Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver

You're going to get a lot of different opinions here. Me? I never leave sharp corners on an anvil. Sharp corners cause no end of grief. Forge a sharp inside corner, do some more forging on the piece and nine times out of ten you go back to that corner and there's a crack. When you're flying around the anvil, doing this and doing that, you'll hang the piece over the edge to straighten it a little and sure as heck, you'll chew it up on that sharp corner. Happens to me when I'm working on someone else's anvil. The last anvil I dressed, I put a 1/2 inch radius in the far side and used it for drawing. On the very rare occasion that I need a sharp corner, I use a hardy block. On the rest of the anvil I put at least a 1/8" radius with one spot 1/4.

Brent Bailey made this for me. We talk a lot about primitive smiths and smithing. Now I need to find just the right rock.

Well, if Steve will pay $20, it'll probably sell! :D

Sorry, I don't see any way that it would be useful building a hammer.

Depends a lot on the condition of the hammer. I've had small steamers like this that could drain my 100CFM compressor with 500 gallon tank in no time. Had to close the shut-off to build back up. Remember; you can by-pass your compressor's after-cooler and run the hammer direct with hot/wet air. You probably don't have a problem with icing up, but it does have a bit more energy. Hammers built to run on steam have big clearances. Not just for expansion, but also to keep live steam flowing through them to keep them hot and prevent excess condensation. To run hot air you run the pipe straight off the compressor to the hammer and put in a tee to the tank. I had great 20 HP Gardner-Denver two cylinder single stage compressor that put out 120 psi and just over 100 CFM and I'll bet that air was over 400 degrees!

Moumke??????

I agree 100%! I really hesitated even mentioning it because I really love the job he did. It was just an interesting aside. Actually, because they are hexes, there are three spirals. An exact Fibonacci number sequence.

WD-40 + grinding wheel = icka-poo!

It looks very nice. Impressive work. Without any criticism meant, did you know that the scales on a pineapple are roughly hexagonal and there are five spirals to the right and eight spirals to the left? Fibonacci number patterns.

How big of compressor and storage do you have?

I think you nailed it Matt. So easy for us to get sucked in, isn't it? Thanks Moderator42 ~ whoever you are!

You cannot delete a thread just because you're not happy with the answers you got. Or for any reason for that matter. Doing so would delete comments by others which you have no right to and deleting you comment would make others comments nonsensical.

If one was "better" that's all people would build. The tire hammer runs off of a 1hp motor, the air hammer requires a compressor. The air hammer is easier to learn to use. The tire hammer can often be built cheaper. There is no "best"!

Sure! CLICK HERE!

It's all done on my friction screw press. The process is exactly the same as the bottom tools that I have documented on Youtube.

A little side note: these are as-forged 4140. I start with 1-1/4 round, forge the shank, drop it in a bolster and forge the flatter then machine the flatter end and the hole. After that it goes to the grind shop for chamfer, then paint and handle.

Ha! And I can say "Forgemaster says so, so it must be right"! Great minds DO think alike!

Pipe clamps can often be used as spreaders too!

All of the commercial flame cutting shops I know of use LP. Dang, they do gorgeous cutting of stuff up to 12" or so. Can't imagine the fuel making any difference in the quality of the cut. Heck, I've demonstrated how you can turn off the fuel once you get the cut started and keep right on going! Blows people away.

Well, they need to match. Most manufacturers use parallel sided dovetails on the dies, so if you have a taper in the slot you need to have a matching taper on the wedge.

The dovetails are usually 7º, but sometimes 5º. Draw for the wedge should be 1/8" per foot.

Easier to forge than to weld and grind! Yes, they come handled. These are little 1-1/2 inch flatters. Even if it wasn't easier, I'd rather forge than weld and grind...........any day!

Interesting patterns. Was it common to have two hardy holes in the larger anvils? Funny how they lost the sweet shape right at the end of the horn. You know what they say; "Old blacksmiths never die, they just quit using their Peter Wright"!

As a good salesman would say "What would you like them to be"?

Got a new product line going. Starting with flatters, but I'll expand into a whole bunch of top and bottom tools now. Had what I thought was a pretty slick punching setup, but didn't work out as well as I had hoped, just having to take out too much material for the stock size. Got a good script going on the ol' CNC mill. Two machine vises with two parts each. Take just under 20 minutes. Allows me to forge for twenty minutes then change parts and go back to forging. Top tools don't require the hourglass hole like a hammer. Heck you're not even supposed to wedge them, just knock them on and off so you can dress them easily.