gazilla

One Wolfgang Gaitzsch published an article in Hephaistos 7/8 2006 (the German blacksmithing association's magazine) about roman anvils, with a picture of a Pompeii mural depicting what he considers a horned anvil. Might be an artist's interpretation of a Niklausberg type though. My personal story about anvils is that I got hooked since I spent some time on anvilfire and saw this guy's website linked: Photos d'enclumes... I'm very fond of these old, odd individual yet functional forms. And when ready to give up, my teacher showed me Bruce Wilcox's work. I confess being an addict :-)

This anvil was waiting for me when I first came to my inlaw's place - been in the family since past memory. It's a 1862 anvil with a fairly thin (8 - 10 mm) face. I've seen other anvils of the same form (same maker?), showing the same default: square horn broken off. Looks somewhat like a manufacturing problem. She's a bit swaybacked as well, but still works well enough, has a decent face (despite being thin), and the price couldn't be beaten :-).

Apart from stake anvils, double horn main anvils appear to become more "common" in the 17th century (as far as I found out). There's a very nice picture of Velasquez with a double-horned anvil. Typical French anvils still follow this basic form (broad face, low anvil, four feet). You can see this picture and others on A Gallery of Early Blacksmithing. There's also another thread on old anvils ("period forges") on this site.

Thanks for the links guys. Apart from images, I'd like to ask a more technical question: how were these constructed? Does anyone have information on these very old anvils, what size parts they were build up from, in what order, if they had an added steel face (or a cemented one, or a cold worked phosphorous iron face), chemical composition of the iron used, ... Any reliable info on these subjects would be greatly appreciated.

I thought these "patented save edge usa" farrier files were going to make really nice forge-welded edges, guess I should forget about them? Mmm, bye, reliable high carbon easy-to-come-by JY steel :-). Thanks for warning Finn.

Thanks for sharing these images, Wayne. You don't happen to have any pictures of actual mediaeval or earlier or slightly youger anvils (iron age - 16th century)? I saw a picture of a mobile gipsy forge in some Russian or Ukrainian blacksmithing revue. It looked like a wooden, earth (?) filled box on legs hooked up to a pair of bellows (not on the picture). I don't know about it's presumed age, though.

I agree with FTK: it's upside down. Looks like a 19th century "cathedral window" anvil, rather than mediaeval. These aren't that rare in Europe. Mediaeval anvils seem mostly to have been square or pentagonal or hexagonal block anvils. This guy did some decent research on anvils and has a nice website: A Gallery of Early Blacksmithing. Anyone who knows about other pictures/drawings of 16th century and older anvils: feel free to let me know. They're rare.

thanks Bruce. I plan to start on a bickern (about 20" long, 10" high, horns 2" at the base), just to get the hang of working bigger pieces with two hammer men. I'll post some pic's when I get to it. Btw: did you harden the anvil you guys made?

Hi Clewer, check out the website of Lee Saunder and Skip Williams: The Rockbridge Bloomery. They've put about everything they worked out on the web, and it was a major help in doing our bloomery experiment last year. We +- followed their recipe, and it worked like a charm.

Hi Bruce, thanks for sharing these pictures, they're an encouragement of sorts. Did you use coke or coal for the welding fires? And how big was the hearth for these huge forge welds? I'm first doing some studying on the subject, to see how "do-able" this is, in order to convince a few people in our school. So any technical information would be welcome.

Hi Bruce, I am thinking of a project like yours. Would you mind giving me some details of your work, like heating time needed, equipment used etc? It sure looks like a hellish job. Just great :-)! Stefaan