George Geist

It a jump welded hind bar shoe. Looks like it was shod sharp for ice at least by the heels. Cant tell from this view if the toe calk is sharp or not but I suspect it probably is. Being made of iron it is an old one. George

I know most of you guys have probably seen this old vid from the Westinghouse works but for those who haven't it shows a bridge anvil in use at about the 4:20 mark: George

They were primarily used in railroad shops. Plenty of heavy work done there. If I were to take a SWAG at the usefulness of the shape I'd figure it to be for bending track or other long sections of stock. George

Looks like a horseshoer got a hold of it and did some unnecessary mods. Thankfully they didn't weld on any turning cams At least is still in good shape and very useable. George

I knew a guy who liked forging stainless a lot. He developed bad health problems that eventually killed him. I'd recommend learning as much as possible about working with hexavolent chromium especially if planning on having employees. OSHA has recently lowered the permissable exposure limits as research is showing this stuff to be far more dangerous than previously believed. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/hexavalentchromium/index.html Unlike others on here I do like the OPs idea. I think if he's a good businessman he can pull it off. Just be aware of the risks and go the extra mile toward ensuring safety. George

Nice one, I like it. Is also the fact that years ago hardening and tempering were very difficult to get right on an anvil. When hardening under waterfalls and such the thinner corners would get hard and brittle while the inner body would stay softer by holding heat a lot longer. There'd be no way to tell when it left the factory but after some use the brittle edges would start to chip. It wasn't always necessarily operator error but was best one could expect from those old manufacturing methods. That being said, there's nothing wrong with new made modern anvils. Folks who think they need something a century or more old need to understand that those chipping problems come with them.

Among other things marking shoes cold with a sharp corner instead of an anvil devil, hardy or center punch. Cold shoeing can be hard on equipment. George

I believe the hardy holes were made tapered on the bigger anvils. Over a certain weight on old British. AIA talks about it if my memory serves me right. George

That's a Fisher horseshoers model. A very good one. If is too much for you let it go. Somebody will buy it. Seller won't have to wait too long. George

Mr Powers is correct. The clip horn has been taken off. Nonetheless it's a great score. Enjoy it! George

As to making a pritchel here's how. Real easy. Do try this at home.

Hardy hole (the square one) is for bottom tools. Cutoff hardies, bottom fullers,swages etc. Pritchel holes are for punching holes in your stock. Horseshoers anvils have two of them because horseshoers tend to punch a lot of holes. Horseshoers pritchels can be bought but are just as easily forged. Before the British taught us to use good air hardening tool steel to make our pritchels most of us made them out of coil spring. It didn't take long for them to become a casualty so we spent a lot of time reforging and redressing our pritchels. It would take about 8 to 10 of them to get one through a good day's work. Using better quality steel we can use one for years only needing to redress it every now and then. Besides their intended purpose of being there to punch holes, often there were bottom tools such as hold downs that could be put into them as well as nail headers and such. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritchel On some of the sites that sell hand tools you can see pictures of them. Hope that helps George

For a period of time, Noted horseshoer Bruce Daniels designed and patented that boattail style of anvil.(late'70s-early'80s) Centaur made a small number for him then the contract to mass produce them went to GE. After they got out of the anvil business I believe AP of Texas made that style for a while. Not sure who, if anybody makes that style now but there are plenty to be found out there. Mr Daniels told me years ago it was to make it easier to work pony shoes over the heel. I'd also be inclined to think it easier to pull side or quarter clips over that tapered area too. It was a very popular pattern for a while but it ran its course like all horseshoeing fads. It was also Mr Daniels who introduced the idea of a groove in the anvil face in his anvils. This was handy for pritcheling out light racing plates. I'm inclined to think personally that he was inspired a lot by the Continental patterns he saw used in Europe that Americans hadn't discovered yet. Clearly his idea appears to be a hybrid. Looks like what you get for offspring when a London marries a Continental. JMNTBCHO that style of heel is a solution in search of a problem. In the case of the pictured butchery it caused problems by eliminating the pritchel holes necessitating carving the groove in it further weakening the heel. The individual who did that should have just gone ahead and bought what he wanted. Another thing about the one pictured is it has lugs arc welded onto it's sides near the base. Those lugs used to come with a swage block hold down marketed by thoro'bred. The hold down came with two springs that attached to those lugs. Unfortunately for many of us, we learned the hard way that those springs never fastened securely enough to keep the holddown secure so we all found other better ways to get it done but not before welding those lugs on lol! Presence of them tells me this guy was practicing swaging race plates, in all likelihood for his racetrack and/or Union test. George

Just depends what kind of work you use it for. If you made horseshoes they'd be indispensable. George

Those Centaur anvils were probably about the best horseshoers anvils ever made. They certainly set the standard for all the others to try to match. Was a shame yours was tragically mutilated by somebody trying to copy a Bruce Daniels pattern. It also appears that it's previous owner did Race Horses. George

I've never known anyone to have done it outside of chipping the edges and such. I'm thinking if it were even possible to break one in half it would require a lot of deliberate effort. On the issue of Vulcans I know there are people out there that love them but I never was very impressed by them. They always looked like inferior quality so it comes as no surprise that somebody could break one.

You think Forge and Anvil are that easily hurt by fire? Let's see now I'm no expert on fire but to my limited knowledge a class A fire burns at about 800 degreesF. Steel starts to turn red at about 1000F then gets brighter and brighter until eventually melting at between 2000 and 2500 F Depending upon what it's alloyed with. Not very hot when compared to a modern arc welder which operates at about 6000 F. These basic facts in and of themselves prove the 9/11 story to be bogus but I digress. Absolutely plenty of stuff could have been salvaged from a destroyed shop which is precisely why the stuff was vandalized as much as possible before they started on the building Any kind of essential tools or machinery were primary targets. Oftentimes yes. Plenty of stuff can and often is salvaged from fires. You think so? To a non smithing observer watching horses get shod they see the horn get used a lot. Maybe more than any other kind of smithing. Vandals aren't often noted for being overly bright. I'm sure it seemed logical to them. One other thing I'd like to say about these oral histories. When I was a young fellow just entering the work force at the tender age of about 19. I met a man on a job I had that was well into his '60s at the time. The man was a WWII vet who served in the horse drawn field artillery and probably forgot more about horses and horsemanship than I'll ever learn. This man's Grandfather was an Irish immigrant who served in the Civil War. During his service there was an election. It was understood that in the Army you had to vote for Lincoln. There was no secret ballot. Those voting for Lincoln got on one side of the room those voting for his opponent stood on the other side. Those who didn't vote for Lincoln didn't get their 3 day pass. For the rest of that man's life he never voted for another Republican again. Is there any documentation to this occurring? To my knowledge no. I see no reason for the man to have lied about something like that though so I believe it. With the whole Army voting for Lincoln he couldn't really lose right? Reason I tell this is because stories like this should not be poo pooed because it doesn't come from Dan Blather or some college professor. Personally if I want to know what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan today, I'd be much more inclined to ask somebody who was there. Not the media. Not the politicians. Not those who write magazine articles but actual eyewitnesses. Tales of Civil War destruction and carnage I trust the words of eyewitnesses also

I just furnished a stack of books, many written before we all were born. How you figure that? I for one have never had a shop. I've done most of my work out of the back of some kind of a vehicle. I can't think of too many things I've done without using my anvil though. What makes everybody think the shop building is so necessary and essential? I'd be inclined to think wrecking the forge and anvil would shut a business down much more effectively that wrecking the rest of the smithy-which they did too.

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Union+Army+destroying+Blacksmith+Shops 5,640 results in 0.56 seconds Not sure why this forum has such a widespread belief that stuff doesn't get wrecked in war. George

A little explanation as to why it's not desirable to have sharp edges on an anvil. When all folks new to the trade find them used and rounded off slightly, they're that way for a reason. Ordinarily I'd never show or condone taking an angle grinder near an anvil but in this case I can assure everybody this guy knows exactly what he's doing and why. George

Turning cams are for cold shoeing cowboys who never learned to use their horn. JHM for some inexplicable reason only has one pritchel hole drilled dead center. Completely wrong for punching out a clipped horseshoes thus making necessary the slot in the heel. Normal made heel is much better for pulling clips on a heavy work horse shoe. Purpose is defeated with cams in heel. George

No experience using but looking at them they appear to be ok. Should serve your needs. Blacksmith style would probably be best choice. Not that there's anything wrong with using a Horseshoers anvil but most of the contemporary ones are loaded with unnecessary trash nobody needs like turning cams, hooking holes and such. If you do get a Horseshoers get an older style one. George

Is true they do but majority of it is for show and trying to keep up with the jones'. Essentially a van, pickup with camper shell or some other such vehicle is really all that's needed or necessary. As to the OP in the suburbs, a garage will certainly suffice. Also joining a local blacksmith club can help as many of them have hammer-ins at somebody's shop on a regular schedule. George

Looks neat. Question for the OP how did you install it? Did you go rent various lifts, come alongs and such? George

All the best to everybody Saoirse! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eTr4me7i5s