JHCC

That is very true. Wear eye protection: I have a small scar under my right eye from a glowing bit of coal that the fire spit out into my face.

Consider a big fan on a stand (like the one in this photo, at the back right) to help cool you off. Even a denim apron is better than nothing.

There's nothing wrong with using anthracite; you just don't manage your fire the same as you do with charcoal or bituminous. The trick is to get a good fire of kindling and/or charcoal going before you add the coal (it takes a lot of heat to get lit) and make sure you have a constant air supply (it will go out without a steady flow of air).

Or better yet, in person!

French bladesmith. Startled, but quick as a flash, she...

As a collectible, or as a working forge? To a blacksmith, or to a reenactor? In the USA, or abroad? As an antique, or as a source of spare parts or raw materials? As an unrestored original, or a modern copy? Are you looking to buy, or to sell? Too many variables to answer precisely, but the simple answer is: whatever someone is willing to pay.

Also, check out this very good explanation from our own @TechnicusJoe:

(N.B.: upholstery leather comes in two different varieties types: coated (or finished) and uncoated (or "naked"). The former has a layer of flexible varnish on the surface, which both beathes poorly and doesn't do well with heat. Naked leather tends to be made from higher quality hides, since it won't have a finish to obscure any flaws. If you have a choice, go naked.)

I made mine from a big chunk of upholstery leather, and I love it. It protects me from sparks, scale, punching slugs, errant workpieces, flying grinder bits, and heat, and it protects my clothes from all those plus soot and coal dust. The day I had a hardy blank at forging heat pop out of the tongs, fly up, and hit me in the chest was the day I remembered why aprons (and properly fitting tongs) are so important.

I don't see it on the website, but maybe @Judson Yaggy knows more. A while back, I saw a video of someone (was it Mark Aspery?) using one of these to upset the blank for a hardy tool. One thing that struck me was how its thickness put the workpiece very high up, almost too high for comfortable striking.

Welcome to IFI, @Holly Schwartz -- and welcome to how easily we get into (friendly, I assure you!) arguments. Your anvil is in pretty rough shape, but after a good wire brushing, you'll be surprised at how much you'll be able to do with it while you're looking for a better replacement. By the way, Josh at the Fisher and Norris Anvil Museum (aka @njanvilman) has a couple of examples of anvils with the horns broken off and reattached with U-bolts and brackets. If he sees this, maybe he could give us a photo.

'No $2 [railroad] spike is worth seeing what a 100,000 ton train will do to you." -- @Desmond Redmon

@Dillion Brian Grant, I can download and play your image, but (A) please hold your camera horizontally when you film, and (B) try to hold it as steady as possible. It's really hard to watch. That said, nice little forge. Your blast might be a bit heavy, so try putting a gap between the nozzle of the hair dryer and the air inlet pipe, to spill out some of the excess.

Well, that's why I'm thinking about getting a few pounds of the stuff sealed up and out of circulation -- it's a public service, really.

Start a work-in-progress thread!

Stay away from concrete for anything that's going to get hit, if at all possible. It will eventually crumble. @notownkid has a portable hole that bolts to the top of the anvil; maybe we can get him to post a photo.

Thanks, SLAG. I've spoken with the radiology lab at the local hospital (I know one of the techs through the Boy Scouts), and they've already got a disposal method in place. However, my dentist still uses film for X-rays, and they're happy to give me the old film holders, each of which contains a small piece of lead foil. They're not very big, but I suppose enough of them do add up. Would topping off the tube with oil help with that?

Okay, but can you make tongs from rebar?

I understand how a dead-blow works; I'm just curious as to whether or not it would be good for my projected use.

One bullet casting video I watched showed that you can differentiate wheel weights by rapping them against something hard and listening to the sound: steel goes "tink", zinc goes "clank", and lead goes "clunk".

Well, it's a matter of putting weight into a given volume. Assuming an interior volume of 3" x 3" x 9" (and I'm just guessing on that; I'm currently several hundred miles from my shop) or 81 cubic inches, that would be ~33 lbs of lead vs. ~21 lbs of zinc (which is what I gather they're using for wheel weights these days)

May his memory be eternal.

Playing around in my head with a bunch of ideas for a treadle hammer, and was thinking about making the head from a 9-10" length of 4" square tube I have kicking around, welding a thick plate on the end, and filling it with lead (melted down from wheel weights). Then I find that wheel weights aren't lead these days, so I start thinking about other sources of lead. Thinking about lead shot for reloaders, it occurs to me that if I filled the head with unmelted lead shot (perhaps with some oil as well), I would essentially be creating a large dead-blow mallet. This obviously wouldn't be good for a tire hammer or something like that, where you want to keep the tupp moving fairly quickly. However, since I'm envisioning this as replacement for a striker for punching, fullering, and the like, speed isn't that much of an issue, and the slower impact curve might actually be a benefit. Anyone have any thoughts on the practicality or advisability of this, or maybe a notion about where I can get some cheap (or free!) lead for my original concept?

A while back, I made what I thought would be a nifty cutting plate to fit over my anvil: it had curved sides with a bit of spring, so that it would hold itself snugly on the anvil. What I found out when I went to actually use it was that if it's soft enough for cutting, then it would easily deform and the clips would lose their effectiveness, but if if were hard enough not to deform, it would be too hard for cutting. I'd just grab a piece of the 7 ga. and keep it handy for when you need to cut something.

I wouldn't bother getting that fancy. Whatever you use is going to get all banged up and scarred anyway,