maddog

Lest anyone misinterprets: I think Laoich has built a very nice anvil. I dont envy him having to grind the horn or chip out the hardy hole. As the impact travels down through stacked layers of plates, the plates will flex slightly and seperate in a manner similar to those desk toys that are a row of metal balls suspended on strings. This effect will dissapate energy. The closer the surfaces mate, and the smaller the spans between the welds, the less this will happen. On a vertical stack, since the blow is traveling downwards, a smaller amount of energy is wasted in lateral flexing. That's theory. In practice it may not amount to much of a muchness. But if you are going to build an anvil you have to choose one or the other. I would have chosen to go vertical for those reasons. No one has said the anvil is "wrong" and of course, if it works its right. But what's so bad about discussing the design and considering improvements? When someone displays his work in this forum it is right to encourage him regardless of how well or badly it turned out. At the very least he should have the confidence to go on and try again. But it is also appropriate to critique the work. It is a disservice to someone to stop at telling him "You done good" when you could help him do even better. This is primarily an educational site. Also, importantly, these threads serve as reference material. The next person building an anvil out of forklift tines might appreciate learning that there is another approach and what advantages it might have. Very nice. I can only hope your weather turns warmer soon.

This advice, which has been echoed several times in this thread, is really the best thing you can do. A few hours in a real smith's shop, seeing how things are done will make all the difference.

Should be great! I would have had two layers for the horn. But then I didn't build it . I like the shelf on the side! I've always wanted one on my anvil. Are you going to put feet on it for lateral stability? I'd love to see how you cut the hardy hole. Great job!

A blanket statement would cover all smiths or every smith. "Most" includes more then 50% which means that even 49% might be excepted. That's a fairly modest claim.

Yeah, it's a rounding effect. I rounded down to get whole pounds and rounded up the fractional part to get oz's. 1.875 (the steps are in eigths) comes out a tiny bit below 16ozs - 15.975. Setting up the calculation and the table of figures was 5 mins work. Fussing with it to get it into presentable format took another 30!

How do I figure that? Over the last 15 years. I've watched a fair number of smiths live and video, in the US and around the world and have not seen one used. I've heard smiths say they've never felt the need for one. I rarely spot them in photos of shop tool racks. They are fairly rare new and used except as sledges 8# and more. I've never seen or heard a description of a forging project that called for one. In light of this it seemed a reasonable assumption that over 50% of the smiths don't use them much. I am not claiming they are useless in a smiths shop. Nor was I saying that no one finds them useful. The main thrust of my comment is that if you are a beginner and just starting to make your tools, there are other tools that should come first. However, I am always willing to learn and I did ask Monster above what he uses his for.

I made this chart in Excel because I needed to figure how much 2" axle I needed for a 2lb hammer. It might be useful to others. For a given sq. or rnd. stock dimension, it gives the weight per linear inch in lbs oz. Edited: To add column names PS. I tried to upload the Excel file but the editor would not allow it.

You can rough cut the pein with a torch and grind it. Someone did this recently. It's going to be a lot of grinding and you will end up with a 6#hammer which is kind of heavy but if you think it's a fun project why not? You learn a lot from pursuing your own ideas whether they succeed or not. It seems easier to find a 3# double faced hammer and forge one face into a pein.(they are often called "sledge" hammers these days even though they are light and handled for one handed use). An easy way to start would be to take a heavy ball pein and forge the pein into a vertical pein. This is a much easier forging. You wont get a 3# straight pein but it makes a useful tool and you can explore the capabilities of a straight pein hammer. Truth is, most smiths don't have a lot of use for a straight pein and if you are going to modify hammer heads there are probably more useful top tool that you could make, like punches, fullers etc. Monster said "...there are a couple things I do that having a straight peen makes all the difference...". Could you give a bit more detail? Thanks

If you are going to forge tongs, IMO mild steel is the best choice. It's easier to forge and it tolerates getting hot and being quenched like Caleb says. Tongs made from coil spring or sucker rod can be forged much lighter and still be strong enough. I dont think it's worth the hassle unless the tongs would be very heavy otherwise or you need the extra strength. You should be fairly good at forging tongs in mild steel before you attempt a pair out of tool steel.

That's cool! From looking at it: The work is clamped between the horizontal surfaces of the two jaws. The height of the lower jaw is adjusted by the screw. The upper jaw is raised or lowered by pulling or pushing the handle that looks like a tail. The handle swings a U bracekt, but there's another lever that pivots on that bracket so that when the handle is pushed all the way down, it overcenters and locks like a visegrip. I find a vise next to my forge very useful. I wish I had one of those! It looks shop made.

With that design the exhaust is forced out sideways and will heat up the edge of the shell. I don't think a coffee can will last long if its exposed to hot combustion gases. Perhaps if the refractory protruded 1/2"- 3/4". But IMO, unless you are forging for doll houses, the coffee can forge is a gimmick. It's cool that it works but its not the way I would make a serious tool. Eric uses 14ga steel. I wouldnt go any lighter for this kind of thing.

Thanks, I'd be very interested to know.

From the grinding marks on the side of the straight pein, it looks like this is a modified cross pein where the face has been cut to form the pein. Which might explain why it doesn't appear in the catalog. If the hammer contains Be, the person who did this took a very bad risk. Very bad.

Happy New Year to all of you. May it bring you happiness,wealth and good health. This is probably not the appropriate forum. So sue me!

I have this problem very badly. I've been to the dermatologist several times. Super glue helps some but not enough for me. My guess is that the cold causes the blood vessels to contract and the reduced bloodflow means the skin isnt getting all it needs to stay supple. My solution is to not to wash my hands at all if possible. I clean them off with lard and then wipe that off with a paper towel. Petroleum jelly or bag balm work too. Crisco is not as effective. Lard is the cheapest and most effective at both cleaning and protection. If it gets really bad, wearing surgical gloves for a few hours, or even overnight will work magic.

You want to do your initial grinding with a hard grinding wheel or a belt sander. Flapper disks are for blending and polishing. They are too expensive and not very effective when you want to remove much material. I would buy just one grit for finishing and the choice would depend on how smooth you like the face to be. I dont go higher than 100 grit on mine. IMO with your skills and resources you could fab up a better anvil of that size quite easily. At some point it doesn't make sense to invest too much time refurbishing this one. Especially if its CI.

Looks great! Mine is a very similar three part design. The blade itself is a piece of H13 otherwise it's identical. Your welds are a lot nicer than mine! I shall have to grind mine out and redo them now :)

Baja, if I understand you, you are trying to identify the break point at which it becomes cheaper to roll your own rather than buy. Seems like a useful way to look at it. Since you estimate the time at hobbiest rates I assume you are not making this calculation for pro shops. 50hrs @ $15/hr seems reasonable. I'm a bit confused whether you are considering a construction with a tool steel plate or rather, laying down hardfacing. I would guess the hardfacing to make a brand new face would be pretty expensive. I think the costs of the non HF welding rod, the grinding materials and the electricity to run all that welding, should be included. It's not only a matter of money. There seems to be a strong psychological factor in the mix. A lot of hobbiests have all the resources to build their own, some are even expert welders, yet very few do. In my case, I have all the steel, including tool steel plate, necessary to build several large anvils. I also have several hundred pound of welding rod that I got very cheap and a 300A arc welder. I am not satisfied with my 345# HB. I dont care for the London pattern and the anvil has some defects which bother me. I could build the anvil of my dreams and sell the HB which would easily fetch $800 in my area. I do dream about it, but have never done anything about it. Why not? I could have my ideal anvil for the cost of just the labor plus a chunk of cash for selling my current one. You might say I am lazy. I guess I am. I should be out in the shop instead of typing this . But not many other people are building their own anvils either. Coming at the question from a different angle: New anvils go for about $6/lb. For a used tool in serviceable condition, 50% of the new price, $3/lb, seems quite reasonable.

I uses forges that are quite a bit smaller than yours and they can easily get a piece of steel say for a hammerhead up to welding heat. I would think yours is quite capable of getting there after some adjustment. I don't know all the details of your forge construction but offhand there are a few suggestions that might help it get to welding heat. . Blocking up the front and back to reflect back the heat. An air choke to get the ideal fuel air balance. I run mine a bit lean which seems to give more heat and then kick the gas up while the work is in the chamber to reduce scaling. Running at a lower pressure. Small forges often have a sweet spot in the pressure setting and run hottest at a point below max pressure. Coating the interior with ITC100. Putting some firebrick or refractory rubble on the floor of the forge.

Ive been using a scheme like that on my anvil stand. I used 3/8 x 1.5" strap. It's very simple and works very well and no welds were needed. I have an unmarked 355# HB and I have no problem taking the welder to it and modifying it to suit. In general, my approach is it's a tool, it's MY tool and I can mod it to suit me like any other tool. That said, if I owned a Mouse Hole I would feel differently.

Stock removal, whether it's the main process or follows some forging, is usually done on steel in its annealed soft state. If you take a piece of leafspring that is already heat treated, you will not be able to cut it effectively with files and saws. You will be restricted to grinding wheels and belts and it will go slow because you cant let the piece get hot. Forging can save a lot of grinding time since you start with the piece close to its final shape. The differences between a small forged blade or one that is purely ground to shape are subtle and probably amount to nothing unless forged by a skilled blade maker. Proper heat treating is a very big part of blade making. Probably more than most other kinds of smithing and it's a whole skill in itself. Whether you go stock removal or forging, you will have to invest some serious time in learning the ins and outs of heat treating blades.

I agree. The CI stove, seems like it would be nice but it's going to be awkward to make into a small propane forge. For a first forge, you should stick to a simple, tried and true design. Keep it simple, keep it small and keep it conventional. a 10" or 12" dia shell lined with 2"-3" of coated ceramic wool and a basic burner stuck in one side is a dependable design. If you have problems, people here are familiar with this design and will give you effective advice. Keep the actual chamber no larger than 6"dia x 12" long. 5"x8" is a great size IMO for a small versatile forge. Most people dont have experience working with high temps, propane and refractory. There are countless threads where people have built a first forge with "innovative" designs only to find they dont work well because of something they didn't understand. It's in the nature of good smiths to look at some contraption and think "I can improve on that design". It's an admirable attitude but this is not the place to let it have its head.

That was the only reasonable solution. It's good that you had the determination to push past a disappointment. In the process of making tongs there is a lot of bending and fiddling to get things aligned. It's very easy to develop cracks in this process. In my experience the two villains are cold shuts which tend to form when forging the setdowns for the jaws and boss and the other is a sharp hard corner on the outside of a bend. Sharp corners tend to tear when stretched. Sometimes the reins will develop this kind of crack near the boss from trying to bend them while cold. Eliminating cold shuts and only bending when red or hotter is a safe way to go.

If you follow Stewarts' First Come First Serve thread, you will see a lot of very good deals on anvils listed on ebay. Some steals in fact. Ebay is not some kind of conspiracy to jack up prices on anvils. It's just a market. The value of something is what people will pay for it. If you manufacture electrical switches with gold contacts, there is no sense in complaining that you have to pay absurd prices for the metal because people are wearing it as jewelry. Gold is simply worth what people will pay for it. A market like ebay provides an important service. If it were not for the greedy, profit hungry antique merchants hunting out these anvils, many of them would still be rusting away in people's sheds, waiting for that final spring cleaning when they go to the scrap yard and end up as rebar. We would all like stuff for free or cheap. Problem is that if the price is too low, people are not motivated to supply the goods. If gold cost the same as lead, no one would trouble to dig it out of the ground. Where I live, there are very few blacksmithing tools or anvils to be found. I have bought a lot of good smithing tools on ebay that I could not afford to buy new. Perhaps in some areas these tools can be found at garage sales for a lot less but even then, you have to invest the time and the effort to seek them out. On ebay I have my pick of a wide selection and all I have to do is click on PayPal.