Blue Whale Smithing

On 1/21/2021 at 6:05 PM, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

Looks very good to me, I would have done the same thing, grab it before someone else does. Now I hope you have read about not doing any grinding, milling or welding on the hardened face. A wire brush on an angle grinder is OK, to take off the rust and a coating of BLO or paste wax will keep it from rusting and retain the nice patina.

That was the plan, my beat up old angle grinder seems to have passed away so ones coming in the mail but upon its arrival I’ll be removing the body rust and applying the blo and then I’ll probably just forge until the face of the anvil is clean. I’ve got lots of tongs and other assorted tools to make anyhow!

Just an update, I pulled the trigger on the anvil, here it is mounted on my log. The mounted anvil

Thanks for all the comments everyone, as for the ring and rebound test the fellow told me it went well with a steel ball bearing but I’ll be testing it myself tomorrow. As for the investment I currently am in the position while the price is a bit of a financial hit I’m not in a position where it would cause me to miss any payments, just tighten my budget a bit when I comes to eating out. I believe this to be a worthy upgrade because I wish to get deeper into the craft to the point where the hardy hole and Pritchel hole will be good investments. During my few years checking through various selling websites in my area this is by far the best quality for a reasonable price. Looking at you sellers who think a chipped to hell 100# Peter Wright is worth $1200. As for haggling the price has been worked down from 750.

I also forget if I’ve mentioned this but my current anvil is a piece of RR track a buddy of mine cut the front into a scuffed point as a “horn” it’ll do but I feel I would be remiss to let this anvil slip by if my past hunts have taught me anything

I’m looking into this hay budden anvil it’s 145 pounds but it costs $675, I’m located in Massachusetts and it seems most anvils go from 400-600 but usually have extremely bad face chipping. I would be upgrading from a rail road track anvil and was wondering if this anvil would be worth the investment.