ThomasPowers

See you are going to *sales* where they are trying to get top dollar for what they have. You need to use my un-patented method of anvil hunting and find the ones folks are willing to almost give away! Once I stopped going to auctions and antique stores I started picking up great anvils cheap. (Why do I feel like I'm channelling a recently deceased pitchman????)

Let me throw a ringer in: my hacksaw has a 30" blade. It's a piece of metal cutting bandsaw blade mounted in a bowsaw frame. I punch the holes a bit closer together than the wood blade so there's more tension. Vey handy to have in the truck behind the seat it's amazing how often it's been used to subdivide roadkill steel, get things at the dump/scrap yard, etc.

When I worked with a swordsmith in AR during the winter we would hang a paint bucket of burning wood scraps on the horn and heel of his 400# anvil and leave it on until the face was warm to the touch---then we would fight over who got to sit on the nice warm anvil during heats. You won't de-temper an anvil if the face is not hotter than you can stand to hold your hand on! Another trick for maximizing "hot" time is to hold the piece just off the face of the anvil and let the hammer push it into contact with each blow. As conduction is the fastest way to lose heat this minimizes the ammout of time it's in contact with cooler metal. I've tried it but never found it necessary in the common way of things. Capt Atli uses a discarded iron to heat his anvil in winter. He plugs it in and places it on the anvil first thing and it has taken the chill off by the time he is ready to forge.

One thing I've noticed with new students is that: 1: they are not ready to hammer when they take the piece out of the forge---the anvil should be clean and uncluttered and the hammer in your hand when you take the piece out. 2: they lay the hot piece on the cold anvil to re-adjust the tongs---do it while the piece is still in the forge even if you do have to drag it out with one pair and then grab it with another. 3: they spend a lot of time looking at the piece instead of hammering---as the fellow who taught me billet welding would yell "Don't look at it HIT IT!" Another aspect is that trained smiths usually hit harder and faster putting energy back into a piece helping to keep it hot longer. Get good now and think about preheating your anvil come wintertime!

And rivited mail of the same wire material, diameter and ring size is on the order of 10 *times* as strong. As the wire was the expensive part of making mail in medieval times riviting was the standard method. Today the cost of the wire is trivial compared to the cost of the labour and butted is often used. However go to any museum and look at the originals and save for expediaent repairs and ornamental "show" (parade) examples yopu will not find butted maille.

Note that if you have any medium to high carbon steel tongs the heat to red and quench may cause some unfortunate surprises!

Howdy and welcome! Please think about putting a general location in your info so folks close can suggest shop visits and conferences! Generally the pitting occurs from not keeping the scale cleaned off the anvil and pounding it back into your work piece. It is not a function of coal stuct to it. However I deal with the coal sticking issue by turning the piece sideways and knocking the piece on the rim of my forge while taking it out.

All you need is a way to get air from point a to point b; shoot I've used a cut off bluejeans leg before---well soaked. Flexable exhaust pipe is banned in many states and so might be harder to find. An *old* garage may have some tucked away that still is usable if a tad rusty.

According to my calculations that should weight 350# if 20" dia and 4" thick!

My great uncle died of cutting his big toe off with an axe, blood poisoning pre-antibiotics! (My mother was born at and grew up on a farm so gory stories are a family tradition and she can *ALWAYS* beat ours....)

My officemate is from Finland; It was almost sad to find they had an english version of their webpages. Looks like good fire rated stuff. My first degree was in geology so I always got to chose the rocks we used for coooking with in the Y1K Irish Living History group I was in. I too used mainly igneous and metamorphic rocks but had to settle for the ones I could find left in the local streams by the glaciers. (and then I tested them before they got used in public!) Having a window out sure makes it easier to watch the food but it also lets heat out by radiation. Probably not a problem in this case.

And an absolute miracle how many of us have still managed to reproduce! (Shoot I still count in decimal!)

Don't forget death by infection! I once owned a 1900's minor surgery book and it seemed like *most* of it was dealing with how to work on infected wounds---people who stuck their finger on a thorn and last their arm or died from a shaving cut. We have been very lucky for a long time what with modern antibiotics! (and we all know that wounded are a greater drain on the enemy than dead too)

Thanks for keeping an eye open for the cites; I really am interested! Some re-enactment groups will strongly filter outliers to keep a camp from being *all* outliers that folks like. (ie: if there has been only 1 of something dug up and 99 of something that does the same job only 1 or the first ones will be allowed in camp for every 100 of the others...) I'm guilty of wanting my own set up of cooking tools myself; Shoot I must have as many hand forged kitchen tools as some villages did in the early middle ages!

Columbians are cast steel no if about it! (Folks; may I commend "Anvils in America" to everyone's attention? Saves a lot of guessing). The underside is quite a rough casting I would not hammer metal on it unless you need the distressed look. BentIron1946's suggestion of not doing heavy work over it is spot on and as a "light" anvil you shouldn't be doing heavy work over the heel anyway! Decent Price, Decent Face that you could take a swipe over with an angle grinder if you feel you have too; but I'd suggest using it a while before doing so. I have a friend who had a 400# Columbian that was also painted red; may be original! And if so then it hasn't been through a fire. Read the threads on how to quiet an anvil as the cast steel ones tend to be LOUD! Well Done!

The several hundred smiths I know of that use propane forges regulate heat not usually by individual burner but at the regulator for both burners (or they turn one burner all the way off). Even for an aspirated forge you can change the temperature quite a bit by turning down the pressure before it gets too low to aspirate with a properly build burner. With blown burners it's trivial to adjust as you don't need to sustain the aspiration process. I have one of each type of propane forges for about 10 years now

For charcoal forge you generally want to control the size of the firepot more as all charcoal in the forge will burn and you need a deeper fire to work with charcoal. For my coal forge I merely add a couple of firebrick to schootch in the sides and make it deeper---and use less air but as I use a handpowered blower that's easy to control. For a bi-fueled forge I would design for coal use and then engineer additions for charcoal use. Weyger's had a great picture of a traditional charcoal forge used in Indonesia in "The Modern Blacksmith". it had high clay side walls and the work was done in the trough between them.

Great now when the demo site is 100" from the closest place you can get your truck to---if you're lucky.....! Plan for the worst at demo's---it will happen! I'm due to see my Dr about back problems tomorrow; I wish I hadn't schlepped a large anvil to demo's when I was a young lad now.

Well within the possibility of cleaning it up with a 7 or 9" angle grinder. You don't need to get abouve about 120 grit and then forging on it will polish it up over time---scale is an abrasive!

WAY overpriced! That would be a good price for a top tier anvil not a bottom tier anvil! Vulcan's have thin faces and dent easily and knifemakers generally need as smooth a face as possible. Not a good combination! I'd go with a chunk of steel over that---even A36 he could at least clean up the face on a regular basis with no problem! Have you checked with the local smithing group? They may have a good brand anvil at that price you could get. E-Bay is not a good place to buy anvils IMNSHO. When I lived in Ohio I averaged 1 name brand anvil in great shape a year for less than US#1 a pound and NO shipping fees!

I once had some *old* osage orange fenceposts, the bottom sections were about gone and that takes a long time! Boy it was pretty when finished though.

The wire used to ship bundles of re-bar (not tie wire, but shipping wire) is also quite soft; I have a pile of it from a major project that my brother asked for and was given. probably a lifetime supply. It's thicker than 1/8" though! (1+" rebar used on that project!)

I can't date rolling mills much earlier than the 1600's however "Batter mills" for making sheet metal do go real far back. Rolling mill cite: "Ironworks on the Saugus" (ISBN: 9780806109572) Hartley, Edward N; mentioning that the rolling mill at the Sagus Ironworks was one of the earliest ones A reference to a batter mill can be found in "The Royal Armoury at Greenwich 1515-1649 (ISBN: 094809222X / 0-948092-22-X), Williams Alan De Reuck Anthony which mentions accounts for iron being sent out to a battermill to be reduced into sheet for armour making" Also personal communication at the Medieval Technology Conference held at Penn State about 20 years ago where I discussed the remains of a circa 900 CE tidal powered mill used for iron work with one of the presenters. Mike can you point me at a cite for Roman's using rolling mills in ironworking? I'd like to check it out.

I think Finn was referring to hand saw blades and not chain saw---lots of pounding out to get a CS bar thin! 1/16 is 16 gauge in some systems. To use mild steel forge it out close to size, clean and then planish it down the rest of the way leaving a work hardened blade.

The Measure of Man & Woman: Human Factors in Design (ISBN: 9780471099550) Alvin R. Tilley; Henry Dreyfuss Associates