matt87

Even at 60-65 rockwell a miss hit will dent the face,dont ask how i know.What i have been wondering is how hard the face on my big old Peter Wright has gotten over the years.I cant believe how hard it is,dont miss with your head in the way of the rebound.Anyone got any thoughts?

Sounds like work hardening of the face.

Mike, I don't know about how screened your driveway is, or what sort of neighbourhood you have, but I think that 175lb of anvil + say 200lb of sand (sandbox stand) wouldn't grow legs very fast... especially if you could shroud it with bins or cars or something.

Besides, garages aren't actually designed to keep cars you know...

I like them smooth, and wooden. (Ooo er, Missus!) I find that even something like a small chip or split in the wrong place can be uncomfortable within seconds. (Smooth down to 0-size wirewool and raw linseed oil for me!)

Perhaps 'forge-drilling' means 'punching'?

Considering it's an Italian coin, I wonder if the 'al fresco' figure is in fact Vulcan (the Roman ripoff of Hyphestus). Cool find!

Ah, well done sir!

There is a list of anvils being used as instruments here.

Wasn't there a Beatles song involving a blacksmith, or at least an anvil?

Also, I like the mechanics aspects of the factory scenes in Schindler's List.

bp0186
Gives you one guy's take on the traditional oliver hammer. It's basically a hammer on an axle, with a bell-crank at each end. One attaches to a spring holding the hammer vertical when at rest. The second attaches to the treadle, which goes under or alongside the anvil.

One in use here.

Thought I'd share this link with y'all from Tim Lively's site. Looks like something one could make with wood scraps and an afternoon. Save a lot of time, money and trouble finding and 'original' one too -- time, money and trouble better spent on hammering iron, on buying coal and on convincing the wife that 'it's not junk it's resources!'

Blower Plans

That 'headache' is no worry if you're a man, Paul... looks like a Scold's Bridle to me. From back in the day when men were men, women knew their place, and mysogeny and domestic abuse were not uncommon.

Rkat,
Try searching the gallery, there are a few pictures at least.

Welcome to IFI.

Frosty has an experiment planned involving forge-brazing a new steel face onto an anvil body, but no one's sure if it'll work. If you can spare the cash, perhaps you can buy the partial anvil and keep it to one side for such a thing, for a doorstop, paperweight for use during a hurricane etc.

I remember a story from a photocopier repairman. Librarian goes into work one day, switches on and uses photocopier, only to hear a hideous shriek and the machine grind to a hault. Repairman turns up, opens phtocopier, turns out a mouse had decided that the machine was a good bed, but ended up repainting his new home personally...

According to Bealer it was two 'boys of colour', two nailmaker's anvils, two forges, two hammers, two hardies, two forges, and a heck of a lot of 1/4" rods...

For such a reactive metal the longevity of iron is amazing. On a dig last summer we were excavating on a manor house abandoned over 300 years ago and we were pulling all sorts of iron out of the ground; broadhead arrowheads where the barbs and socket were still intact; door hinges; over a hundred nails; I found a stick-tang knife in a few pieces in what was once a drain, and later someone found another, just missing the tip, just where I'd been standing a few minutes earlier. Probably the most amazing find was this. And all these finds were in a fairly acidic soil; no wood survived, just building materials like stone, plaster, mortar etc., metal, some shells (only a fraction) and some bones (most quite delicate). A fair amount of coarcoal though.

My archaeometallurgy tutor pronounces it 'twee-eeairrrr', but she has a fairly strong Sri Lankan accent. I pronounce it 'twee-air', but I've heard 'tweer' and 'tue'.

Ah, a diamond chisel, that makes sense! The places I read never specified
, just 'cut barbs on face with chisel'.

I read an interesting alternatve method in Basic Blacksmithing by Harries and Heer; make a short spike out of the sma type of steel you're using for the face. Place the face on the body and use the spike to join the two, befor bringing the whole to welding heat and welding.

I've read about welding a steel face to the iron or mild steel body of a hammer. Bealer and elsewhere talk of cutting barbs into the face so the two stick together physically before you weld them, but I've been unable to find any details of this or pictures. I'm curious how many one should put on a side, where exactly etc. Any advice out there?

There was talk a little while ago about taking one of them cheap old table-top hand-cranked grinders and attaching a home-built blower cage.

Also remember that electronic storage media can physically age; don't know if it still happens but home-recordable optical discs (CDRs etc.) used to have a limited number of years before the dye faded and the data was lost.

Johannes, that link indeed does make a lot of sense.

My suggestion: big box made of wood (3 feet on a side). Stick a pipe through the back side to act as the tuyere and fill most of the inside with sand, ash, dirt, perlite or whatever you have or can get cheap, then you can shape the firepot (a hollow) to whatever size and shape you want. This is the basis behind most of the world's forges (North America is quite unusual in using bottom-blast).

hibjib, it sunds obvious but does a collier in your area supply metallurgical/smithing coke?

BP0093 Forge Welding hosuld give you the basics. More pertinantly, zis small hand or camp axe

Of course, to add historical geekery to the topic,

racer3j, I just compared your decription with this year's edition of Vaughan's price list. The 1-3/4 Cwt single-bick London pattern anvil that they currently offer matches almost all of your dimensions, excet that the face is listed as 4-1/4 wide and the overall height is 11-1/2. The weight is listed as 88.9K. Oh, and yes it is available in any colour you like so long as it's Record blue

Price, for reasons of interest/curiosity is GBP