Marc1

Safety sure. Spring coils are painted with ordinary black paint. Some fancy 4wd springs may be powdercoated. Easiest way to know is hitting it with a hammer. Powder coat will crack and peel off. If you only need a short piece to make a punch, cut off the desired length and work it cold with the hammer all around. No need to swing your arm above your head with a 2 kilo hammer, just tap tap all around. Powder coat will come off, paint will not come off that well. If you don't want to burn it off in the forge, make a fire outside and burn a few at the time. Paint bubbles before it burns, so no surprises there. If you have a weed torch you can hit it with that, or if you really want to be free of hazards, sand blast it clean with a pressure washer and a sanding attachment. Works a treat and no dust.

Isn't that a bit extreme?

Beer with corks, aged beer ... my oh my, I must live on a different planet.

A lot of interesting replies. Sure, in general terms a more expensive tool is better. No surprises there. Just like a magnetic base Feins drill ($2000) is better than a $200 Baum made in china, a Hofi hammer is better than a Kmart hammer. Here one can elaborate on the definition of better till the cows go home, and if you are better than me and how the best craftsman can make do a cheap nasty tool. I like the blu/check/hofi hammer but wish it had a longer handle. And I also know that one hammer does not work for everything or everyone, so most folks have a couple of dozen different hammers. As far as the idea that people buy expensive tools to show off and that in reality any hammer is the same, I disagree on both accounts. Anyone that buys tools to use them can appreciate the better quality. Some may be able to see this more than others, but the difference is most of the time rather obvious. Sure one must admire the craft and ingenuity in the person that makes a cheap tool work better and the ability of someone tuning and modifying a $1 hammer into a good tool. Blacksmithing can be done with almost no money and with the most primitive of tools. However the converse, that is buying a quality tool off the shelf, or even better, custom made, should not be frown upon as vanity or a vain attempt at compensate lack of skills and it is not set in concrete that a 'beginner' has to start from scratch and make everything himself starting with a rock for a hammer. As much as the journey of making your own tools and starting with $1 tools can be a very good learning path, there are no two path the same and if someone wants to buy a dozen $140 hammers along with everything else new, let him/her be. We are all different.

Do what sells, of course. I personally am surprised that bottle openers sell at all. Most beer here is 'twist top' no need for opener. soft drinks have a threaded top. If I need an opener I will have to dig deep in the back of the kitchen draw ...

Hi Evan, welcome. You probably missed the date on this post they go from 8 to 4 years old

Make it cross eyed

offer 50 bucks for the hammer and 200 for the anvil , hardy tool included.

That is called a cobblers anvil. The cobbler would have one on his lap sitting down, mainly used to nail a new sole to the shoe. The leather sole is cut along the edge and the nails go inside this cut and through the sole into the shoe and hit the anvil and turn up and hooked inside the shoe. The insole then covers the nails. That one seems to be working upright, this one is to work sitting down.

Isn't that a classic. In olden times they bragged of forging weapons into tools. We forge tools into weapons ... haha.

Good for you JT. It is always harder to negotiate with someone that has no knowledge of the good he is selling and relies on third party "expert" advise. Whatever you paid will soon be forgotten and the anvil, every single pound of it... is in your shed. Well done! Now make it shine beating it up with some hot iron.

If you improvise and hit the wrong note, you just make it work with the next few cords ... no one the wiser ...how about adding another spacer somewhere?

I like it. Nice work texturing the flat bars and those leafs look real good. I wouldn't have used expanded metal but that is personal taste. Very nice.

$700 Australian

Well ... I acknowledge that comparing two identical anvils, identical ... you can compare using their weight. Sure. But the anvil market is overwhelmingly second hand and overwhelmingly antique, made by hand not two are the same, not two are the same condition, not two are even manufactured in the same way by the same manufacturer. And diamonds don't have a set price in carat, rather the price depends on the job good or bad done by the cutter. Just googled it ... the price per carat varies from 11,000 to 74,000 dollars, so it is meaningless to compare two diamonds using their weight.

You are right, my bad, 232 lb, 105 kilos. That means I have 24 lb more so it should be worth some more? Only kidding.

Yes ... no ... wrong example. Cattle or beef are commodities that are available in any amount required. There is nothing unique about them. Let's say you find a relique from the civil war, a sabre and you say ... Eureka! I found this sabre and will sell it for $10 per ounce. Would that make sense? No.

My recently found 208 pound Peter Wright. Bought on ebay of all places. Comes with a story. The seller lives in a very affluent suburb in a multi million dollar house, and does not seem to be a blacksmith. Checked the anvil out and asked him how he came by the anvil. The guy tells me that when he was 18 (he is now about 60) a friend of the family a very old person, came to him asking him to "get rid of this anvil for me". He put it in the family home garage, and covered it with a tarp and it layed there for 40 years. I didn't ask anything further. The price was right (for Australia that is) and the anvil is almost perfect but for a small chip.

Yes, Thomas, it does not make any sense. If something is sold by the weight unit, that means you can get an amount in units. Can I have 100 lb of that anvil? Surely not. So what is the point of the price per unit when the price is not determined by its weight alone? There are several other factors much more important than it's weight. The Refflinghaus price list does not list the anvils with their weight and states, $16 per kilo, you work it out. It lists each anvil with it's price and yes there is a relation but it's not raw material sold by the kilo or the meter. My opinion. For second hand anvils and even less for antique anvils that are unique, that idea of price per kilo or pound makes even less sense. However in fairness I can imagine an anvil salesman 100 years ago, running around with a little sample anvil saying I sell XXX anvils at $0.2 per pound whilst Jo from YYY sells them for $0.3, so buy from me ... JT ... GO AND BUY THAT ANVIL AT WHATEVER PRICE YOU CAN !!!!!!!!

Oh well ... I tried. Negotiation skills include not being afraid, but it's your money. Being a rare anvil and a rare size, if you can pay $1500 or 1600, you will not regret it. If you can pay $1400 even better

Beautiful anvil. I never understand this $ x lb concept. That is like buying a car by the meter. Yes, my 4wd is 5 meters long and would go for $6000 a meter An anvil has a price based on location, manufacturer, material, condition and yes, sure, size/ weight. Offer $1000 and see how you go. If you are not ashamed at your offer that means you are offering too much.

So do we know now what that thing is?

It's all relative. You did invent it because you did not copy it. However may be others before you invented it too. An invention is called that when someone claims to be the first one. However how does he know he is the first one? Give enough lack of communications, insular culture or lack of historical records and you can have inventions that are reinvented a few times over. Did Gutenberg invent the printing press? Yes! Did someone else invent it before him? Yes! And so on and so forth. Did Columbus discover America? Yes! And so did many other cultures before him ... ha ha ... like I said ... all is relative.

By the way Bigorna is Portuguese for anvil. Comes from the italian bicorna or two horns. In some languages like portuguese and spanish it becomes synonym for anvil even in the case of a single horn anvil