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I Forge Iron

My first anvil


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I'm a total noob to blacksmithing. I just finished making my Lively forge two weeks ago, and have been on the hunt for an anvil for a while so I put out an add on Craigslist.

I got a call from a guy that had an abused 200lb anvil collecting dust in his shop. It was a very old building, and I understand that it was in the building when he bought it. $25 was the asking price.

I went to his shop Friday and looked it over. It was pretty beat up and covered with some old chipped up green paint. All that was visible was a 2 stamped on the side. Neither one of us knew what it was so I paid him, loaded it up, and headed home. Any anvil is better than an 8" piece of RR track that I was going to use.

I buffed off all of the paint and discovered that it is a 1820-1835 233lb. Mousehole:

My railroad track, cowering in the background:

I'm toying with the idea of welding up the chips, but I'll probably just bevel the chipped areas with a grinder. I don't know if I feel confident enough trying to weld something like that.

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Edited by rasputin
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I just bought a smaller 152 lb mouse hole on ebay that I will eventually have to fix up I paid nearly $1.00 lb plus shipping. Since I live in Louisiana my self I think that you had better chain that one down. I had one mouse hole stolen from me 10 years ago.
(Wasn't the one you found though :) )
Repair of an anvil that size is not too tough but you would have to set it on top of your crawfish burner for a while to get it up to the required 400 deg. F. pre heat. Don't grind on the top plate unless you intend to repair. On my stolen anvil there were a couple of places where the face was less than 1/8 inch thick before I hard faced the entire top.
The main thing to think about is that the top plate on these anvils is worn from years of use and abuse. If it is nearly flat then odds are that it has been leveled by grinding at some point.

Congratulation of your good luck,
Charlotte St. John Parish

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