ThomasPowers

WARNING those are modern swage blocks and anvil currently being cast in Mexico using "real" ones as the positive for the mold. Many of the swages are crudely cast and will have a lot of issues with porosity especially in the bottom of the dishes. They will take a lot of effort to clean up and are priced about double what I have seen them for around here. The anvils may or may not be a decent cast---it depends on what they were casting the day that one was poured, if it was a decent medium carbon steel then it's a basic anvil with no heat treat---again requiring a lot of clean up as they run the molding line right down the middle of the face and horn. If they were running cast iron that day you are SOL. I'd go maybe US$1 per pound on it *after* checking for hardness and ring with a ballpein These items are not rare, old or antiques though they are often misrepresented as such at auctions around these parts.

Some items quench better horizontally some vertically: single edge blades are often quenched horizontally, double edged vertically for example.

Great brand Hay-Budden, made in Brooklyn NY. It is a forged anvil and looks like it has plenty of face left. For oversized hardy holes: find a piece of square tubing that fits in the hardy hole and slit it down the corners with a hacksaw for about 3/4" and then fold the tabs formed out to 90 deg forming a hole size adaptor---you can repeat this if the size differential is very large. My 1.5" hardy holes sometimes have 3 of them "nested" to use tooling from smaller anvils. A variation of this is to just use (one or more) pieces of angle iron with the corner slit and tabs folded over. I prefer the tube as you can get a nice flat surface for the tooling to rest on.

FREE wood is best followed by cheapest (as long as it's fully charred). Note that the japanese swords are forged using softwood charcoal.

No that is a handling hole from when they were making the anvil. Forged anvils usually have a number of them and how many and where they are located is one clue to what brand they are if all other info is lost/obscured. cf "Anvils in America"

A busted knuckle from a RR car coupler makes a better anvil than a chunk of rail IMNSHO and pretty much ANY chunk of sttl makes a beter anvil than a cast iron ASO. Does your area have a place that works on dozers? lots of "impro anvils" in used dozer parts! What about fork lifts? A scrapped forklift tine can make a great anvil if used vertically and is still better than rail if used horizontally. (note when talking with such places you must emphasize that the piece will NEVER be used for it's original purpose again and you would be quite happy to have it oxy cut to make sure it couldn't---with a little finesse you can get them to make the cut *you* wanted for free!) Please think about coming to Quad-State in Western OH the end of Sept. You can camp onsite saving money to buy tools!

H13 and S7 are solid gold as blacksmithing trading stock as both such alloys have a good high heat hardness and suffer not too much from blacksmith heat treating. As mentioned it's a great material for hot work cutting and punching, not so much used for dies, hammers, etc. If you can get it in reasonable sizes/shapes; get all you can and sell it by the piece at Quad-State to help pay for your trip!

Processing non-homogeneous steel by folding and welding to make it more homogeneous improved it. Processing homogeneous steel by folding and welding opens you to all the problems that folding and welding can cause: inclusions, cold shuts, decarburization, grain growth, etc. So in general yes it would make things worse than sticking with a good uniform steel. Where it helps is in the inherent beauty of the pattern welded steel. If you are really good at it you run less chance of ruining the steel; but it's still a chance that need not be risked if you are willing to use a single composition steel to start.

As most anvils were NOT cast this is not a possibility. However punching the hardy hole which was the common method does result in similiar excentricities of shape. On many anvils if you flip them upside down you can see the bulge from the punching operations. (others dressed that region to get rid of it) scale is an abrasive and will gradually help widen an old hardy hole along with abuse and use. Many folks like to dress their hardy tools to fit in all orientations and so be a tad loose in some of them. Some colour code their tools for the anvils they fit.

Why not just use powder metallurgy and HIP like they do to make the Sweedish Damas Steel? A technology already worked out and available. Another method would be to just take your bar to start and Arc weld it with the various alloys in rod form, again easier and cheaper. Note that elemental movement at high temps can be quite fast and so some of the alloying elements you are trying to layer will instead just distribute across the boundries. (others are quite slow and will stay put) I don't know of any blade making process where you dip it in something else to change it's properties save for quenching and that has nothing to do with changing the steel's content. (Two others:flux and case hardening, flux doesn't change the steel properties as much as keeps them from changing due to oxidation and case hardening isn't used for blades.)

I picked up a complete Columbian 5.75" jaw postvise in Albuquerque NM last Friday for $50 which is pretty good in these smithing equipment poor lands...

Sort of depends on how and what you are quenching. Japanese swords traditionally used horizontal troughs, edge quenched knives often use a baking pan with a rest on the bottom. My knife quench is vegetable oil and is in the bottom half of a pressurized gas tank that is mounted in a "no tip" wooden frame. I have a coffee can that sits over the top to keep stuff and animals out of it. Remember the material of the tank needs to be such that it won't burn or melt when in contact with glowing steel and the volume needs to be enough that it doesn't heat up too much if you will be doing multiple quenches close in time. I know a smith who burned down his shop trying to quench in oil in a 5 gal plastic bucket. He tipped it on it's side because he was low on oil for a long blade and it ignited and burned through the bucket...

What I've enjoyed most forging tools for craftsfolks is when they realize I actually mean it when I say "go use it a while and then come back and tell me how you want it tweaked in the next version". Doing a couple of iterations to get a tool spot on for them and how they work can get you quite a reputation too. (It can also lure folks over to the dark side---had a bowl/vase turner want a bent shaft to hold carbide inserts for internal turning come by the forge once. So I heat a piece of steel up and stick it in the post vise and tell him "Now bend it how you want it", left it to normalize when he was done and several weeks later he had his own forge...)

I use an old style wooden match.

JPH, I have unfortunately envisioned you in the boots necessary to use that for a boot knife, I am mentally scarred for life now and have reported you to the UN for contravening the Geneva Conventions. I will not mention this to Homeland Security if you swear/aver that such boots will never be in pink patent leather... (Did you get a sheath worked out for it or did you sell it "naked"?)

Doesn't mention metal now does it?

Fisher, Trenton, Peter Wright, Hey-Budden, Arm and Hammer (helps that I don't have duplicates!) Might get into trouble if I told folks I was going home to beat on "Jane" I do have a hammer nicknamed "Frenchie" by my students as it's a french pattern crosspein greatly loved by them for working on their projects.

Perhaps your definition of "sword" is too limited? Look at what the aztecs used or other peoples who used wooden "blades".

Musashi Miyamoto once won a sword duel using a wooden sword whittled out of a spare oar while a boatman was taking him to the island the duel was to be held on.

What about donating them to folks back in the hills in AR who are too poor to have a car up on blocks in their front yard? Shoot I have some cousins like that! (based off a "Goon Show" radio programme on "Trash"...)

Actually for Zombies I was thinking of using my falconette with chain shot... Of course a back up weapon is always useful when the rate of fire is so low...

OddDuck; I'm really happy that you are introducing this idea into the forums; my suggestion is to just stay away from posting info that you are not up on and so avoid any issues with areas you don't have the background in. You have a lot of great information to share with us and then you go getting into areas where you don't have a firm basis and it makes your other info suspect. "Hole in the ground forges" are probably more common world wide than other types and great work has come out of them. Skill is more important than the tools! I've done a pattern welding demo using a chunk of rail and a clawhammer with charcoal sieved from old bonfire remains and an improvised firepot. Fire management is not very hard at all if you use charcoal. It is more difficult for coal and coke (with coke most of the issues being starting it and keeping it from going out). Of course using charcoal you are also using "biomass and recycling" Now living in the country I would be much more interested in a power source to run a triphammer than a replacement for a simple easy to use forge. If you are interested in the general use of biomass to produce heat "The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" by Rehder might be an interesting read for you.

Or you can tack weld a "handle" to your stock and use that and just cut it off when you're done---what we did when I was forging down some 30# chunks of steel into stake anvil shafts.

In general if it's in poor but usable condition the bottom price is around US$1 per pound. If it is in extremely good condition the top price will be around US$3 a pound. If it's unusable or mint untouched the price may be outside those bounds. There should be 3 sets of numbers on the side indicating weight: the first is hundredweights, CWT's, which are 112 pounds, the second is quarter hundred weights, 28 pounds and so can only be a 0,1,2,3 and the last is the remainder in pounds and so can only be 0-27. So for an anvil marked X Y ZZ it would weigh (112 x X) + (28 x Y) + (ZZ) Seems like we had a fellow bemoaning his inability to find an anvil down that way fairly recently.

Wow that's in great condition compared to my 1828 William Foster that's missing the heel and 90% of the face! (Picked it up for $5 in case I ever get a chance to try refacing it the traditional way...)