bajajoaquin

So Cal Anvil: My link Orange County Hay Budden: My link

I took a client out to dinner on Wednesday, and to my surprise, she expressed a lot of interest in trying out blacksmithing. She is from Denver (I'm in San Diego), so I looked up the Rocky Mountain Smiths site, and there wasn't much there. My request for more detail was met with a "look at the website" response. The CBA has some really good programs in my area through the Vista Forge. I was hoping that other organizations would have similar programs. Can anyone here recommend a beginner/introduction class in the Denver area? Museums, ABANA affilliates, schools, whatever. Thanks!

Yeah, he's on the Sacramento Craig's List, if anyone wants to look them up.

Further north, a 274# Trenton: My link Wow. I don't think I've ever seen this many anvils for sale in California at one time. I guess it's true: if you want to find an anvil for sale, all you have to do is buy one. The others will come out of the woodwork.

My link Ad says: "110 LB ANvil - $120 (possible delivery)" I say, "possible ASO."

Another one in Ontario (CA. That's CA as in Californina, not CA as in Canada ) My link This is a old style anvil with a great top and a nice looking horn. No major damage and ready to work. Great for a metal worker, horseshoer or even a decoration.

A bit over priced, unless there's lots of extras, but it looks to be an interesting old anvil: My link ANVIL HOOFCARE UNIT (Heavy Iron solid with tools included and mounted on a Iron stand with rolling wheels) used unit asking $ 1000.00

For a Miller 210, you'll have several options for welding wire, because you can run .045 flux core in it pretty easily. You may want to post up some pictures of the damaged edges. The general consensus here is to leave the anvil alone unless the abuse is really bad. If that's the case here, you can save the $150 (or more) you're going to spend on wire, and put it towards the purchase of your next anvil.

Really? Nobody is going to touch this one? (sorry, couldn't resist)

There were some comments over on Anvilfire about stacking plates to make an anvil, and how that can absorb energy, being less effective than a truly solid mass of the same weight. I think that there's something like that at play with anvil stands. With a very heavy, very rigid steel base, I imagine it could contribute significantly to the effective mass of the anvil. But it would have to be rigid approaching that of an anvil from face through the waist, otherwise you'd be talking bout losses as described in Maddog's post. If someone wants to come up with an equation, I'd be happy to build another spreadsheet!

I am not so worried about the derailed thread. It's a discussion forum and discussions have lives of their own. We dont all agree, and this would be a boring place if we did. On the topic of knowledge work versus physical work, I encourage people to read Shop Class As Soul Craft[\i]. It's written by a guy with a degree in physics and a graduate degree in political science who decided to quit his think tank job and start a motorcycle repair shop. I think he accurately describes the issue as a transfer of working knowledge from the individual worker to the systems of the corporation. From that flows the process of outsourcing and other things discussed here. But back to anvils. Some have touched the complexity of the math describing the actual hammer blow. We had a thread on hardness and rebound. Does anyone have any thoughts on the combination of the two? Some posters have commented that the fabricated mild steel anvils feel dead or lack rebound. With the plastic deformation of hit steel under the hammer, how much would that affect actual work efficiency? I guess it also gets to the question brought up other times about the difference between anvils of varied quality.

Reminds me of the lyrics to a song from The Damned in the '80s: ...and only the wounded remain the generals have all left the game with no will to fight they'll fade with the light there's nobody left they can blame We went through rounds of layoffs here. They kept firing the indians, but the chiefs who made the big directional changes which lead to our problems somehow always made it through the cuts. Every quarter, during the layoffs, that song would go through my head.

That could cost considerably more than the $500 budget... :D

I also sent an email. I was polite, because I wanted pics, and also to open him up to more ridicule. I asked if it was a rare piece!

Yes, good point. I should have said "white chocolate sand dollars." The problem was that she didn't know the diameter of each of the three cake layers, and hadn't decided what size to make the chocolates. And you don't want to have partial sand dollars on your wedding cake, right? So I made one that would calculate to the whole number with variables for layer size and item size. Of course, at the end of it all, she just ordered a bunch to have lots of extras. I agree with the comments that it's not the spreadsheet, but the user. I mentioned in the "Business side of Blacksmithing" forum, a cost model I developed when working for some friends. Once I built the sheet, I was able to show that they were seriously undervaluing the work they did. It also helped illustrate the difference between doing production runs assembly-line fashion and as 100 individual pieces. As a result, they were able to both raise prices, and reorganize how they made some of their mass-produced parts. The company grew from 8 guys on the shop floor in a 12,000 sq foot facility to 25 or 30 in a 40,000 foot facility in 18 months.

Sorry to go so far off topic, but I just looked at my spreadsheet archive here at the office (I'm running reports for a meeting tomorrow): Acre/sq foot converter steel weight calculator Tire size calculator Hammer/anvil ratio calculator Mortgage overpayment payoff calculator Calculator for pricing campers with varying options/standard equipment Calculator for the number of sand dollars my fiancee will need on our wedding cake Drilling/milling FPM calculator Vacation accrual Motorcycle sprocket ratio calculator Incremental growth for a sphere in diameter, volume, and circumference Retirement funds calculator with compound interest and wage growth factors This may explain to some why I keep asking, "why?" :D

You're welcome, but let's give credit where it's due. Maddog did the math. I just plugged it in. And let's all remember: he's not claiming much accuracy for his formula, and I riddled my spreadsheet with lots of arbitrary assumptions. Just because it's in writing, doesn't mean its correct. Having said that, it "feels" directionally accurate to me. I'm hoping some more people will weigh in with opinions on that matter.

Yes, I agree. I was worried that it would degenerate into sort of an anvil equivalent of bashing soccer moms for driving SUVs. "You don't need that Ford Excursion! You never haul more than Masie and Cindy to practice!" And Jacob, I love me a good Excel file. I've got them for everything from converting acres and hectares to square feet, to steel block weights, to tire diameters from standard sizes. :)

This is fascinating. Thank you all. I took maddog's formula and put it into Excel, adding variables for hammer and anvil weight, as well as changing the result from percent lost to overall percent efficiency. It made more sense to me to visualize the diminishing returns. I've attached it as a .zip file so people can see the numbers or play with them themselves. Assuming a 2.5 lb hammer, reading comments from lots of people, and using the equation with a big grain of salt, I focused on the difference in efficiency between 250 and 400 pounds for an anvil. Just for the sake of argument, it seems like smiths can pretty readily tell the difference in forging between these two sizes. 2.5 lb hammer, efficiency: 250 lb anvil: 96.1% 400 lb anvil: 97.5% Difference: 1.5% So, again for the sake of argument, a good smith can easily tell a difference in efficiency of 1.5%, and there is a strong preference for being over 95% efficiency. If we look at the numbers for a 5lb hammer, 5 lb hammer, efficiency: 250 lb anvil: 92.3% 400 lb anvil: 95.1% Difference: 2.8% And note that you don't hit that 95% (arbitrary) threshold until you're at 400 lb. Getting back to my original scenario that caused me to ask the question, I punched in a 10 lb hammer, like you might use with a striker. 10 lb hammer, efficiency: 250 lb anvil: 85.2% 400 lb anvil: 90.5% Difference: 5.3% To look at the effects of something the size of stewartthesmith's anvil and the 1000 lb Refflinghaus, we would be looking at: 10 lb hammer, efficiency: 750 lb anvil: 94.8% 1000 lb anvil: 96.1% Given the fuzziness of this whole process, I'd call the 750 lb anvil close enough to the arbitrary 95%, but I also note that it's pretty close to the 1.5% that it seems can be readily noticed by smiths. This also sheds some light on the engineering choices made by power hammer manufacturers. Somewhere around 20:1, it's cheaper to hit the material again than it is to design in a heavier anvil. When you're forging by hand, and the power isn't coming out of a electrical circuit, the calculus changes, and the ratio at which people seem to start to say "good enough" is 75:1 or 100:1 Very, very interesting. hammer_anvil_ratio_efficiency.zip

My coworker came in to my office today to tell me about a find from the weekend: a 1928 Boy Scout manual. Among other things, he told me of some of the interesting things Boy Scouts were encouraged to do as their "good deeds." One was "crank start a car for a one-armed man." At first, I thought it was referring to the WWI veterans, but then I got to thinking, and it was probably referring to industrial and farm accidents. Guards and regulations make things a lot safer now. Also last weekend, my uncle was out for the holiday. He was telling a story about my grandfather, who was a chemical engineer for Rhom and Haas, working in the Plexiglas plant. Some of the chemicals used to make it smelled of rotten eggs, and permeated leather. His work shoes always smelled dreadful, and he wasn't allowed to bring them into the house. When my uncle asked what smelled so bad, he said, "That's the smell of your bread and butter." Being a little kid, my uncle took him literally, and thought his father made bread and butter - and it was a stinky job!

I think the post above about making a hammer has merit. I haven't seen anyone post the link to Anvil Fire's junkyard hammer page yet: JYH Link For less than $500 you should be able to cobble together a serviceable hammer. As for noise, you could probably limit your forging time to weekends or maybe a half hour or hour late in the week (like Thursday nights) when people may be a bit more easy-going.

That makes sense. It sounds like something that by shape or design works better with strikers than a power hammer.

That's a good question. I was reacting to the new Refflinghaus thousand-pounders, but I didn't think it through that much. I guess it's about the money as much as anything. If you're spending that kind of dough, either you can afford it, period, or you're making a choice based on relative utility. But let's say a thousand pounds, arbitrarily. For $5,000 to $8,000, is there anything they do better than a 400-lb Peddinghaus and a 65-lb big BLU? (Feel free to adjust these numbers for the sake of argument.) Like my post about rebound and hardness, I am really interested in why, not just what, if you know what I mean.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. We don't generally make anchor chain by hand these days. Striking seems to be done for reasons other than production work. Big anvils are better for maximizing the force of your blows, but I suspect there's diminishing returns for a solo smith swinging a 3- or 5-lb hammer. I've got no problems with buying the biggest old anvil you come across, or having the wherewithal to purchase a giant new one. I'm just curious if there are some real things that strikers do better than power hammers. Because on a cost basis, it seems like that would be the decision: really xxxxxxxx big anvil and lots of labor, or a power hammer.

I was doing a bit of research on anvils recently, and came across pictures of a 1,000 pound Refflinghaus in use. Of course, I want one. But, other than general tool lust, is there any real reason to have an anvil of that size? Bigger anvils are better when using strikers, I understand, but at some point, wouldn't a power hammer be more effective? Or, is there something that is better done with people and multiple 10- or 25-lb hammers? I mean, the $7000 price tag on that monster would buy a pretty nice 350 lb anvil and a power hammer. And yes, I still want one anyway!