Ian Sayers

I'm in Portland Oregon and I've been wanting to emulate a specific style of tsuchime / hammered finish I see on Shun's premier knives. I see a lot of unappealing tsuchime jobs but I love the way Shun is doing it. Specifically I like the deep, pronounced hammer marks with lots of overlap blending together. I just can't figure out exactly how they accomplish it. I think they are done mostly by hand because I see a lot of variation in the hammer marks between knives. I assume they are using a top/bottom set of ball peens simultaneously to keep it from flattening out. Does anyone have experience using dies with arrays of multiple ball peens? I was considering welding a cluster of a half-dozen or so 1" bearings to top and bottom plates, after grinding off some of the sides of the bearings so they are not spaced perfectly uniformly, and then just repeating that pattern with lots of overlap and maybe setting them in with a press. Has anyone done that? Do you know a better way? In your opinion, is the Shun pictured here actually hammered freehand with a single set of peens? Any advice on how to achieve a similar look is appreciated.

I constantly read that bronze/straw oxide color is for cutting metal and blue/purple is for cutting wood. But why wouldn't full hardness be just as good for woodcutting? I get that a softer metal is easier to touch up, but wouldn't a harder edge last longer and wouldn't your time investment in sharpening be proportional to the longevity of the edge at the end of the day? What gives?

pictures always help...

2 hours ago, Dan P. said:

That anvil is not known as a "pig anvil" anywhere but on iforgeiron.

Not true

Explains a lot right? He's Sheffield school so I'm sure techniques differ a lot, plus he's using a different type of cutler's anvil, but it explains perfectly why a cutler would need several hardie holes. Unlike most modern smiths, you'll notice he leaves his hardie chisel in at all times, because he uses it for much more than cut-offs. For instance, you can see him use his hardie chisel to forge out the tang in record time by cutting and splaying it rather than drawing it out on the face. A lot of instructors would have a fit if you left your chisel in all the time, but if you want to make knifes at that kind of pace, you can't be switching out hardie tools all the time.

Check out the youtube video Blade_Forger by taliesinpewter.

On 12/12/2015 at 3:30 PM, Nobody Special said:

Ah, the old step faced anvil. And for only 150 more dollars, I'll sell ya the secret to my aqueous sodium chloride quench.  And my special blended breed horse with the parabolic spine and the assymetrical drop step gait.

OMG, step faced anvil, aqueous sodium chloride quench, asymetrical drop step gait - my room mate just came out of her room to ask me what I was laughing about.

100% a Peter Wright. The Main stamp says "Peter Wright Patent" and the stamp around the middle weight number says "Solid Wrought".

does it have a handling hole in the throat, under the horn?

Wow, that is cool! The curved side-exit hardie is a dead giveaway that it's either of French make or produced for a French importer, but 3 hardies, that is a new one to me. The signature vertical seam between the legs is common to that pattern, and suggests that it was made by the same foundry as many of the single hole anvils of the same pattern, so it probably isn't a style preference of that anvil maker, but rather a specially produced anvil for a specific trade, as Matei noted. There are some features that hint at the possible use. One is the size of the face. It looks longer than most pig anvils and the placement of the hardies coupled with the length suggests that a long uninterrupted working face was important to whatever they were making on it, so probably a long item that needs to be very flat and straight, like a blade of some sort. But whatever it was also required a variety of die geometries that were in use simultaneously, like on a cutler's anvil, so it was probably not for making saws or files. The typical English solution is to have a number of slots cut into the face, but if you want to preserve as much flat work area as possible, multiple hardies are a better way to go. There was a high demand for sabres in France during the time this anvil would have been made, so it might be a specialty cutlers anvil made for producing longer blades. There was also a worldwide demand for large "Sabatier" chefs knifes produced in the Thiers region of France, and like the Sheffield tradition, they used a "fully forged" approach that requires a specialty anvil with many geometries. If you are ever in the Thiers area, you should stop by the Musée de la Coutellerie and bring a picture, they might be able to identify it. Whatever it is, it's a hell of a collector's piece, nice find!

4 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Getting a hemispherical bit in those sizes will be very pricy!  And take a huge machine to spin/hold it.  Any chance you can forge the dimple and then clean it up?  Fairly easy to turn a tool on a lathe and many a hydraulic press would then imprint it.  As price is no problem. what about EDM?

I thought about forging the dimples in, but I won't be able to straighten the blade without damaging the dimples. I am trying to make a blackened steel blade that looks like knapped obsidian.

I am trying to figure out a way to do a concave parabolic grind. Note that I am not trying to do a hollow grind. I want to grind shallow hemispherical (bowl-shaped) depressions with radii ranging from golf ball to cantaloupe sized. So far, I haven't seen any grinding products that would work. I see there are concave cutting wheels for cutting sink holes out of marble and granite, and I saw a mushroom-shaped grinding wheel for snag removal, but it was too small. The closest thing I found were diamond grinding wheels with a slight radius, that cost about $100 for a 6" wheel, but they won't really work for me because the radius of the wheel face doesn't match the wheel diameter, so I would get rounded slots instead of spherical depressions. Does anyone know a good way to do this short of CNC milling?

That's a face only a mother could love, LOL

"two step anvil", LOL

That's an unusual one. Did you get it in France? I have never heard of anything else marked JD. My first thought is that it is not a John Deere, because I would think if it was, the weight would be in pounds, not CWT. There aren't many American anvils marked with the hundredweight system, and if it ended up in France I would think an English origin would be much more likely. It looks like a Brooks, with that thick heel and the flats of the feet converging high on the waist. Most English anvils don't say "CWT" (it is just assumed), and most that do use hundredweight use the 3 digit making system so most manufacturers would mark your anvil as 1 . 1 . 0. Brooks is one of the few anvil makers that commonly used fractional hundredweight, and their 1 1/4 CWT was a popular anvil. It crossed my mind that the D could a damaged B and therefor stand for John Brooks, but it does look like a proper D. In any case, Brooks anvils like many others were stamped differently depending on which of several foundries they came from, and some anvils were stamped especially for an importer. My guess is that your anvil is a Brooks that was marked especially for an importer.

Of course the adage is that a good anvil "rings like a bell", but yes, the mount definitely affects the sound, a lot, and on bare concrete most high quality anvils will be pretty loud. Putting it on wood should dampen it, especially if it's a heavy anvil, but without a frame of reference it may not be that meaningful. And even if it's kind of flat that doesn't mean it's worthless. Anvils that are made from cheap cast bodies with thick tool-steel faces can have great rebound, but little to no ring. Hammer rebound is really the more important thing, but if it has a healthy ring, so much the better. Hopefully you'll need help identifying it and we'll get to see some pictures : )

Agree with Matei, almost certainly French. German style typically has a flatter transition into the horn. Yours has a slight step, which could mean French, Spanish, or Italian, but in this case you have one very suggestive identifying feature, which is the side-exit curved hardie hole. The only place I have seen them is on French anvils.

Tell her it's an ironing board.

That's a very low serial number for a Trenton, so unless there's damaged number that's missing, it's probably from1899.

I have had a hell of a time tracking Steve down, would love contact info if anyone has it. I get the feeling his anvil business may be on hold, or possibly defunct...

I'm getting interested in a heavy anvil and I'm looking at 450# Nimbas and 460# Ratholes. The Nimbas are cast from 8640 (which I only know for its use in gears) and the Ratholes are cast from H-13, which I know as a hot-work/die steel. I'm guessing the H-13 might hold up better to prolonged hot work, but probably splitting hairs there... Both are about the same price. Both seem to be dressed very well. I really like the look of the Rathole and I like that it has the upsetting block. Everyone raves about Nimbas and I don't hear much about Ratholes, but I suspect it's simple marketing because Rathole has done so little in terms of web visibility. They look good quality and I've heard a few good comments about them. Any opinions? Anyone have a Rathole?

If it tells you anything, KMG has stopped making serrated wheels. They say smooth grinds were too problematic, and that with today's belts, serrations simply aren't needed. I imagine they make a bigger difference with cheap belts. Bader still sells them and maintains the claim that they increase cut rate and prolong belt life. I have also heard that serrated wheels tend to track better, but I couldn't say from my own experience. There's a long discussion about this on blade forums BTW.

Yeah, that is a Wilkinson. The faded pic you posted afterward is exactly what I meant by "a pair of crossed hot dogs". The only one I've seen so far that uses stone weight. Also unusually large for a Wilkie, though I'm not too familiar with the anvil scene in Australia... Cool score.

Whether it is cast, solid wrought, and how thick the face plate is all affect the weight vs dimensions. You'll have to weight it if you want to know.

Robert Postman, the author of Anvils in America had said to let him know if anyone stumbled across a Badger because he'd never seen one in person, just in catalog pictures, so I called him to let him know about this one just now. It turns out that he'd actually figured it out since then, and discovered that like this one, a lot of Badgers lack the trade mark stamp. I saw a picture of one from 1930 that looks like yours and has no trade mark.