TWISTEDWILLOW

How can you tell?

Here’s three anvils I found in my area using the TPAAAT method. 122# Peter wright, 105# William foster and a 94# Peter wright. I gave $200 for the 122#, $105 for the 105#, and I gave $200 for the 94#. two of them have a long history of use in my county being handed down for a couple of generations. So I thought it was cool to find a couple pieces of local history. The William foster is marked 1844 but I have no way of knowing the history on it past the last two members of that family because the last living one didn’t know past his father.

I know what you mean the local votech here hasnt offered any kind of shop or machinery course there for over a decade to my understanding They sold off all there machines, books and tools years ago. And I’m not aware of any other local votechs that do. But the votech in salisaw started offering a blacksmith class this year I thought about taking it and There is also these blacksmith brothers Ed and Brian Brazil that live in the same county as me that I met this summer when they brought a couple things in my shop for repair and they said they teach classes every now an I thought I’d take a class with them sometime to. But your right there is no shop courses to take.

I’ll do that, it sounds like a good idea. I’ve already bought a pile of blacksmithing books that I’m starting to read through. I’ve seen a lot of talk about the anvils in America book so I thought it might be a good resource and an interesting read so I thought I’d pick it up after I’m done reading through the pile I already found, but I’ll definitely start looking for a shop manual too Because I definitely do a little bit of everything in the in the shop and I’ll bet that it would come in handy for a few things.

Whensparksfly, that’s my fault I didn’t clean off the grease before taking the pictures it’s not broken I’ve just got it greased up pretty good so when I took it apart it kinda does look like broken metal but it’s just messy. thomas, that makes since I have several bench vises that I use for my day job but they are all really big. I never needed a small one so guess I never thought about the utility of having small and large and different heights for different jobs. I see your point it sounds handy being able to close a vise with your leg when both hands are full because I definitely cant do that with my big bench vises. Also I read about anvils needing to be mounted at correct height but I haven’t read yet on the correct height for post vises that will be my next stop before I build my stand. Thanks for the tips.

I don’t do any heavy welding but I bought the cheapest flux core hobart welder that tractor supply had about 5 or 6 years ago I can’t remember, it’s a 125ez and I’ve used it much more than I thought I would. It still runs and I can say it’s definitely more than paid for itself on jobs helping out around the property and farm and occasional light customer repair. I think it ran me $250 or $300. The only thing I don’t like about it is it won’t take the bigger spools of wire but hobart now has an updated version that does take the 10 pound spools for around the same price I’ve been thinking about picking up.

That must be what I’ve got here because this thing is almost twice the weight as a iron city I found with 6” jaws. I didn’t realize that they came in such a wide range. Would that be on purpose for different uses like portable farrier or military Calvary versus blacksmith shop or would that just be different heights and weights because they were made before modern standardized manufacturing?

Hi mr Davis I live outside of Stilwell Oklahoma right close to the Arkansas boarder. I’ve never been over to Lawton but I know round about we’re it is. I bought the vise for $150 it was a pricier than some others I’ve bought but I liked it because of how big and heavy it was. I just didn’t know what the history was on the original Trenton post vises but I’m still reading through other posts trying to find out all I can. I’m very interested in tool company history on all kinds of stuff. I’m gathering up steel materials and plan to build stand/mount for it soon. Billy cochran

Never had one of my chickens do something like that but I had a young shop cat jump on the woodstove once but it never tried it agin. The only chicken problem I’ve had is them coming in the shop and pooping on stuff but I solved that buy pouring scratch grains all along the outer walls of the shop and it did two things one it got them out of the shop and two it took care of the weedeating because they tore out all the grass and weeds around the shop as they followed the walls digging at the scratch.

Sorry y’all I wasn’t trying to get on anybody’s nerves. I backed out like you said and it worked it pulled up several posts titled Trenton post vise I read through them all and found a little bit of the Info I wanted to know but not all. I’ll try searching that way some more using different words to see if I can find the rest of what I’m looking for. I Thank you for your help and I will go back and reread the read this first post because I apparently missed the part about the search bar so I probably missed something else to. Thanks again

Okay thank you I’ll try that. Nothing came up when I used the search tab up top with or without the quote marks. Ill back out and try from google.

Hello guys I hope I’m posting this in the right place I did some searching on here and didn’t find any post about this so I thought I’d start one. Hopefully I didn’t look over any other post talking about these. This is my original Trenton post vise i tried to get clear pictures so y’all can see it. It’s stamped original Trenton and then under that is stamped 1902 and then has a number 1 stamped under that. It’s a little over 6/1/2” wide jaws and it weighed 128 pounds on my wife’s bathroom scale. Which I thought was odd most 6” and 6/1/2” I’ve found this size were quite a bit lighter? Anyways I was wondering if original Trenton was it’s own company or was this made by someone else like fisher? Or is this the same as the Trenton anvils?

Not sure on the prices in Texas but up here in eastern Oklahoma I paid $200 for 3 post vises one one 4” in good shape one 5” in good shape and one busted up 5” and then later I found a 6 and a 1/2” In Pretty good shape for $150