MLMartin

Junk, boat anchor

One is for grabbing a bull nose the other one is for flaring or crimping tubing

I think this thread is already made. Please look in the old post.
I hope a moderator can delete this thread.

In Georgia maybe 100 miles from the cost line. Thick ice storms this week. Not all that cold but the ice took down hundreads of pine trees on my land. I am 10 miles from town and have been without city power for a week. I am happy my grandfather has a old little generator. Probably has not been run in 10 years. I poured some gas in and it cranked right up! Had to remagnatize the coils.

Just enough power to run internet refrigerators and a light or two. Hooked it up to the well pump for a few hours today and had a shower.

Poor shop is dormit

I would try and have the forge a foot or more away from the wall on the opposite side that you stand. Images having a 3 foot bar that you wanted to heat the middle of. You would need a minimum of 1.5 foot from the center of the fire pot to the wall for the bar to fit. If you had a 4 foot bar you would need more. I know it's a small shop and you probably will not be working big railing or such. But you would not want to overly limit the length of bar you can heat.

Can you cut a foot size hole in the wall next to the forge? A side draft hood that punches right through the wall then goes straight up the outside wall will work well. Many people on this site call it the "hofi hood" but it's really just a side draft hood style that has been around many many years.

Your steel and time. But if you are just looking for a very usable anvil the shape you cut is a big waste of metal.

You could cut a nice large double horn anvil with no feet on it. The anvil would be bigger and less material would be wasted as drops. Look at the "Nimba" anvils. Feet could be welded on later our of smaller stock.

And those are some nice toys you have in your shop. I sure wish I could get a big anvil cut from that stuff

Best of luck to you

While brick forges are lovely a metal one could probably be built much cheaper and faster. And they are easy to modify should you desire to change it later. What is the normal temperature where you live? A small room should not be hard to heat. Having a solid work bench bolted to the wall then the vise bolted to it should be very strong. No need to have a steel bar from the vise to the wall.

Depending on smell problems from coal you can use wood char coal to forge with. The smell from this would be very low.

Best of luck. I am sure that space could be used as a great little forge shop

Very unlikely compression.

The anvil appears cast to me. How about turning it over and looking at the underside. It might make it more clear as to the material of the anvil

The other posters are right. The London pattern was a general work anvil. Heavy industry designed anvils with holes just were they needed them. Anvils like the one above and anvils like chain makers anvils had tool holes heavily supported for constant work. For even heavier work you could get a anvil with slots all across the face were you would key in dies just like a power hammer.

No anvil is just right for for all forge work

For my ornamental work that requires a great deal of bending I preferr a long thin double horn.

By the time the classic London pattern had taken its shape in America as a thin long anvil most shops had meconized and would use power hammers for most heavy forging. The anvil was more suted for bending than heavy forging

Finally handled the last hammer. Handle making is on my list of things to practice. And to start hoarding and drying good lumber for the handles.

Yes I would be more inclined to use a iron rod in place of a wood beam for the hammer head. If you used a large cross peen for the head maybe you could set it up to quickly rotate so you could use the peen or flat face!

Best of luck to you

Anvil mass location makes a huge difference. I have a block anvil that is 6" square and 12" tall. It is around 120lb. I dare say no person could reasonably damage this anvil with a 20lb sledge as long as they were hammering on hot iron. Now if you have a 120lb hay budden anvil I think a 20lb sledge would be to large for this anvil, at least certainly to big to be striking heavily over the horn or heal.

The number under the horn is probably the weight. Looks like a 5 or 6 ? That would be 50 or 60

If you plan to use this vice while forging you will be very dissapointed. If you simply need a good vise to forge with you would save a great deal of money buying a used leg vise. For 200 you could buy a very nice leg vise used that will last many years. The price of a new leg vise is very high compared to the many used leg vices on the market in the USA. This type of vise will brake under normal forge work

Colonial Williamsburg has a large number of gardening tools on display and in use around there town. The Anderson armory & blacksmith shop has made a large number over the years.

Looks like a nice rack some one built. If that person is actually getting 3500 he must be living nice and easy.

If you would like any tips or assistance your welcome to swing by my shop some time. It is always nice to have folks in the area that are excited about quality metalworking.

Mackenzie

If you are building a unguided small helve hammer I would use a 20lb sledge hammer head. Mount it on a nice long 3 foot handle. I would use a u shaped leaf spring like the "Hathorns power hammer". If you have a good long range of swing say 10" at the head, it would hit very hard

I forge welded a set hammer struck end together after it cracked. Worked fine for another few months but cracked again, it was solid tool steel. MOB brand. We had 2 or 3 of these set hammers crack all the same way at school.

You could forge weld a collar around the struck end to fix it.

Yes sir definitely cast iron, I just wanted to post about the composite brazed boxes because I have seen many tools destroyed while restoring them because some one did not know how they were made. I might have broken some old tools myself because I did not know better about there construction.....



You might try electrolysis to loosen up the rust

I am surprised that so few current anvil manufactures do not add mounting lugs. They are very handy!

Post photos of the vise screw box. Many screw boxs are made from a dozen parts brazed together.

If you heat this type of screw box it will likely come apart. And I mean break apart because the female threads will yank out of the box making the vice useless. Or by heating it you may end up brazing the screw inside the box.

Many other vices have solid iron screw boxs, or cast iron boxs. Heating this type of screw box may help to loosen the stuck screw.

It's important to know what you have before heat is applied

The soft link is the leaf spring right on top. You can see that the spring is connected to the helve near the center. And the drive rod connected to the leaf spring is on the end. The spring can flex freely. Not the best connection out there but I sm sure it works fine enough. In fact you can see a pile of scale on the floor under the anvil

I have seen a number of European anvils with the bolt lugs. I do not know who made there anvil like that first, it may very well be Fisher. But claiming that it was a copy seems a stretch. It's not a big leap of through for cast anvils to add bolt down holes. I have also seen some anvils with drilled and tapped blind holes in the bottom of anvils. So some bolts can be used to fasten the anvil to heavy iron stands from underneath.

I built a anvil when I was 17, welded it up from heavy iron blocks. I welded a web in between the feet and added bolt holes. At the time I did not know of Fisher anvils. I would not say I copyed Fisher.

Some ideas are to simple to really claim