Marc1

Ha ha, Penrith at 3am is likely to allow you to have a nap in the middle of the road ... Training was between 7pm and 9pm Very reasonable traffic at that time. Have not been back in the last 6 month since trying to recover from a shoulder injury. The city of Penrith is constantly being mentioned in the weather bulletins when talking temperature. It is a pathetic trend that started some 20 years ago. Before, the weather was used to inform and Penrith was known to be an anomaly and avoided for general information. Today it is an instrument to alarm for political purposes. Sydney has a large variety of temperatures and when there are areas that can get to 40C, at the same time there are suburbs that can be as low as 27. Notably Palm Beach due to being a peninsula and smack on the ocean. Using Penrith as a temperature parameter would be like placing temperature gauges inside a greenhouse. A bit of trivia ... the workers that built the Hawkesbury bridge were from New York and they named the island opposite "Long Island" and the town, "Brooklyn" and the name stuck till today. https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Brooklyn+NSW+2083/@-33.5474967,151.234073,14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b0d51c0e99536d1:0x5017d681632ae60!8m2!3d-33.5483592!4d151.2149798 https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Palm+Beach+NSW+2108/@-33.598568,151.2911117,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b0d52ad5a1ce9a5:0x5017d681632c5b0!8m2!3d-33.601111!4d151.321667

Hi Kozzy ... i bought a Lincoln "bullet" welder, 3 phase DC generator, 250 AMP, years ago made in the sixties and the seller gave me among other things, leads for tig welding with it. I never used them since I never TIG welded before. Is it likely to be relatively easy to do with this dinosaur? It surely weld like a champion and is smooth as they come.

Yes, Penrith is a lovely city but the traffic in peak hour is bad. Used to go for training in Penrith at night time, and at that time the street was deserted. As for media coverage of weather issues, they report what sells. The public is brainwashed into believing humans ( only the rich mind you, oh ... and cows as well) are responsible for the weather, so weather doom equates to rich bashing by elevation. Global warming will go down as the second biggest fraud in human history.

it may be the case they use different ways to sell them or are not selling them in the US at all. It is not easy to know the size of a market unless you work in one of the firms that service that market, and even then, marketing data is not something that is freely available nor something you can google reliably most of the time. Plenty of european anvils for sale by ironworks in Petersburg for example. And there are many more of course.

I think you underestimate the number of customers in your country and overestimate the number of anvils imported. They represent a drop in the ocean when compared to the size of the market. Don't forget that your smithing market supports several factories that need to sell hundred times the numbers that may be imported just to make ends meet. Furthermore this is an anomaly and will soon level out. The increased demand in Europe will push the price up and the customers in the US will soon realise that it is better to buy new than unknown bashed up second hand. Time will tell.

Anvils are cheaper in the continent and even cheaper in the UK compared with US prices. i know a guy who ships to the US containers full. he was not cheap enough for me or I would have bought a load myself. Nothing mysterious mate. No anvil conspiracy, just business

You will have to decide if 4 legged chairs suck or rock ... can't be both

Surely one can find uses for the step. hundreds of years of anvils with steps are not to be taken lightly. it is a matter of habit and also depends of what you do. I like real estate on anvils. Big flat areas to expand on That is why I like the southern german pattern. No step and continuity from round to flat and then the square horn and the shelf ... No step ... saves the knees And besides ... I have relatives in Bavaria

Interesting that Rust-oleum attracts mold. It is a paint manufacturer so I suppose it depends which one of their paints you use. For specialised paints we have Hammerite and POR-15 both allegedly very good and very expensive. I have seen Rust-oleum branded pressure cans now that I think of it. In your case I would apply a coat of mold killer that contains Benzalkonium chloride, the sort of stuff you apply to metal roofing to kill lichen. Not particularly bad for humans either ... well unless you drink a pint I suppose.

Like a southern german anvil ... yep ... I worked on anvils with no step and now the london pattern with the step has me out of step ... so to speak. What is the point of the step again? May be a step in the right direction? I get people asking me for money for the house with no steps ... go figure.

Epoxy is good particularly if it is two part. I use a lot of epoxy two pack primer for painting hot dip galvanised steel. Bulletproof and the paint of choice for exposed steel buildings. Made a steel structure over salt water some 5 years ago and it looks the same as the first day. Painting your anvil with two pack epoxy would be of course overkill of the nth degree unless you have the nasty habit of leaving your anvil in the weather. An even then, you can only paint the sides. Nothing wrong with ordinary oil based paint for your anvil. Refflinghaus paints his anvils, and so do many other manufacturers. They surely don't use linseed oil or olive oil beeswax or beef drippings. Matter of fact i have a couple of Australia made farrier anvils that came painted from the foundry in a nice old fashioned red oxide primer. Of course one can use anything really. I try shoe polish next time I remember

All organic oil can become rancid. Rancid is a colloquial term to describe the reaction with oxygen in the presence of light, temperature moisture and bacteria to different degrees. The reaction between oxygen and the double carbon bonds in the molecule of oil eventually leads to polymerization and the oil becomes a solid. As such the oil will produce a film and voila, you have made paint. Clearly if you want to paint your anvil, you are much better off buying a proprietary product rather than attempting to use a home made one. Paint manufacture has come a long way and there is a large variety of choices. Why is it ok to rub your anvil with magic juices yet paint your car is the norm, I don't understand. I promise to try to rub a rusty car with olive oil and see what happens in the long term. Promise !

Light mineral oil will works for a workshop tool, but I wouldn't use it for finishing a nice sculpture. For that a mixture of eucalyptus oil and beeswax would be preferable ... with a touch of mint perhaps For the workshop anvil an alternative would be mixing beeswax with olive oil and a dose of kaffir lime leaves.

Ha ha, so true! Especially if your ethnicity makes others assume you can not possibly speak "their" language. i had to tell people off many times by simply saying in their language ..." do you think you speak a secret language?" As for face expressions, they are indeed part of what you say, however most people are well trained in communicating on the phone and know how to overcome the lack of it. Teleconferencing biggest shortcoming is the tendency of some to hog the microphone and prevent a rising hand and an "excuse me" to stop the tirade and allow for a word in.

I vote for home built. Most likely by a lefty.

Are you sure that sideblast is the norm in the UK?

105F to 115F in Sydney this past week, however only in one particular area, Penrith, notorious for being hot and humid, worst possible location for a city. The rest of Sydney had some milder temperatures for summer, around the 90F mark. Not that the weatherman ... sorry person ... is interested. Hot days are announced with dutifully somber faces and funeral voices ... even when it has been this hot every summer since ... well the last ice age I love it

Definitely depends from location and weather. A vice or anvil left outside will need all the help it can and I would paint it all around but the face and then cover with something that keeps the rain off. Inside, I don't have the need for much. All I do is wrap the anvils and the vice with a canvas when I finished using them. In a high humidity area may be boiled linseed oil or beeswax. Not something I had to think much about. Probably more an issue for those who live on coastal areas. The sea air is unforgiving. How is it in snow regions?

You have a very fine anvil and a family history to go with it. I hope you can keep her within the family awaiting the member that decides to do some blacksmithing on her.

I use "Pferd" made in germany. Bought a large box of the things and another box of flap disk.

I agree with Bean ... best sizes are 5" and 9", forget 4" and 4.5". I believe you guys in the US have 6". Probably a good choice too. As far as brands, if you are going to buy second hand, all bets are off. You are buying unknown provenience and conditions. New ... Makita is by far NOT what it used to be. Cheap power tools like grinders, are made in China in the well known cheap and nasty way, just with the Makita logo. If you can find made in Japan, whatever brand, buy it. Made in Germany or US, buy it. Milwaukee despite being owned by Techtronic, that also owns Ryobi, a brand you don't want to use too often, is a decent grinder and so is DeWalt, Bosh (blue) Feins, and many others. I use mainly 5", soft start, Rat tail, dead man switch Milwaukee. Have also a couple of Dewlat 9" and a little Hitachi full aluminium body 4" 30 years odl made in Japan that refuses to die. It is a very useful tool, that demands respect and that should never been used without the guard and full face shield and hearing protection.

Sure, I am not denying the dangers of a grinder of any size. It would be redundant to anyone with metal work experience to enumerate the occasions he knows first hand of horrific injuries. i am only saying what i believe to be the case of those photos. The many times I have broken thin cutting disk, when cutting colorbond fence sheeting, something they are not made for, they fly apart and just flop one meter away due to their minimal mass. Not to encourage anyone to be complacent with disk of any size though. The grinder is by far the most dangerous powertool in a metal workshop.

I find that odd to say the least. you had my fair share of 1mm cut off disk breaking and every time the light mass of the disk meant they did not do much damage at all. Had bits hit my shirt, pants or hit the floor with no consequences. A thicker disk is another matter entirely. I believe that the disk in the gyprock wall is a fake. You can still see the paper surface lifted in the cut and gypsum powder going down the cut from when it was done with the running grinder. i abstain from commenting on the safety glasses picture ... however it seems to me ... may be wrong ... but those two halfs, the glasses and the wall seem to fit each other.

Sometimes ebay or google have a bunch for sale for a decent price. At the moment there is a dude from the Maldives that sells 10 for 160 bucks. Not sure what the postage is though. otherwise "Artisan supplies" has new tongs for about $30 when on sale. I have a dozen or so old tongs, some bought from a diver that brought them back from the bottom of Many harbour. They work but I always reach for the nicely made new tongs from Gameco. I don't enjoy making tools, only using them.

Those edges have not seen much work at all. Most if not all anvils in active use have radius on their edges, chips, worn out, no anvil has pristine edges unless it is for decoration purposes only. One thing I would do is rebuild the horn's end to needle sharp condition ... ... nee, only kidding.