Wehr1850

Thankyou George for your warm welcome. Didn't know how you American's would feel about some bloke from down under joining your group. One thing we have in common though is how those big hunks of metal we call anvils seem to have something that we can't quite explain but we tend to feel this desire to run our hands over them as we stand alone in our workshop and think of all those who lived and died before we were even born, and how they loved them as much as we do. What the heck is that anyway? greetings to all those in your great state of Wyoming.

G,day guys, I have been reading your posts on William Foster anvils and because I have just purchased one I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you. I was visiting my old home state of SA a couple of weeks ago and looked up Anvils for sale in that area. Back in the early 1800s South Australia was the only Australian state that required migrant's from England and Germany to have a trade qualification such as Blacksmiths, boot makers, farriers etc. so many German Blacksmith's moved there in the early to mid 1800 hundreds, my Great Great Grandfather being one of them, arriving in South Australia from Germany in 1850. As a consequence it is easier to find old anvils in SA than in some other states of Australia. I found an advertisement for a 120 kg (260 lb ) William Foster for a good price and so I grabbed it and transported it back to Northern Australia where I now live. This is what is confusing me ... on all the photos of these Anvils that I have seen, they are marked in a similar way, with the bick to left there are the 3 indented numbers indicating the weight in cwt. In this anvil I've purchased, it is 2 1 17 so... 259 lb. With the bick to the right in all pictures I have seen, there is the full name ... William Foster. Under that is the year the anvil was made. Under the date is the initials of the inspector (probably). On my anvil instead of the full name, there is only the initials WF. And thats it. I can't find a date or any inspectors initials. I would really like to know the date it was made. It certainly looks to be a William foster. From my research I think at some stage the waist has changed from the proportionally wide waist to a narrower waist a bit more like a Peter Wright, who as you know was producing Anvils before William Foster. I think this change may have been around 1860 but I'm not really sure. Any thoughts or corrections would be appreciated. And if everyone knows when William Foster first started to make Anvils and when production ceased, I would like to know that too. Thankyou Rob.