Everything Mac

My 2p if I may. Youtube is a double edged sword at best. Indeed I concur with much of what has already been said. My main gripe that I see with all online content, not just videos, is presenting opinions as fact. And the apparent total lack of understanding of which is which. "This is the "best" bla bla bla" "It's an English anvil so it must be a Mousehole" "you need sharp edges on your anvil" "That's definitely a such and such brand of xyz" "This is how you forge xyz" There's a handful of youtube blacksmiths I enjoy. Some are entertaining, others are more educational. I think the more popular characters have a duty to further the craft and promote safety and education. If they don't know how to do something they should be making that perfectly clear. The issue is however the old you can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Andy

A cracking press. I quite literally grew up using a Denbigh No. 4, making parts for my Dad. It's still in daily use today and he must have had it at least 20 years. The Denbigh's arm is cast, the posts for the ball weights were not only tapered but octagonal. If your ball isn't original you might have a heck of a time trying to get it to fit. All the best Andy

*Nope I'm talking rubbish - you can get 1400*C board but it's twice the price and castreekilns are out of stock. Andy

Almost certainly a cast iron ASO. BUT as they go that one doesn't actually look too bad. That said I agree with @JHCC - a good set of tongs for example make a world of difference. All the best Andy

Not too sure off the top of my head. The only board I've come across is only rated to 1260*C. Board also has the same issue as blanket in that the fibers are carcinogenic when dislodged (when being cut for example) - Bricks are the way forward for me. Saying that board certainly makes life easier for your roof. And as long as you wear your PPE when building the forge you should be fine. Andy

My only worry with that is that you would have a weak spot in your insulation at the corners. I wondered if a beefed up "C" frame design with a hinged door on the back say 9" wide. Then you'd have 3 open sides and would still be able to fit long sections of wider material in. I'm not sure I if you're on instagram Joel but "Jorgenhaal" recently built a very nice gas forge with big arches for the door pulley system. Not exactly KISS but looked cracking. All the best Andy

Looks good to me. When you say you want to have doors on all 4 sides though, how are you going to support the roof? Or are you having it open on 3 sides with a solid back? Grade 26 bricks are what I've been using. - Well that's not strictly true. I've been using ceramic blanket and a dense castable refactory in my little forge but the mk2 version I'm building will be using the grade 26 bricks. I believe the 26 are better at insulating than the higher grade 28's. You can't go far wrong with either a dense brick or castable floor backed by some insulating material. I've gone for a 2" block with an inch of blanket under it, which should be ok. 3" insulation brick walls / roof. I'd be very interested to see what door design you come up with. All the best Andy

Fully agree. Make sure you're happy before you hand over the cash. £200 is a decent price these days. Looks like there may be a gouge in the face but there's plenty of space left on it. 28" long? that'l be around 2cwt. I've also done a video on identifying what your anvil is made of here: All the best Andy

Explaining the real basics for the beginners out there. Cheers Andy

Here's the walk around video of the hammer. As you say Frosty it's not so great for general forging. But it really comes into it's own with top tools. All the best Andy

Will do. I'm finally going offshore tomorrow so I'll get the drawings done as soon as I can. All the best Andy

You're welcome bud. I was using it a lot today, while it is good on it's own for just pounding stuff, it really comes into it's own when using top tools. There's so much clearance available I can even use the hand punches I have. (not that I would) You get a good level of control with it, though it struggles with really light taps as it needs a bit of a swing to get things moving, by which time you gain a bit of power - if that makes sense? I'll be making some hardy tooling for the anvil. Coupled with that it really will be a great machine to have. I'll be editing a detailed video on it with dimensions and such this evening. Hope to get that uploaded asap. All the best Andy

Or a treadle hammer, what ever you want to call it. I picked this up at auction a few weeks ago. Cleaned it up and got it back in use. The hammer weighs 28lbs. It hits quite hard and there is a reasonable amount of control. It needs a couple of bits sorting on it but on the whole I'm pretty chuffed with it. Here's a quick video on it running. Skip in a couple of minutes if you don't want the chat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVtLFndlG8k All the best Andy

Anvil identification:

Thanks Luke. All the best Andy

Final parts of the series are up. Let me know what you think and stick around to the end of the second video to find out the details of a giveaway competition I'll be running. All the best Andy

New "forging a bottle opener" series has started. Let me know what you think so far. Cheers Andy

Invest in a set of either "presto" or "dormer" drill bits. - Presto are UK made, not sure about Dormer off the top of my head but either way you won't be disappointed. Slightly more expensive than your average brands but you can't beat them in my opinion. All the best Andy

test

I think the earlier Trenton anvils had forged bases and only the later ones were cast. They had a weld line around the waist if I recall correctly. A bit of searching on this forum will bring up the information. Andy

lol. Yes I think "Yet" is probably a more accurate answer. Especially with the long shopping list I have.

I'm almost certain I've spent less than that equipping my entire shop over the course of about ten years.

As TP says, claying your current pot might be an option. Though 6" deep does seem excessive. I reckon you'd probably find the smaller design better for your day to day needs. All the best Andy

We need to take a deeper look at "Sway" - occurring on wrought iron anvils with a steel face plate. Let's imagine for a moment that we aren't talking about metal anvils but we are intact looking at something made of entirely different materials. - please bear with me on this. Let's pretend for a moment that the body of your anvil is made from fudge. Yes. Fudge. That brown sweet stuff I would love nothing more than to sit and eat half a pound of. (For our analogy Nougat would work equally well.) Fudge is reasonably hard compared to many sweets. You'd have to press pretty hard on it before it starts to deform right? But in the grand scheme of things fudge is not that hard, so if you want to forge sweetie goodness you're going to need something a bit harder to go on top of the fudge to protect it. In steps Toffee. Now toffee can be really hard. Especially if it's just come out the fridge. But if you sit it on the side for a while it warms up a bit and becomes a bit softer, it will bend rather than crack but it is still significantly harder than fudge. Would you agree? Toffee would be ideal, something like jolly ranchers hard candy would be too hard and would just shatter if you hit them. So we've made our anvil with the fudge body and the toffee face and we can now forge out some nice sweeties. But the problem with these materials is that they are not immovable objects. By their very nature they have a certain amount of ductility in them. Fudge is significantly more ductile than good quality toffee but toffee will still bend rather than shatter (if it's not too cold.) Having a toffee plate that is particularly hard would increase the risk of the edges chipping. 20 years worth of pounding out sweets will inevitably take it's toll on our anvil. That toffee will eventually start to deform and press into the fudge beneath it; and so you have an anvil that has developed a swayed face. Now obviously the fudge represents wrought iron, which is significantly softer than the steel face represented by the toffee. The steel face on an anvil has not been hardened so much that it is brittle and simply cracks. It can quite easily deform if used heavily for a significant number of years. Struck by a team of workers with sledge hammers for example, as was often done when these anvils were made. It is incorrect to assume that because the anvil has swayed that the face must therefore be soft and milling it flat would be relatively easy. Now as I've mentioned the steel is not "Jolly Rancher hard candy" hard, but "Toffee" hard. Still hard but retains it's ductility rather than being so hard it will shatter. A carbide bit will do it but that doesn't mean you should. Milling a swayed anvil flat can remove a significant portion of the steel face plate from the anvil. - Typically a face plate is about 1/2" an inch thick, more or less. One would like to hope that the heat treatment of the anvil hardened the entirety of the 1/2" thickness but I have heard of cases where this has not happened and a smith has removed almost all of the hard material from the face plate leaving soft steel underneath. Effectively ruining the anvil completely. Now with that said I must mention that I personally have had an anvil skimmed. As with welding an anvil face it CAN be done. BUT, and it's a big but, you run the risk of ruining the anvil completely. I had a 262lb Peter Wright anvil that I had owned and used without issue for a year as suggested by folks on here. The face had a few pit marks where it had been left outside for goodness knows how long and these pits effected the look of some of my work. 99% of the time it was ok but some times the pits were making it difficult to finish the work as I wanted. Now as I mentioned above PW anvils has a radiused face to combat sway. It so happened that the pits did not go deeper than this radius on the face and so I figured I would likely be able to get away with having it skimmed flat. I had the job done by a smith that had the equipment to do it. It was not milled but skimmed with a surface grinder with a belt finisher attachment. (There's a video on youtube as it happens of my anvil being done) As it happened I got away with it and the material underneath was as hard as the original face. I got LUCKY! Very lucky. I do not recommend this course of action 99% of the time. You are normally far better off just learning to use the anvil as it is. Use the anvil for a year and see what you think after that. If however the anvil in question is heavily swayed I'd suggest keeping it as it is. All the best Andy

Wire cup wheel on the angle grinder will clean it up perfectly well. All the best Andy