Marc1

Aiaiai ... painting an anvil. Checkered black and white? Also ... putty up and sand all those funny scratches and markings for the spray paint to be nice and smooth. Full restoration complete and back to factory standards ...

Steel brush on a sander polisher works better and does not spray wire bits all over the place. As far as wax and other coats, I find them unnecessary. The anvil only rusts if you leave it uncovered overnight. Throw a piece of canvass doubled up and tighten it up with a rubber tie down strap around the foot and it will stay free of rust and need no waxing oiling or anything at all besides a bit of wd40 if you really must.

When I generally speaking agree with Jack and buy tools as if they are going out of fashion, as far as rounding hammers, Thomas hit the nail on the head. What do you forge, determines the hammer you use. Usually I plan the tools required after I decide on a project not before. To make a large rustic hinge for a front door, that is the hammer you use to texture the surface. If you want to make a fishtail scroll, you use a cross peen hammer. Or you can buy every shape hammer there is and you can't go wrong. But will only use the one you need for your next project.

Bluemoon ... I sympathise with your intention of surprising your husband with an anvil. What you don't say is what your budget is nor what date do you need this for. If you read this forum, you will find that buying a good quality second hand anvil at a decent price is an adventure that takes month if not years of searching. A typical anvil weighs in around 120-150 lb and folks pay from $ 200 to $600 and this just as an indication. Your location and the condition of the anvil play a role, if cast or forged, manufacturer etc. If you want to undertake this search, look for the "Thomas Powers anvil purchase method". may be someone can post a link to it ... You have a further alternative to the above, and that is to buy a new anvil. New anvils can be divided in two sorts. Forged and cast. Forged anvils are typically of high quality and of course dearer. Cast anvils are made in China, sold in hardware stores and e-bay, cost a fraction of the forged ones, are frown upon and called ASO (anvil shaped object) Having said all this, I venture that a chinese cast anvil may actually be more useful than a railroad anvil, even if shaped in fancy ways.

Sure, that is why I posted a link with US rebar sizes and codes. As far as my post in reply to a not helpful reply from the marble tower, I find this type of finger wagging replies very irritating because they discourage others and achieve nothing. Then again my irritated reply achieved very little to. Point taken.

A bit about the US rebar, mostly apparently made from old cars ... so a bit of a mixed bag. Must say that it is not the same in other countries who use a wide variety of standards for their concrete reinforcing bars ... https://sizes.com/materials/rebar.htm

Interesting nonsensical attempt at not replying. I suggest ... if you know the answer, as opposed to simply possess "common knowledge" ... that you kindly explain to the simple folk in this forum who are thirsty for one or two words of wisdom dropped from above, and let us know about alloys and all that and if there is a difference between large and small. I, and the rest of the audience I believe ... await with baited breath.

If that is true or not I can not say, but knowing about wax worms I can tell you they will not be very useful for reducing plastic pollution since they don't go underground nor in the water.

I would like to hear from someone who has used an anvil in a backpack for training ...

Sure. I think that in relation to anvil "repairs" because there are so many anvils around gathering dust, and in the wrong hands, the idea that someone will eventually "have a go" at making it "new again", without having any intention of using it for what it was intended is sort of inevitable. To me it is like taking an authentic Chippendale antique table and sand off the top back to flat (to get rid of all those unsightly dings) and applying a coat of polyester two pack lacquer to it ... (oh my I shudder at the thought) and give the carving another coat of polyester resin for good measure.

Yes, bad advice in relation to anvils is rather common. Have a look at this Hay Budden "renovation" www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPfZiecdfdA However I like this the most www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJX-XK0VSqA

Ha ha, reminds me of a hippy friend of mine who used to make "antiques" and flog them off at a hippy market. He made a rather nice chest and was heavy on detail to make it look old, including punching small holes on the base like borer holes. A customer soon showed a lot of interest and was about to open his wallet when he turned it around and saw the fake borer holes. He refused to buy for fear of infesting his home with borers and no amount of reassurance that it had been gassed convinced him and he left. The next day the chest was up for sale again this time the holes had a good dose of putty.

Distressing or ageing wood works if the wood has two different strata, one soft and one hard. Softwood, real soft like poplar or weeping willow, does not have this. Brush it with a wire brush and all you get is a series of scratches in the wood. Spruce and douglas fir have natural hard and soft rings and there you can scrape off the soft and get the harder rings to stand out and give the drift-wood effect if you brush along the fibres. What burning achieves is a differential burning. The softer rings turn to coal quicker than hard wood rings and so you can brush off the charred softwood off and get a much better effect.

Well ... false cognates and false friends are different things. Embarrassed in english and embarazada in spanish are two words that sound close but mean something completely different. Those are false friends. Obligado and arigato (thank you in portuguese and japanese) are false cognate, sounding the same (or close), meaning the same yet having different etymology. Cognates comes from latin meaning relatives. It means "in law" in Italian, sort of the same thing. But in the case of "embarazada" in spanish meaning pregnant, there is a cultural explanation. Pregnancy in a culture that considered all things related to reproduction shameful and sinful, becoming pregnant was in fact embarrassing. Not going as far as russian that literary means burden or punishment, gravida in italian (loaded) but being happy in chinese. If you want to be on the safe side, say "encinta" in spanish or "incinta" in italian ... and don't forget that pregnant in english has an equivalent in spanish, that is "preñada" meaning pregnant yes, but used for animals, so ... don't use it unless on the farm And on the False Cognates front, that expression reminds me of a friend from Indonesia who told me that when he went to the US, every mexican was approaching him in spanish to his great distress. He kept on saying sorry I don't understand a word you are saying I am not mexican! But he looks like one.

"..........accepted popular usage trumps academic/historical meaning every single time....." Oh my ... reminds me of the so called 'false friends' where words that sound the same but have different meaning are borrowed from one language into another with atrocious results. Unfortunately the false friends of translators end up in the respective dictionaries victim of political correctness and an urge to be seen as progressive.

Hi Marc, welcome. Yes that is a good anvil to start with and not a bad price for starters. Don't worry about the tail end and use it as it is. Unusual and very old it seems. Get stuck in making a stand for it ... or is it her?

RHS 100x50x5 would be my choice, but an old lintel section be it T or angle with a decent thickness of 6mm or 1/4" would do just fine. Some prefer the hollow section so that they can fill it with sand. Can't say I know if it works or not. Probably does. Glue the anvil with some tough silicone to the stand and Bob is your father's brother.

Yes, it has been said too many times that making your own tool is the way to learn blacksmithing. It is not. It may have been 100 years ago when the apprentice worked 12 hours under the blacksmith supervision, and made his tools after he had finished.

Best stand you can make is the tripod. Also very easy to alter the height with wood blocks and plenty of room for your feet to stand close to the anvil if you need to. https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/28676-anvil-stands/

Can I come too?

Not to mention that a perfectly flat surface is only one of the two surfaces. The other one is the hammer that is neither flat nor square to the piece being worked and changes angle with each stroke. If you then compare to the anvil in a power hammer, you scratch your head and say ... why on earth am I fussing over a flat surface when a power hammer does not even have a flat surface from new?

Hardwood, (real hardwood) comes up nice by sandblasting. Softwood like Douglas Fir or Spruce, that has distinctive hard and soft rings, comes up best by burning with a blowtorch. You burn until you start seeing patches of shiny charcoal, then brush off the coal until the wood shows up again. Radiata pine or poplar is the softest but still can be aged in this way. The amount of black you leave is up to you, you can brush it all off or leave a bit here and there. What you are doing in this way is take away the softer wood and leave the harder wood, giving the appearance of driftwood aged naturally. Test on an offcut of the same species of wood recommended.

That is a lovely anvil. Like others said, use it as it is. The slight dips on the surface are from working. Think of them like slightly worn stone threads. Would you render the surface with cement to make them flat? Hopefully not ...

Cold not hot, on the post vice open jaws. Tap in the center as you push forward slowly, you get the circle you want. How much you open the jaws, and what size hammer will depend on the dimensions of the flat bar. It requires several passess and checking on a pattern. If you want to do it hot, you will need to make a jig as you do to make a scroll, but if you master making this cold you won't bother making a jig. That is how my old Italian master did it and this is how I learned to do it and did it for a long time until the decorative globes we used to make by the hundreds went out of fashion. It takes some time and of course a bending machine will do it quicker. A big circle that allows to hammer inside the circle like this one is easier than a smaller circle.

Only just saw this thread. Good job with that window grill. It's disappointing that no one suggested to make the circle as it is done, that is with a ball peen hammer on the open post vise, little by little and checking on a circle drawn on paper. ... oh well. All's well that ends well.