thelittleguy

Little Guy-

I'm in Rehoboth Ma, not too far away from you by Texas standards but light years away by Massachusets standards.

In Wilbraham I'd bet there are 50 anvils within a twenty (more like a ten or five) mile radius from you: most of them are:

1 coveted by their owner
2 valued and used on occasion by their owner
3 seen as a potential source of income by their owner, and
4 some small amount just taking up space, a pain in the neck to move, and always in the way.

Find someone in category 4 and they may pay you to take it away!
(Not likely but one can always hope) at least you may get one on the cheap.

I know just what you mean thats the kinda person I'm exactly looking for haha

While you are doing your anvil search, remember to also try to find a post vise, various tongs with different shaped ends, various sized hammers, and steel stock. You also have to decide what you are going to use for heat: Coal forge, gas forge, torch, or something else? It does not take alot to get started, but you need some basic items to get started. There are many smiths around your area. Northeast Blacksmith's Assoc have meets now and then. Try to find out when and go and meet local people. Most members are willing to help someone get started. Watching and being involved goes a long way beyond reading a book.

I was thinking of coal as my forge source and I'll definitely look into the northeast blacksmiths assoc

You might try putting up some flyers at your church (and other local churches): fellowship halls usually have notice boards.

You might also know of some local shops that have the same. I was looking for an old engine cart (to hold hit & miss engines) that are even harder to find
than anvils (price per pound engine cart to anvil would be about 4-5 to 1) and placed postings at the church and also the town butcher shop we use...I received several
calls as the result and was able to find what I wanted, in fact a few of them, for pennies over what I would have paid on E-bay (they also don't ship well or cheaply).

Make sure to add a picture of an anvil: if someone has one taking up room in their garage, shed or barn its more than likeley useless to them, they won't know the value,
and you can make yourself a good deal.

I'm new to smithing but my son has done some at his school (techical HS) (which started me down this path): I've found some good equipment a good prices.

When I first started welding I didn't need the perfect welder but I needed a welder (not two rocks and a coat hanger): its easy to say "make do" with whats at hand, and
if you have lots of experience that works pretty well, though I'd agree its not the tool but the person using the tool that makes the difference. When I fisrt started rebuilding engines I thought I needed the right tool to remove (and replace) cylinder rings; I learned from someone with alot of experience that the best tool to use in that situation was an old shop rag - grab one end of the ring with one end of the cloth and the other end with the orther end of the cloth, pull apart and remove...that's experience. I didn't know the shop rag was a "tool at hand" but learned.

Hope you find a great anvil and I'd agree with the earlier posters, keep building up the pile of pennies!

Thanks for this advice and I will certainly take it into use

So you're not going to do anything till you find the "right" anvil eh? It's pretty obvious you don't know how to smith and you're making a fundamental beginner's mistake waiting till you get a "real" anvil.

The tools don't do anything. What does the work is the mind of humans and their thumbs all the finest most perfect tools in the world are just highly refined dirt.

If that's too esoteric for you try this. Use your brain, find something that will work and start learning to blacksmith, a "real" anvil will come along sooner or later. In the mean time you'll be LEARNING how to blacksmith and maybe making doodads you can sell and earn enough to buy a nicer anvil.

If you can't improvise you're going to have a really hard time learning this craft. Don't worry though, the "I gotta have the perfect tools to learn this (whatever) craft" is common to human beings, Most of us have gone down that road, at best it's only a waste of time and worst . . . Nevermind.

Frosty The Lucky.

I'm saying I'm not looking for perfection and it's way to cold to start anything where I live right now that's why I said winter I'll start on a steel block if I have to which is technically an anvil just with out the horn or hardy hole. In the spring time thats when I'll start the actual smithing and crafting

What do yo consider an anvil? In reality an anvil is anything hard and heavy you can beat iron on. Lots of steel stuff around if you keep you eyes open and I'm not even going to mention the most common field expedient folk use.

Do you have enough experience to know how to use the horn? They are pretty recent additions and pretty unnecessary if you know the tricks. One of my favorites was an axle buried flange up on a sand bar but have used whatever was handy at one time or another.

I'm not trying to discourage you but your $125 will buy you a lot better kit than just an anvil.

Frosty The Lucky.

I don't know how to smith at all this will be my first anvil so I would like to get one that is in good condition and that has a horn and hardy hole at least

You are in the right part of the country to find anvils. Keep you eye on CraigsList, EBAY and tell everyone you know what you looking for. You never know where one will turn up. And make sure you keep your cash ready. Maybe try to add a bit to the pot every week till you find what you are looking for.

I already have a lot of money more than $150 so if one comes up that I really want them I can buy it and some time in the spring I'll just start driving around and looking at garage sales or seeing if people have them lying around to try and buy them

Last anvil I bought was $1.00/lb. Take your time, save up more money, lower your standards (in terms of appearance face flatness) but definitely try for 100 lbs or more.

Ya thats what I was thinking I'm not looking for perfection I'm looking for something to get me started

Remember that you are really only renting the anvil, basically for free for as long as you own it. Someday in the future you will be able to sell it probably for more than you paid for it. What kind of work do you plan to do? You will probably want to seek out an anvil on the heavier end of your range, unless you plan on only doing light stock or jewelry work.

Well my limit for the price is 125 I would love to get an 100lb-150lb anvil but I just don't have the funds necessary

I'm also willing to buy any tools that you don't want/need

I was wondering if there is anyone in the wilbraham Massachusetts area that had an old anvil they weren't using. I'm willing to pay $125 and below I'm looking for a 40lb-80lb anvil if possible.

You can learn a lot by starting with  plaster. A 50 pound bag of plaster costs only a few bucks and will be enough for lots of castings. 
When you have a working knowledge of draft, venting and gating you can advance to low melting temp alloys, then higher, etc. That is the usual progression

I was actually thinking about going to a career/tech school and to see if they have a metal shop and I think I'll have a good chance of getting into one

On 1/20/2015 at 4:43 PM, njanvilman said:

I am a recently retired Metal shop teacher.  We had a foundry in school where we poured Aluminum.  37 years and over 750 pours into petrobond clay.  We did aluminum because the fumes where not like what comes off of bronze. And we had a ventilation system and multiple wall fans for the smoke and fumes

 

.... snipped ....
 
Be careful.  What we are all trying to tell you is to be informed, and do not do anything that will kill you and others, or disfigure you for life.

 

Thank you so much for that story I wish that schools were like that now'a'days but now everything is "oh the kids are going to get hurt or oh that's not safe." And it drives me nuts because they don't know us some of us are rather mature for our age and wont do the stupid xxxx that they think that we'll do.

Thank you for the styrofoam information because that's actually how I was going to start out but I think that I'll just get myself some molds, clay, clay tools and some flasks.

I'm also trying to see if there is a safe teacher around were I live that can teach me around he ropes

 

boy we were excited when the shamans first started telling us about *metal* the new wonder material...of course some of us were perfectly happy with flint---just like grandpappy used to chip! The ground was much softer back then too; over the years as I've aged I find that the ground has gotten harder as it's not nearly as comfortable to sleep on as when I was young.Iron Dwarf; as a friend of mine liked to say "someday you *will* be in range!" get off my lawn!

Im starting to like this community

when Thomas was at school dinosaurs roamed the earth and the only elements known were earth, wind, fire and water.
since then of course things have got more restrictive due to safety concerns

a piece of steel up to yellow heat can cause injuries
a crucible holding at least 10 pounds of molten aluminium suddenly being emptied like a geyser and covering an area 20 feet in diameter caused very serious injuries to a friend who was standing next to the crucible at the time, he was not wearing a full mask but just safety goggles and  molten metal got inside his goggles.
he had just added more scrap to the crucible and one piece must have contained water

Ya I'll definitely use all safely precautions while melting and casting

Simple *molten* metal is far more dangerous than hotter but *solid* metal.You drop a hot bar of steel on the ground it lays there until you pick it up with tongs. You drop molten metal on the ground it may cause a steam explosion and blow right back at you killing you or causing massive and painful injuries.As for getting started may I commend to your attention backyardmetalcasting.com; I'd get involved with the forum there and try to find a local caster that will get you started. I took a brass metal casting class at a local community college arts program that jump started my casting.Note if you are under legal adult age it may be harder to find someone willing to take the risk and personally I would not suggest going with anyone who didn't demand a parent present---I do for teaching smithing to the younger ones. (Funny casting Al was part of our middle school metals class back in my day...but event then we rammed the mold and the Teacher did the pouring!)

Wow you're lucky to have a middle school who had a metals class, the most dangerous class my school has is probably scitech were there is a possibility of shocking yourself and also I will look into that forum thank you. Also that makes a lot more sense with the molten metal and the hot bar danger thing I will definitely see if there is anyone around here that will teach me with my dad present so that maybe he can learn a thing or to aswell

its good you are getting interested, but I suggest that at 14 you are to young to buy most the the equipment needed to do this. due the dangers,  please keep reading and you can start casting fairing aluminum and bronze failly soon. 
 
I have no idea where Iron dwarf got the idea Aluminum is 10 times more damgerous to work than steel,  I would like him to explain that one, i must have missed something.

Ya I didn't really get what he was saying but I think ill start with pewter and I was going to make my own foundry out of some supplies and I was going to buy anything I couldn't make so it should be good by spring and I will soon be melting and casting

most metals are toxic and you will need a lot of safety gear before you start.
I would consider pewter to be something you could start with.
molten aluminium at a few hundred degrees is 10 times more likely to cause you serious injury than working steel at 1500 degrees centigrade,
any molten metal is dangerous, they make poisonous fumes, they can explode out of a crucible if something contains a drop of water ( a friend has bad scars over a lot of his face and very nearly lost an eye due to molten aluminium )

Thanks I think that I'll start here and work my way up as I get more experienced with melting down and casting

Cupolas are more for doing cast iron and are great for that usage. For melting steel you will need to get a good steel melting temp rated crucible and also work with the possible uptake if carbon from the crucible and/or erosion of the crucible due to the flux used.Let me say that if you are at the stage you don't know the difference between melting/foundry work and smelting you are nowhere near the level for melting and pouring steel. It's one of the most dangerous processes out there!!!!So please tell us what you are trying to do and perhaps we can suggest a plan to get there from where you are at. For example we have several people on this board who do melt steel for doing wootz and others that work with cast iron.

Well i wanted to work with aluminum but then I found out it was toxic so I thought that steel and iron was the next metal to work with don't ask why so if you could tell me what type of metal would be best for just casting and molding then I would be more then glad to work with that

Hi, what you want to research is not crucibles (though that method is possible) but rather cupola furnaces.

Thanks for the suggestion I will look into making my own seeing if there are any books or ways of making them right now but I think it might be to complicated

Do you mean smelting which is making iron/steel from ore; or do you mean melting which is melting iron or steel for casting or alloying?
 
Smelting I don't use a crucible but a Scandinavian short stack bloomery; others use the tatara furnace.

Oh ya sorry I'm new to all this black smithing terms i just started learning about it the other day and I meant melting I just wasn't sure because all the crucibles that I have looked at will melt if I try to melt down steel

What type of crucible do you use while smelting iron or steel?