Sask Mark

Every ounce! :blink:

You have yourself a Columbian cast steel anvil. Very nice!

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the kind words. My wife contributed the empty gin bottle...

I made my first rose today. After viewing Mark Aspery's videos on YouTube numerous times, I decided to give it a go. It's nothing special as the minute detail that Mr. Aspery is so adept at capturing isn't there, but I'm happy with the fact that I got the leaves to stick with forge welds on my first attempt. Getting the stem and the branch lined up correctly for the weld was a challenge for me as I didn't want to burn up my OCP tongs in the fire holding them together. So I grabbed the biggest, meatiest tongs that I had so they wouldn't burn before the stem and branch reached welding temperatures.

It could be a Soderfors. I have one that has ledges on the feet like that.

Good scores Joshua!

Here's my contribution:

I saw that one yesterday. If I lived closer, I would buy it.

My Peter Wright is also 37.5" long and it weighs 455 pounds.

Can't beat that. Nice score!

Mr. Junior Strasil emailed me his method that was made into a blueprint at one point. It worked quite well for the edge and spot repair on one of my anvils. If you are interested in it, send me a PM and I can email it to you.

This challenge reminds me of watching Brian Brazeal's '1 heat tongs' video. Every single blow is placed accurately to achieve exactly what it needs to do. A great exercise for anyone.

According to Anvils in America, Black Prince anvils were made by Columbus Forge and Iron (makers of Trenton anvils) for the Shapleigh Hardware Company of St. Louis, Mo.

No, Hay Buddens had a strong ring like other forged anvils. Fishers didn't have a ring as they were cast iron with steel faces. Any anvil with a cast iron body didn't have a ring.

I don't think it would be you Steve as there is no question as to your skill level.

I don't think the intent of the rating system is to rate the person's skills or knowledge, but it is there to rate the relevance, usefulness, helpfulness and validity of each individual post in the eyes of other members. If someone strongly agrees with what a post says, they can give you a +1, regardless of who wrote the post. The post doesn't even have to be about blacksmithing. If it was just based on knowledge and skills, I would undoubtedly be in the red as my skills and experience are elementary at best (I'll assume you were talking about me as someone with 'questionable skills' and a rating of 'over 30' seems to be more than a coincidence).

Thanks for the update Larry. Hopefully Grant's legacy will continue and someone can do justice to the incredible line of tools that OCP is known for.

Do you have a bathroom scale that you can set it on? It will probably weigh within about 5 pounds of it's original stamped weight.

Cool. I've never been to the one in Steinbach. I'm married to a Mennonite girl and have been to the village in Swift Current. It's not a living village though. More of a museum.

Welcome Jim. Did you work at a Mennonite historical village? Seeing that you are from Steinbach, it would make sense.

If it has a ring when struck I would imagine that it would be made of steel, not cast iron. If that is the case, is would be possible to weld and grind/polish the face.

That's a cool find in New Mexico Thomas!

Steve, I'm not trying to downplay your role here. You are highly respected and a wealth of information. However, since you do teach so much, you should also realize that everyone learns differently. With the information age, young people are using completely different ways of gathering information and learning. They instantly have vast amounts of information at their finger tips electronically. Why would information on blacksmithing be any different? Are they being unrealistic trying to learn about something that takes practice? Absolutely! Do they realize it? Probably not! However, unlike the classes that you teach, it is NOT a waste of everyone's time as everyone has the option to try to help or ignore it. I personally think that you are making a problem where one doesn't exist. Think of it this way. If a guest visited your house for the very first time and asked to use your washroom would you tell them to go find it themselves or would you tell them it's the second door on the left down the hall?

Glenn, I'm not putting anyone in a position to defend themselves. Steve can do what he feels is appropriate. I personally don't see a problem with people asking ANY question they feel is pertinent. In university, we had an organic chem prof that would answer any question with 'go read a textbook'. Almost half the class failed. The next semester the prof (different prof) was very helpful and went out of his way to put anything in terms that each person needed to understand the information. The class was far more successful. The student reviews of each professor reflected what they thought of each teaching style. I don't think that I'm the only one that is seeing it this way either. I notice that I have a few positive feedback on my posts (I promise that I never gave myself any of these scores). You will always have people looking and posting information in the wrong sections. Sometimes it's accidental, sometimes the subject matter can fit into more than one category, and yes, sometimes it's laziness. There is a moderation team that does a great job on this site in keeping this information segregated and categorized. Just for the record, when someone new to the site has asked information that I know is in a sticky I have suggested they read the sticky and provided the link to the sticky. If they still don't want to read the information, then that's their problem. I don't think that a snappy reply to the effect of 'we already talked about that - go read it yourself' is very constructive.

I haven't missed anything. What I see is probably the only person who routinely gets bent out of shape from questions from beginners is you. Do you honestly think that you will change the way every Newbie asks questions Steve? Do you think that every Newbie that comes here is going to scour every sticky before they ask questions? Probably not, so you will probably continue to get irritated and feel that they are trying to take advantage of you and your information. You probably won't change the way it works so maybe you need to change. If you are constantly upset by these questions IGNORE THEM. It's not up to you to police the site and chastise members for not doing prior research. You refer to them as trolls. If I'm not mistaken, a troll is someone who posts something in order to start fights and get a rise out of other members, not someone who asks a question that is legitimate in their mind, but not legitimate in someone else's mind. IF you already have a bladesmith forum why are you still here constantly getting irritated. Do you like getting irritated? In post number 13 you use words like 'clutter', 'lazy', 'desk jocky hearsay'. These words make it sound like you have nothing but utter contempt for anyone who is not a seasoned veteran of the site and is not familiar with all that's been discussed before. I often see people reference how many topics and posts are on IFI. There's a LOT of information here. The info is not always easy to find.