Marc1

Mm ... you gave me a good pointer, it is a collection. "Collector" sounds much more professional ... sort of purpose driven. Thanks I am a collector of tools ... wow! Who would have thought

Mm ... hammers he? ... I am a compulsory acquirer of tools, any tool. In fact I take up a project just to have an excuse to buy the tools for it. Bought an Echo pole saw when my daughter asked me to prune a tree, bought a honda powered, professional brick saw to build a pizza oven and imported a T180 Bobcat to level a driveway. One of my workshops turned into a storage unit with hardly any room left. I think I would be classified as a hoarder if I didn't use most of my tools. I do have some tools I never ever used, but no one knows that ...

Cast iron just from the way it broke. It would be an interesting project to make a new jaw.

We wouldn't know what an anvil going price is in the Netherlands, what I do know is that in Europe there are some high quality anvils, French, German, Swedish etc. That particular one ...If I lived in Europe I would only pay a low price for. From your photos it seems the face is soft or turned soft from the welding on he edge, educated guess from the myriad of hammer marks but happy to be wrong. Add to it the no name, I say that 450 Euros is way too much. Keep on looking, there are a lot of very good quality anvils that side of the pond, and distance between countries is ridiculously small. You could buy super cheap in England, Super good in Germany and France ... hey ... it is you who should tell us what good stuff is available over there

Ebay has a small PW 86 lb asking US $625. That is 4 times the going price for you and twice the price for Australia Surely the bladesmithing programs have an influence on the market. Proof is the number of people who think blacksmithing is making knifes. However, I wouldn't hold my breath for prices to drop. Bladesmithing had a resurgence like cooking had based on cooking shows. The difference is that anyone has access to a kitchen and people willing to try your work. "Making knifes" is a bit more complicated. I would like to see people interested in blacksmithing work that does not mention blades of any description. That would be refreshing and a welcome change. The market at least in Australia is hungry for locally handcrafted items. Wooden items of very poor quality go like hot cakes here. A blacksmith making everyday stuff can sell whatever he makes at good prices. But if you talk to someone about taking up blacksmithing you get the usual conspiratorial smile and nudge ... do you make knives?

Strike while the iron is hot. But I like the spanish version better because it rimes. Hierro candente golpear de repente.

There is no substitute for a proper hydraulic cylinder and pump and air assisted is sort of slow. What about hydraulic assisted? All you need is an electric motor and a hydraulic pump and both can be had second hand. Needs a bit know how and safety measures but should be much faster with the appropriate flow.

1) Marc and I live in Australia 2) It was my first job at age 15, working in my father's smithy 3) making something that is utilitarian and decorative at the same time is extremely satisfying. 4) the heat in summer 5) I make, railings, gates, lamps bed heads etc 6) I can stick and mig weld ... just. Couldn't make a living welding though, not without serious training. 7) i am not sure why you would ask a blacksmith about welding. Blacksmith usually stink at welding and some even think that being a bad welder is proof of their blacksmith skills (I know, funny but true). Since I do more metal fabrication than blacksmithing I need welding skills and always think in doing a course but keep putting it off. So I would love to be in your course learning welding, but would probably hate working as a welder in a factory or on the road welding pipes. So perhaps I would say something on the lines of ... learn to weld but keep an eye out for other opportunities to set up an independent workshop, fabrication, repairs, blacksmithing? You are welcome. That was not so hard.

Dressing the edge of your anvil is personal preference and relates to the work you do and the size of the anvil. So in other words you first get started with whatever you do and then you customize your anvil. if you feel that you must do this for whatever reason, give the working edge a small rounding, something you will not regret later, say 3/16 What do you actually do on your anvil?

It's not too hard to imagine someone running the pointy horn into his thigh and take to it with a hammer with gusto. Your was just a bit overdone. Grind the excess mushroom off and leave the round point untouched. As for the dressing of the edge, without knowing what you do on the anvil it is a bit of a moot question. There is no such thing as the ideal or standard radius or the manufacturer would supply the anvil dressed. On the other hand, a lot of chips you see on anvils are bits that came off from sharp edges and likely from missed blows or working cold stock. It would be difficult to break a bit off an anvil with a round edge and beating hot stock. But ... if you need to ask the question i wouldn't grind any radius at all and work your anvil as it is until it will become obvious what you need for that particular work you do.

Easy 10 Kg ... will do a nice anvil for now if you can secure it well to a stump in a vertical position. You can get back at it for the bruises on your toes ...

Yes, your maths is right, you will only need 90 psi to produce the same force when all is stationary. However it will cycle the same not because of pressure but because of volume, since the volume of air you will use will be larger and the pressure drops as you use air volume. If you had infinite storage, you would have some savings Your compressor pump may stop earlier because it achieves the pressure quicker but you will be using more air per stroke due to the larger volume of your piston, so I don't see any savings there. You can not create energy so energy in you compressor, energy out of your hammer, mutatis mutandis, the difference shouldn't be much at all, yet when it comes to compressors, bigger is always better. Can you actually change the piston size like that? I thought it would be an integral part of your hammer. Check your hammer's specs. it should tell you the CFM/psi/rpm required. i don't know how much more compressor you need over the requirement of your hammer. The manufacturer should tell you all that. I suppose at a wild guess, 30% more would be a good thing.

Sure thing. I answered a post on Gumtree for an ad that was interstate, posted in Victoria and I am in NSW. Peter Wright anvil almost 500 lb, wanting $2500. Call the guy and asked for more pictures. Lots of chisel marks on the cutting table and the horn. Normal edge wear, decent flat face. Called back and gave him the speech of what this retails for in that condition and he said he wanted $1000. Offered $900 and got it. Paid $200 for interstate shipping. It is a real good price fo Australia where some anvil collectors are selling old beaten up anvils for $10 a pound. The internet is full of real ugly anvils for a king's ransom. They add to the folklore I suppose. There was an ad selling anvil and stump. The anvil sold and the stump was still there for sale with a $150 tag ... just an ordinary slice of log.

A hardy hole in the side can be handy when working long stock for architectural work. Must avoid abuse it though. 14 anvils? Wow ... I have 5 and some of them are in the way ... but 14?

If you have the cash, buy the mill ... you will not be sorry and you will find hundred more jobs for it. If you don't, you can always sell it. I once found a brick saw for sale in a pawn shop and bought it thinking in making a pizza oven that needs so many brick cuts. I have so far used the saw for 20 jobs and yet to make the pizza oven

That is certainly not a common design not even for Europe, but if you can get it cheap, 300 lb is a nice size

It's max revs. Can be anything.

if you are talking about your hammer now, think of it when not in motion for a second. You have 60 gallons of air at 120 PSI in your tank, connected to your hammer piston that has ... say 30 square". That means that for each square inch of surface on your piston there is a downward force of 120 pounds. so 120x30= 3600 lb. That is the power of the stroke ... well sort of because when in motion you also have kinetic energy of the mass of the moving parts so substancially more, but for illustration purposes it will do. There are a series of other very interesting factors in this equation but you get the idea. If you now have a smaller piston, say only 10 sq", the downward force of your little hammer will be 120x10= 1200 lb plus the rest that will necessarily be less because it is a lighter hammer compensated somehow by a faster stroke but still overall way less. You can increase the power of the thump by increasing the pressure setting on your compressor and use in that way more air but you are limited by the build of the hammer and you don't want to abuse it. Put too much pressure in it and it will be like using nitro in your car.

How long is a piece of string? Realistically it's a small anvil and I am sure you can do better than that. Even with high demand, $300 - $400 should be a nice earner for the seller. $800? Tell him he is dreaming ...

There is a relation between the volume of your compressor tank and the flow of the pump. Increasing storage capacity is OK for a one time run but then the pump will not be able to refill in time for a second run. If you are running out of air at your normal working pace, you need a bigger compressor, that is a bigger pump and a bigger tank, there is no way around it. A power hammer manufacturer may underestimate the size of the compressor required for commercial reasons, but it is you that must determine how much volume of air you need. The CFM of your compressor has no bearing on the performance of your hammer, well, until you run out of air that is ...the pressure does, and as other have said you have to run your hammer at the pressure it is designed to take, not more nor less.

TJ, flow in a hydraulic pump is the result of displacement and rpm. Different pumps will have different maximum rpm so two pumps may have the same flow but at different rpm due to their construction. A heavy pump may cavitate if driven at 2500 rpm when a smaller lighter one may be ok at 4500 rpm. When you read the specs of a pump you will see displacement in a unit of volume like cc or cubic inches, then Max speed for that pump, maximum flow at that particular maximum speed, and pressure. So there is no set RPM to rate all pumps unlike air compressors that can rate a compressor in CFM simply because they are driven by an electric motor that has a constant and known speed. Hydraulic pumps are rated at their maximum speed and that maximum speed is dependent from their construction.

You guys don't say quid ... ?

In an anvil poor country like Australia everything goes. A light piece of rail is considered a commodity worth selling on ebay. Then again if someone wants to beat up a bit of 1"x1/4" flat bar into something resembling a knife, who are we to object the abject object that is the object of this objection? After all the buyer can fill the hollow parts with concrete and add some mass this way ... right?

You can probably buy a plug already wired with a meter or so of cable and spade connectors attached from your local electrical wholesaler. That little fan surely need replacing. It would be interesting to make one out of aluminium and balancing it properly. If you have the original covers for front and back, you could do without the fan and drill a hole in the casing to use some of the air from the blower to cool the motor. A bit hit and miss though to guess the volume of air required and so the right size hole. If you don't have the covers, I think you are in for more work than it's worth to get that thing working again ... unless you enjoy shaping sheet metal.

If you are in the UK, it's just a plug and play then. Not sure you are allowed to do it yourself in UK though ... actually I think you can just like in NZ. So no issues with the frequency. You have 240V 50Hz nominal 230V. Your colour code is Brown = active ... blue = neutral, green is earth. Your wall socket has 3 holes. The top is the earth, the right side as you look at the wall is the line or active (some people say "live") and the left is Neutral. If you go and buy a plug, you guys use "G" type plugs that have a fuse inside. When you open the plug you must make sure to have the brown wire from your load attached to the side where the fuse is, (right) and the left is for your blue wire, neutral, and the green is your earth and goes to the big pin at the top. The connections are marked inside. Here is a video that tells you how to do it. This is a video for the UK and for G type powerpoint and plugs and does not apply to the US nor Australia. In Australia the powerpoints look like yours but upside down so the earth is below, the active is on the left on the wall and neutral on the right. US is different again. ://plumbing-n-electric.wonderhowto.com/how-to/wire-type-g-electrical-plug-294855/