100 years old. What did it spark test as? Most crowbars would be a bit low in carbon for a european style sword though many will be close to what a japanese sword often was (about 1050) Spark testing should give enough information to see if it would be suitable.

Depending on the time it was made PWs can have "Solid Wrought" in a circle on them. The flat along the front and back feet is a pretty good indicator of a PW too. Orgtwister; have you read "Anvils in America"? One of the ways you can date some anvils is by the variations in what's stamped in them.

Note that while a good vise will recover it's generally a better idea to make a set of "spacers" to drop in the opposite side to keep your vise from twisting so much in use.

Clean the face and check for rebound by dropping a large (1" is good) Ball bearing on the face. Rebound should be 80%-95% for most antique anvils. (anvilfire.com has a table of rebound test results: navigate anvilfire => 21st Century => anvils testing rebound ) Not a boat anchor! Better than the HF ASO's; but they are usually being marketed as what they are not. I mean who would put a mold line through the face of an anvil if they were going to cast one? Guarantees that you have a LOT of clean up to do before you can heat treat. I'd like to see one of these tested for alloy content and then appropriately heat treated. If you get one made with a good alloy it could be very nice indeed! Although the work to clean it up and heat treat would probably exceed the cost of buying a good anvil outright. Back around 1982 I owned 1 anvil and had it stolen a couple of days before I was to demonstrate at a museum for a day. The only thing I could find quick was a 220# Buffalo anvil---Chinese cast iron. I paid way too much for it; used it for the one demo---it dented *under* red hot coil spring when I was hammering on it. I then retired it and drug it around for YEARS till I met a fellow who swore on a stack of Bibles that he would never attempt to forge with it and I sold it to him at a loss. And folks wonder why I've multiple backups these days!

If your alloys have very different properties they will often tend to shear when trying to forge them after welding them together. Also heat treat becomes more of a guess as what is just right for one alloy may not be good at all for another. BTW have you lookd at what's being done with Mosaic Damascus? Or the Swedish HIP powder damascus? Or have you looked into Wootz?

Except that those brands didn't cast entire anvils, even the ones that used cast subsections forge welded them at the waist, (or later arc welded them together at the waist---see Anvils in America!) and so would not put the time and effort to weld up one of substandard parts. Also the trenton and others have a depression cast in the bottom to help the anvil sit flatter. If the bottom is flat it's NOT one of the antique ones. The Swedish anvils were the totally cast steel ones "historically". I'd bet it's one of the Mexican ones; I see 20 or so a year for sale down here---a lot show up at the implement auction and I'd bet that some were headed to Quad-State as our local anvil collector bought some to sell, (a good pallet load!) A good check for a welded up pritchel (which would have probably messed up the heat treat anyway) would be to check the underside. Most folks that work on the top side skimp the underside. Most likely way better than a HF ASO; but without heat treat they are at the bottom of the "real" anvil heap even when they are made from a good alloy. I've seen some cleaned up with a drilled pritchel (sharp edges!) and expect some bright lad will start converting them over to "antiques" by stamping them like the originals and rusting them a bit, sigh.

"airtight" + Forge = Coffin!

This is when it's AOK to mill an anvil, You can turn it upside down and mill the base to make it parallel to the face! *Never* ever let them try to do the reverse!!!!!!!!!!

Well you need a big anvil for the shop and a light anvil to carry to demos. I like having several anvils set at different heights myself and with different "features" Since they are all close in weight I'd go with the ones with the best face (thickness, smoothness, etc) on them. What did they want for that trashed bridge anvil?

Ti makes low quality knives compared to a good high carbon steel; so if you want high quality avoid Ti. Can you share with us how you got an idea that Ti was extreme quality alloy for knives? I don't know of a single Ti blade that has passed the ABS Journeyman's test---a pretty good test for edge holding and toughness. I've forged Ti for a knife but it's for my camp set and I wanted something I could boil or throw in a dishwasher when I got back and an eating knife doesn't need to hold an edge like a "cutting" knife. They are also good for diving knives or working where no magnetic signature is required. For those uses Ti is a decent alloy; but for general use it ranks pretty low. As to where to buy coke, do you need a source in Australia, South Africa, South America, England, Italy,...? Unless you can tell us where YOU are it's rather a waste of time to post coke purveyors!

I sure hope they are not temper colours as they are inverted---you want the higher temps toward the grip and the lower temps out toward the "using" end!

Usually a medium carbon "tough" steel rather than a high carbon "brittle steel". But a lot of old hand made ones were made from what ever was handy so junkyard steel rules apply! (Rule 1: Test before you spend the time making something from it!)