Sam Falzone

Sorry to hear that ironstein. Keep looking and good luck. Enjoy the wedding and relaxation anyway. Cheers.

Have you considered just acid etching all your medals in copper and then having the different colours plated on or anodized (or something along those lines). Just musing out-loud.

<br /><br /><br /> HAH!!! Cool. Boy did he take a wrong turn Have you ever seen a hummingbird nest? It's the size of a shot glass ... really.

He's probably more interested in the bunnies that your forge ;)

<br /><br /><br /> Chyancarrek brings up a good point. Taking material from railroad tracks (including spikes) is illegal. I think it may even be a federal offence in the US - I could be wrong on that point. Be careful out there

I recall a thread sometime last year where many of us talked about how much we loved our wives and we even discovered that there seems to be some strange attractive bond between blacksmiths and fiber artists (people who spin wool and or weave) - the STEEL-WOOL combo ... Well, as the thread suggests, it just keeps getting better for me. My wife works for the Canadian Federal Government and this summer, she finally got her transfer to a new department closer to home. She is now the HR consultant for the Department of Natural Resources ... her department specifically deals with Steel Research. I almost fell over laughing. Life is good.

HAH!!! Norse-style blade. I always knew Pratchett had good taste. That is a nice, simple and elegant design. I like it. Good on him.

Hey, forget about it. There's no such thing as a stupid question. Not asking the question ... now that's stupid Besides, sometimes even the obvious answers get overlooked. Happy reading - they really are great books.

Sam here Frosty. My wife says if I ever shave off my beard I have to send her a picture of what I look like without it and give her 2 days to get used to the idea before I come home. I find keeping it trimmed to about 1/2"-3/4" keeps it from catching fire around the forge. I'm pretty sure that without a beard I'd look like a muppet - kind of hard to pull off the "burly blacksmith" image when you look like a muppet ...

Sorry Simon, I'm pretty sure that's cast iron. For $200 you could get a good size block of mild or tool steel for bladesmithing.

Sorry ... not ready for a shop cat yet They're really cute though ... but my two house cats wouldn't take kindly to a new addition.

I have lots of friends who have barn cats - I'm seriously thinking of keeping a shop cat, specifically to keep the critters at bay.

Now that's what I call delivery !!! I love quail.

WHAT THE XXXX IS THAT !!! ... and where do you live ?!?! The only critter I've had to deal with in my shed/shop was a opposum who decided to get comfy under my work bench.

Thanks very much Mark - that's been a great help. If anyone wants to see the anvil, I posted pictures on my 300lb beauty thread. Sam

Here are some pictures of the cleaned anvil. From the ID post, I've learned that this is an H BOKER anvil, probably made by the Peter Wright foundry (according to the flats on the feet). In the first picture, the can of WD50 is for scale. Sorry if the quality is a bit poor, but all I had to take photos with was my phone today. Sam

I've never heard of them. Do you know anything more about them? Thanks Mark.

It turned out to be even easier than that. I happened to mention to the head caretaker at my school that I had to figure out how to get the anvil out of my truck and he and another caretaker just moved it out of my truck for me onto a cart so I could wheel it into my shopclass. I'm planning on storing it in my classroom for the winter. I also got a chance to wire-brush off all the paint and clean her up. Big surprise to me was that the pritchel hole wasn't full of paint as i thought ... some bozo had filled it with brazing rod, so now I have to drill it out. I have it drilled out to 3/8" so far, but that's the biggest my hand drill chuck will take. Low and behold, another surprise, I found a maker's name under all that paint (at least 3 layers) but I can't fully make it out. I started a separate post asking for ID help, so if you think you can help, please check it out. I'll post pictures of the cleaned up anvil tonight. Sam

I finally got a chance to clean up the 300lb anvil I got this week. Grinding paint off an anvil is NOT fun and this baby had at least 3 layers of paint (... I saw at least black, white and green ...). All that paint was covering up a maker's name, but one I can't completely make out and I'm unfamiliar with, what I can make out so far. So this is where I need some help. I checked out the list of anvil makers from "Anvils in America" (I found the list duplicated on-line) but couldn't make any matches. I don't have the pictures downloaded yet but I can describe what I can see so far ... The letters I can make out in the name line are: H B? KER -I'm not sure if there are any other letters to the left of the H -the letter between the B and K is hard to make out ... I originally thought it might be an A which would make this a Baker anvil, but it doesn't look like an A compared to the script the other letters are in. Under the name line there is a star like shape which looks like an X with a line drawn hroizontally through it ... like this X Under that there are the numbers 139 which I think is the weight in kilos - which converts out to be 306lbs I'll post pictures as soon as I can, but does this sound familiar to anyone so far??? I'd appreciate any help. Sam

As far as I can tell it was only ever used for marketing - Fisher being able to claim that they make the BIGGEST cast anvil - EVER. There was another thread about this anvil just a few months ago. Apparently the anvil went into storage shortly after that world's fair and was almost forgotten. It's just recently been put into a museum in New Jersey for people to actually see again. We have a "resident" Fisher anvil expert on the forum who can tell you more than I ever could. Of course, I don't remember who right at the moment ...

Here are the pictures. It's still in the back of my van - I gotta figure out how to get it out. The guy I bought it from had it on an engine hoist so putting it in the van was easy. Oh well - time to call in some favours. ;)

Yup it has a pritchel hole - it's just full of paint Pics will be coming as soon as I can get them off my phone. Cheers.

Well my anvil stash has increasesd by one. Just got back from picking up a 300lb anvil from a Kijiji hit in Welland. I can't make out any maker's name - the anvil has been painted black - but the feet profile is reminescent of a Peter Wright. There seems to be a small chip in a corner of the top face, but the edges seem pretty good. Even through the paint, the anvil sounded good and solid. This deal was too good to pass up - I bought it for $200.00. Now I just have to figure out how to get it out of my van ...??? Sam

Brian or Dick ... Could either of you put up a step by step photo series showing how these are made - like the ones brian has released recently (i.e. the steel hearts)? Or does it already exist? I'm taking a silver class and I would love to learn how to make these. I'm really hoping to see this soon. Sam

Was planning on it ... but something has come up. Oh well, there's always next year.