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I Forge Iron

Charcold

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Everything posted by Charcold

  1. I'd avoid anything that is on ebay personally. Save your money and keep using the rail, or a large piece of scrap like TP suggests so often!
  2. Based on the prices in Illinois 3-4$/lb If you are near northern Illinois there is another seller constantly on Craigslist with 3-4 anvils, I believe he also posts on IFI. So you have any buyer looking at his anvils as well as yours. Someone sure was nice to the face but mean to the edges somewhere in her lifetime. Based on that maybe closer to the 3$/lb, anything over 200 lbs carries a nice premium over the common 110-150 lb anvils.
  3. Just a guess but i'd say the fact that something you're hitting is set into an open whole, and not the top of the swage block has something to do with it. for example if you were to have a cast iron block and holes (depressions really) that only went half way through, then put in a piece of hot steel a lot more force will be put into the cast iron block. since the piece is in open air and can rebound off the "shoulders" of the hot piece much less force is displaced into the swage block. maybe we're just 50 years too late to see a lot of cracked swages, any that had defects in the casting or really bad base materials in the cast likely broke early and found their way back into scrap piles. just a series of guesses
  4. Looking at the side view of the face it appears the plate is around 1/8". which seems to be the same thickness as what originally came on my #9. Although you're has the full 1/8" left and im under a 1/16" in places. cool anvil for sure, thanks for sharing
  5. I can see the History channel episode now, "Belgian anvil found in Argentina? Could this be proof Hitler and other high ranking Nazi officers fled Germany before the war for a compound in Argentina?" I found no other UAT posts with that "pig feet" style, but i swear i saw one posted somewhere (here or elsewhere). Likely i cant find because they didnt know it was a UAT.
  6. seeing this makes me wonder what size, if any, vulcans got a thicker plat welded on top. or if they simply put the same thickness plate on all anvils from 40 lbs to 300 lbs. looks quite large compared to my #9, im going to guess its a 180 lb because no one else has!
  7. knew id seen that design somewhere else before, think ive seen one or two others posted.
  8. that double horned stake type anvil is very interesting (bottom right), as is the bottom left with open air between the feet. thanks for posting
  9. make frisbees on my lathe for my other hobby, disc golf! and by that i mean finally have an excuse to buy the lathe i want. there's actually a market for mini metal or wood lathe spun frisbees, as silly as that sounds. because in competition disc golf a miniature frisbee is used to mark your place so you dont step on nice frisbees and so you get an extra 8-12" closer to the hole (the "mini" is placed in front of the edge closest to the hole). cheap plastic ones are given away free all the time, but people like the look of a good wood spun one. when i say market though, i mean 5-10$ max for what amounts to more than that in hourly work by a long shot. not a money making endeavor haha.
  10. no problem, i stole the idea from a fellow on another board! forging the chain also has the bonus of forging memories of failures more clearly and in sequential order which i find helps keep my mind straight moving forward, at least a bit more than trying forge welds on random scraps that you dont care about.
  11. every time you forge make a few links on a chain. even if the welds are no good make them into rough links and add them to the chain. in a few years time you'll have a literal visual representation of your journey into forge welding. From one end with mishapen poor welded links to the other with perfect looking links with perfect welds. I am currently doing this, i just havent gotten to the good part of the chain to post it. So far it's a visual representation of how im still learning to forge weld!
  12. i've got a big old pile of offcuts from doing a project that are all about 8" square. If it were me i'd buy a 4.5" hole saw and just slam centered holes through them, then slide them down over the anvil for a nice snug fit, screwing together every few layers with the screws offset every other. if it was too tippy some tail fins like TP said. but thats mostly because my wife has been yelling at me to burn off that pile for a year of so
  13. I think a wooden structure alone would work, and make for a move-able stand. I have heard of cement sleeve post anvils for LONG stock before but have never seen one personally. I wouldn't like the idea of having to bust the thing up if i ever wanted to rebuild tho. If you are going to go cement perhaps a 55 gal. barrel would be a better "shell" than wood. That would allow you to move it as well.
  14. New blood brings the opportunity for old smiths to unload gear to new smiths for inflated prices. I remember when i first started i was infatuated with hardy tools. I wanted 1 hardy tool of every kind, 2 or more would be even better. Then as i started to forge, and i started to realize i hadnt found a single use for one of those hardy tools i wanted so badly that i couldn't MacGyver my way around with round stock, angle iron, or a good old stump. If some old smith with a box of hardy tools found me in that phase he's have unloaded them all in one shot. Now all i want is a chain maker hardy, just to try one out, and want to finish up my leaf vein swage tool that i started.
  15. Wow, perfect urban driveway smith anvil. Moving my Vulcan #9 in and out of the garage is manageable but a #5 would be a breeze!
  16. Havent seen a 2$ anvil of ANY kind for a while except cast iron ASOs. Even the vulcans are getting 4$/lb pricetags...
  17. I will have to bust out the camera and take pics of my finds as well. Been detecting about as long as LBS here, although i dont have nearly as pretty of cases. I've mainly just stuffed things in jars. So it's not uncommon to see a 1990s matchbox car sitting with an 1800s square nail. I am also lucky enough to be able to detect my family's 1850's Illinois homestead, to which i have the only permission. Last year I pulled 6 spikes out from an area i think a barn once stood in that i believe are wrought. about 6" long 1" sq stakes with a 2-3" long taper. Could be some really cool material for a gift for my grandparents. In general in my area i'm lucky to find wheat cents or indian heads. most parks were dug out by a few prominent detectorists in the 80s-90s. ive met them and they have JARS full of silver like it's no big deal... at Das, i also have an AT pro, quite the machine huh?
  18. LOTS of hay budden and trenton on my local c-list. Quite a few P Wright. A few Arm and Hammer. A few vulcans. Lots of junk railroad ones. One single colonlial era 5th foot anvil with a cracked off heel weighing in at around 100 lbs for 100$ i missed out on and still regret. Looked like a real beauty with a slightly mushroomed top and that textbook square shape u really only see in old anvils, from what i've read.
  19. that seems like a good call also! Interesting looking at all of the different techniques for making chain, from scarfing on the corner to those nifty chain making hardys. That would make sense on this anvil in combination with the horn modification as well i'd say.
  20. ya first thing i thought of when i saw that face notch was an arrowhead maker must have owned this anvil. i could of course be wildly off it's just what popped into my head.
  21. disclaimer, i know nothing about welding such anvils. but keep in mind that appears to be a cast iron body with hardened steel face. if the same process that they use to make Vulcans was used here it was added while the cast iron was still molten in the mold afaik. That may make for a really interesting composition to try and weld. Given the the price of welding rod, and your time welding/grinding i'd value it (and the chance of failure) at well over the 100$ you'd save on passing on the swedish anvil. under 3$/lb seems like a steal on those as well compared to my area.
  22. Just as a note my post was meant to advise someone in the situation of "I've got this 15 lb anvil, what now" rather than an endorsement for buying one. I came by mine as a gift from a relative who heard i was getting into the trade and had used his one time for straightening some metal. As thomas said 15$ can be well spent elsewhere, and the 50-60lb models of theirs should be avoided 100%. Like tell your family to stop suggesting you buy one (if they're like my family and ask "why r u still using rail"). @JHCC
  23. I have one of these as well. I "forged" on it for about a week before I got a proper section of rail to use. Which I then graduated up to an improved powerhammer bottom die anvil. Which I then graduated from to my current vulcan anvil. I'm determined to trade up all the way to a mousehole! One advantage of that lump of cast iron is that it shows marks, it will be a visual guide to your mistakes when you miss hits. It also has a hardy hole. which is too small for real tooling and the body is too soft to strike on. It will however, i've found, make for a perfect little bench anvil for finishing your hole punching. I have mine sitting on a little sheet of mild steel and have used it a few times to knock out the slug when punching holes. You could possible use it for chisel work or something. Another bonus is when your friend asks if he can come over and try forging you've got an anvil to set them up on without them chipping an edge on your good anvil, and if they really like the hobby you can loan them it until they get set up. Point is even non-ideal tools can be a lesson for you, and even if they don't fit their intended purpose they may still be usable for something.
  24. Nearly 5$ a pound just a bit south of you in Wisconsin is common for craigslist postings. Personally I'd try to offer the guy 400 or 450. But it's a nice anvil so he may not budge off that price and he may even get it if you dont buy it. I see a LOT of 5$/lb anvils on craigslist, the nice ones seem to sell the not so nice ones sit.
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