humphreymachine

I looked at a fairly large Hay Budden today which was in nice shape except for the fact that the area where the weight is normally stamped is messed up with many many center punch type marks. I thought I had seen a table showing dimensions for various weight H B anvils but if I had I can't find it again. It is 32 1/2 inches long - 5 1/8 x 19 1/4 face - 12 1/4 high - 1 1/4 hardie. I'm guessing around 275 pounds. Any thoughts???

Picked up this pair of blacksmith’s shears which struck me as having larger than normal jaws compared to the size of the handles. Seams are visible in the jaws which I assume are the forge weld line between the tools steel and mild steel. Neat graphic. The fellow I got them from thought they would look nice hung outside a shop as a trade sign.

This 48 inch long bellows was for domestic use but thought I’d show another example of how fancy they can get. Satinwood inlaid into mahogany. c1910

Hope to leather the bellows one of these days. It is 28 inches long which is larger than a hand held fireplace type bellows but quite a bit smaller than the common American forge bellows. No sure how it was operated. There are no nail holes to suggest that it once had handles but there are three unexplained notches/depressions in the top and the extra piece of wood on the top. There are also three rubber bumpers on the bottom suggesting that it may have been placed on the floor? Foot operated? It is made of hardwood and rather heavy.

An interesting bellows(sans leather) with a carved animal head surrounding the opening which presumably held a metal nozzle. Appears ancient but I don’t think that it is as old as it looks. Probably late 19th/early 20thc and Asian in origin.

4 items from an old smith's shop. Two heavy tongs - not sure if they were designed for manual or power hammer use - 'standard' size Atha tongs shown for size comparison. Most power hammer tongs I've seen have longer thinner handles designed to both give the user more distance from the hammer and dissipate some of the shock of the hammer's blows. The 'loops' on the ends of the one pair of tongs appear as though they once pointed to the side as each of the reigns have be twisted 90 degrees A neat old Oxweld acetylene gauge with 1917 and 1922 patents. All brass construction and fairly large. A shelf piece. Lastly - an interesting hand forged punch holder. Internal seams demonstrate that the 'cone' was fabricated from a piece of flat stock which was forge welding into a cylinder and then forge welded to the base.

Broaching would produce a nice uniform hardie hole. Punched holes in Peter Wrights and other are often anything but - often tapered - out of square not uniformly square etc etc etc

Super cool - thank you for sharing. Hope to see your collection in person one day -- but until then - the things you share only wet our appetites. Interesting to see that they used an actual piece of steel on the horn to mimic the piece that would be placed in the mold. Also the double 'sandwich' of steel used on the table. One which would leave the swell in the iron to give the impression that the steel top is thicker. At first I didn't notice the core print for the hardie. Was a prepunched hole in the top plate used to secure the bottom of the core - thereby insuring perfect alignment?

I've seen many (and have several) of these with railroad initials stamped in them. Until the fairly recent development of portable cut off saws railroad workers would perform in the field repairs by scoring a rail around its circumference and then braking it in two. They would then use a hand crank drill to drill the holes for the splicing bar and then after hours of other back braking work pump themselves home on a hand car. That was a day's work!!!! If a rail can be cut with it I'm sure it can handle whatever you throw its way!

See lots of these out there in the antique trade. As others have said it is one half of a stamping die for a piece of silver or silver plate. There was a bankruptcy auction at Lunt Silver in Greenfield Mass several years. They stored thousands of these die sets in fireproof rooms to safeguard the huge investment they and their clients had in their development and manufacture. If I recall there were also separate dies to cut out silver blanks before the stamping process and maybe trimming dies as well to trim off the excess silver(flash) after the pieces had been stamped. So multiple die sets to produce one piece of a flatware set. On edit I see that it is not exactly the same as the examples I've seen but I almost guarantee that it is somehow involved in the said flatware production. I see a chip in one of the corners which has me wondering whether it is cast iron although these dies are generally hardened tool steel which can chip as well.

I’d love it in my shop just the way that it is! Shown is an engraving of a bolt heading vise without the nut swages but clearly by the same manufacturer. Also shown is its lighter duty cousin in my shop. Note the heading dies in the side protrusion. The previous owner was using it to make rosehead nails thus the special additions to the vises jaws.

Very cool! Looks like a super heavy duty bolt making vise with a built in top swage for forming bolt heads and maybe accompanying nuts as well. Lets see some more photos. Thanks for posting!

I see the above discussion about Hay-Buddens not having deep depressions in the base but this one is an exception I guess. It’s tough to see in the photos but the H B stamp is there.

Here’s a 148.5 lb H. B. I picked up the other day for 100. It appears to have spent some time on a damp floor or the like. There are some horizontal bands which appear to be the slabs of wrought iron which were originally forged together to form the body of the anvil? I’m guessing that like an old wrought iron anchor or other weathered wrought iron object the ‘grain’ starts to show as softer iron starts to corrode away before the harder slag. The top pitting is not too deep and should easily remove with a little belt sanding.

Bought this Punch/shear/bender 'ironworker' by J F Kidder of Burlington Vermont for $50 but had to wait around at an auction for five hours to get it.

Here is a Buffalo forge which I picked up recently. Does anyone know the model number or the approximate years of production? My catalogue shows, and the other fabricated(not cast iron) Buffalo forges I find on-line have cross braced legs rather than the cast iron corner brackets which mine has. The chimney pipe is 8 inch and it appears that the smith who used it added some extra sheet metal to the hood – presumably to improve draft?

"Fisher anvils are the undisputed king of anvils". While I love my 300lb Fisher I'm not sure that I agree

Thanks guys -- I looked at images of power hammers on Google and it appears that it was a Nazel based on the casting remnants at the end oposite the anvil. Tragic that it was broken up!

"Not all FISHER anvils had their name on them. There were inconsistencies depending on the era of manufacture and even time of day." The name wasn’t a permanent part of the pattern?

Great looking anvil. I hope you are able to repair it. In the photos at the top it does appear like a cast example particularly with the protruding metal around the handling hole which would have been cored and maybe part of a mold line above it.

That is the coolest steam hammer/photo I’ve seen – rivets -- mahogany encased cylinder –even the heart shaped pulley. If one had the time and the means it would be a fun build and much easier to accomplish than a cast frame. If one Googles ‘steam hammer’ and hit ‘images’ it’s amazing how many great examples survive today – particularly across the pond where many more large hammers appear to have been preserved – if only as out door sculpture. There is at least one more image of a steel plate fabricated hammer.

The large block is forged as is the smaller one. I'd think one could get a fairly sharp corner by driving a square bar in when forming the 'V'? While a sharp V could be a liability it would allow one to use the block to hold squares on edge. I wonder what they used if for? Holding rounds? I like the idea of shearing with the other two pieces.

Here are several miscellaneous tools found with a large power hammer. Not sure what the handled piece was used for? Two edges are slightly rounded and two are square. It seems like it may have been used with the ‘U’ shaped block to make clips? but I suspect that it may have been used more as a flatter/set hammer. The ‘V’ shaped block does not come to a full 90 degree point in its trough.

Two small bench vises showing some similarities to their larger cousins – the post vise. The smaller of the two has all over scale which would seem to suggest that it was overheated while finishing or heat treating. Not sure it these were heat treated but it might make sense given the two small ‘anvil’ spots on each.

I'd think a nice heavy section of RR rail would make a better anvil for general forging?