Hello all, I'm Jay from Devon in England. I've been browsing on here for a little while so figured I should introduce myself.
I had the chance to do a little bit of forge work in metalworking class in my first year of high school, a very long time ago. I forged a fire poker than my mother still uses to this day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, like many subjects, I wasn't able to continue it past that first year and so I haven't been at a forge for over 40 years. Recently I was chatting with a couple of friends of mine about hobby crafts, they're a woodworker and potter respectively, and mentioned I used to enjoy hitting hot iron. She said 'oh my dad's got an old anvil sitting in a shed somewhere, I could see if he's still got a use for it'.
A few weeks later and I have an anvil, which appears to be a Mousehole anvil, pictures below. This morning I hit it with a wire brush on the angle grinder and uncovered some half legible marks, then gave it a coat of boiled linseed oil, which seems to be the thing to do. It rings nicely when you hit it with a hammer which I think is positive. I'm going to try and find a ball bearing and measure the rebound.
As I live in the countryside, I'm luck to have a barn with a workshop at the back and I'm in the process of building a welding table so have space for a small forge. This week I put together a propane forge burner using an Amal injector (amazing what you can learn on the internet :) ) and now I'm reading about building a small forge for it. My friend the potter has some spare kiln bricks and I'm just waiting to hear what type th ey are and whether they would be suitable for a forge. If so, I think all I need st a bit of angle steel and some all-thread and I can put a forge together.
So, hopefully soon I'll be hitting hot metal again. There's a place not far from me that does two day introduction to forge work courses that I want to get on to reintroduce me to the art but until the current restrictions are lifted, they can't run them.