anvil

The most efficient setup for your post vice, anvil and forge is a triangle. Each piece at one of the points. About a step and a half to each: forge to anvil, forge to post vice, and post vice to anvil. Like Charles said, then set your power hammer back between anvil and post vice. I place both my 25# lil giant and my treadle hammer on their own platform back about a step and a half from the line between anvil and post vice. The most stable setup for the stand to be 3' or so into the ground. My stand is a log stump cut to a rectangul. I've used a railroad tie plate forever to bolt me post vice to.. I bolt my vice to this and lag this to the top of my post. There are 2 side straps and a back strap welded to this plate and these straps are lagged horizontally into my post. If this makes sense, I cut an "L" out of the post from the top down to where the bottom of the post vice sits. So it makes a step in the post with the step at the bottom. I have a piece of heavy angle iron that sits on this step. It has a hole drilled into it the diameter of the round tenon at the bottom of your post vice. I drill thru here into the wooden step. I drill a couple of holes into the vertical leg of the heavy angle, and a couple on the bottom leaf and use these holes to lag this angle to both the horizontal foot and the vertical stump I flat out guarantee you that your post vice will not move no matter how heavy your iron is!

It's a great way to drive stakes,,,

Lol, different strokes. My first years were as a farrier with a portable metal stand. I used this in every possible situation. When I set up my shop, I went for a buried in the ground stump. Now stump doesn't mean round log drop. My stump is cut to give me about 2" all around my anvil. So it's rectangular, not round. Eventually I mortised it into the stump. The mortise is deep enough to add a couple inches of sand. This makes leveling the anvil a snap and, most important, gives me the best sound deadening hands down. And it means all the boogers and traps( chains,straps, turnbuckles etc) are gone. Rot isn't a problem with proper stump prep. Roofing tar is great,,, below ground,,, To amend the above, my first 5 or so years in my shop, my stump was round and not buried in the ground with all the inherent problems. I read about mortising your anvil into the stump in "the Ring" and that's when my stump became rectangular, got buried in the ground and mortised into the stump on a bed of fine sand.

Lol, differences. The horn's primary function in my opinion is to turn a scroll. Ask or watch any farrier. It's convergence creats an infinite number of curves to bend your scrolls. A sharp tip means you can turn those bitter end finials literally to zero and have complete use of the horn with no reason for a Bic. Thus, for me this is not a reason for a Bic. There's obviously other reasons. The only reason I can see for a blunt end is to not have a sharp point to stick your leg. Lol, and there is a far better way to keep that from happening. Anvil Situational awareness? Truth be known I rarely use the horn any more. Nearly all my scroll finials are turned free hand over the edge of the anvil and with my sets of bending forks on my post vice for the rest. The horn's primary use for me now is to tweak or fix a flat spot in a scroll that is too tight for my forks. And here the sharp point is the most used part.

I radius mine from 3/8" to zero. 3/8" at the step and tapered to zero just ahead of the hardy hole.

Like I said above and Charles said, don't put fireclay in your firepot. It's unneeded. That's why it's made out of cast iron. Clinker sticks to the fire clay. And finally normal fire control with your poker will chip it off.

I'm a proponent for repairing anvils,,, so,, You can fix the horn by using a rosebud and two hammers. Rock your anvil back on its back edge so the horn points more or less up. Take a good heat back a few inches on the horn. Use your daily driver hammer and a heavier hammer to draw the tip back out. Use the heavy hammer to back up the blows of your lighter hammer. It becomes the anvil As far as dressing the edges, they are pretty rough. It's a personal choice. We have the ability today to bring old anvils up to "new" for reasonable money. This means your 100+ year old anvil will be in new condition going into the next hundred years. Not to mention having a pristine anvil to work on. Can you weld and follow directions? If so the cost is less than 50 bucks and your time. It's not a difficult process. Got a friend who can weld and follow instructions and can you do the grunt work for him? (Grinding). A welding shop is the most expensive, but still reasonable when you figure the life of the repair. I stress the "follow instructions" because many welders believe a less expensive rod will be just as good. It's not. A good enough rod will give you a 10 year fix if used in a working shop whilst the proper rod will give you a 100 year fix. Here's what I believe is the best process for repairing an anvil: https://www.anvilmag.com/smith/anvilres.htm

A long ago blacksmithing friend from California was a "double striker" as well. Lol, what we do for show and what we do for go are sometimes very different. Frosty, you must have better eyes than me. i see no fire. But check out how they are swinging. one hand near the hammer and one hand back near the hilt. No matter how hard the swing, those hands are the key to control and safety. Now go back and look at the first pic. I know FTC from here and a few other sites and have great respect for him. However in this case, that two handed grip at the hilt would never happen in my shop. It will wear you out, be far less precise, and an accident waiting to happen. I dont know SJS, other than from here, but when reading his dialogue with FTC, we would have no problems striking for each other cold, first encounter. Interestingly enough, in the dialog between the two, Francis kinda indicates he too agrees with SJS. It doesnt matter to me how you strike, or what you allow in your own shops. Thats the joy of having your own shop. Im speaking soly for me and my shop practices. However, it just so happens that the people ive struck for and struck for me in a work roll have all used some variation of the pic I posted. So far no injuries, few missed blows, no dinged anvils or broken handles, so we must be doing something right,

A long ago blacksmithing friend from California was a "double striker" as well. Lol, what we do for show and what we do for go are sometimes very different.

Great video! Thanks. Thomas. Yup, the ones forging the ring are using a variation of what I described above. No wild swings,,, very controlled, very heavy blows as the work demands. The windmill crew in the back,,, who knows what they are doing. They don't appear to be forging hot iron or we should see sparks or at least a glow. So I would say they are doing some type of heavy cold work and using the proper swing to get her done. I'm going to go ahead and post these two lady farriers striking and making a draft shoe. It's a beautiful dance and a great example of team striking. If it's bad, because I can't identify them, than please delete. lady farriers striking.mp4

To answer your question. Repair it if you want. If you have never used an anvil with a level face, then you don't know what you'r missing Like was said above, sway does not preclude you from being able to level your work, but sway is NEVER a benefit. Being able to level on an anvil with sway is a work around for the sway, not an improvement. Repairing your anvil is a personal choice. If I were to use this as a farrier, I'd repair it. If I were a hobby smith, prolly not, as a part time smith, maybe, but depends on my work. As a full time smith, I'd bring it up to new. Most don't realize that the process most often used when forging is to bring it back to level after every heat. If you don't do this, cumulative twist and edge bend will clean your clock. Basically after every heat and before my iron goes back in the fire, it's levelled on the face of the anvil and checked by eye. Another matter is if you can weld and can follow instructions. If yes, then this is a fix that would take very little time and money. If not, then can your welder follow instructions? Lol, believe it or not, this can be a problem. Many welders believe they "know best" and won't follow the process nor use the proper rod. Here's the tried and true method for refacing an anvil: https://www.anvilmag.com/smith/anvilres.htm When repairing, always check level by checking the diagonals.

Thanks for picking that up. Lol, I'm going to have to draw it on my table to figure it out.

What a score. I've never had it in a wooden box. Mine all came in metal cans. They made three flavors, at least I believe all were made by the same company. Cherry weld, ezweld and Climax. I believe the iron content decreased from ezweld to climax to cherry weld. I might have them mixed up. Alas, all good things come to an end.

reminds me of a story,,, well lol, not for here.

Both are excellent reasons! Here's the real deal,,,. I don't know if any of you remember Judd Nelson. A legend from the Smokey Mtns (if I remember correctly) featured in the Foxfire books, a hoot to watch at long ago ABANA conferences to mention a few of his highlights. Well, his way of applying 20 mule team borax was to grab a 3 or 4 finger pinch and toss it at the fire.... Never missed a weld and, of course done in broad daylight. So have fun playing with fluxes and never forget,,, the fancier the name,,, the better the bragging rights.

What's relatively thin? I have no problem forge welding 16th" A lot of good advice here which should solve your problem. The one not mentioned,,, Add just a touch more experience.

Lol, a very upsetting experience! I don't chain or bolt my anvil down for many reasons and this situation is one of them. Personally, this is a perfect situation for a forge welded collar.

Iron dragon, that might be the old ezweld. Good stuff. I've still got a can of that and cherry weld as well.

I rest my case. :). I did the melting thang once and bought the high price spread once as well. I just use plane ole 20 mule team borax with a little boric acid thrown in for bragging rights.

Use castable refractory or "fire clay". Google it for location. There are many companies who make it. You buy it by temp needs. It can be found at pottery supplies as well as hardware stores and fireplace supplies. The hardware stores and fireplace supplies usually don't have the needed temps Do not line your firepot. Clinker can stick to it and your fire tools will trash it with normal use.

I do a lot of hot filing. I too use a farriers rasp. A slight correction, both sides of a farriers rasp are meant for horse hoof, not metal. When I was a farrier I had two farriers rasps, a dead one and a live one. The live one was for hoof, the dead was for metal or whatever. I start my hot rasping with the fine side. Then turn it over and use the coarse side. I use all my files the same way. A hot rasp is a great way to dome the struck end of your hand tools. I start with the fine side. This prevents the coarse side from grabbing, then reverse to hog it out. Then back to the fine side to clean it up. One heat does it. The filing is done with a rocking stroke. Start with rasp tip down on the far side, then rock it parallel as you come towards the top, then tip up/handle down as you rasp the near side. This is all one stroke. There's no better teacher for how to file in this day and age than by being a farrier. 8 horses or so a day, 4 feet per horse and all are brought to level plus setting two angles with a farriers rasp. Once upon a time Tom Joyce made a comment to me. " You were a farrier, huh? Must be pretty good with a file!" It took me a bit to realize the power of that statement. Once I realized it's meaning, I took it to heart and used that base knowledge to expand my filing. There's generally a "touch of the file" in all my work My go to files are two half round bastard files. One is half inch. The other is one inch. They last a long time. I prolly don't take as good of care of them whilst working, but in-between use they all have a home that keeps the cutting surfaces from touching iron. Throwing them on a table or in a drawer just doesn't cut it, so to speak. All my files have a safe edge. Usually a narrow edge. This means the safe edge has no teeth, so it removes no metal whilst the perpendicular edge cuts.

If I read Glen's PDF above correctly, It appears that it is not a problem no matter how you apply it.

Thomas, I got the same impression that he forged the billet then stock removal for the blade. Nice knife and congrats on the forge weld!

Pretty cool!

I have a similar memory. My family was from Cripple Creek, Co. Gold miners and silver before that in Leadville. We would go visit friends and relatives and when we got to the lookout before dropping into the valley we were confronted with a spactular panorama and the smell of coal smoke from the houses. When I started smithing, I too felt like I was coming home.