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ID Old Anvil


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Anyone have any idea what this is? I bought this years ago when I decided to try blacksmithing... didn't want to spend too much money in case it was just a passing hobby. Bought this for 50 bucks. It's in deplorable condition, heel broken off, bad gouging in the far edge (when i started out, I used it backwards to have a clean edge to work on). I quickly got a nicer anvil once i was hooked on smithing (and then another lol), now this one just sits in my garage...

I am thinking that this anvil is pretty darned old... anyone have any clue what it is? It's about 160 pounds, 1" hardy, markings are almost completely gone and not really legible. Wondering if anyone could take a stab at it just by sight? I'll get out and take a photo of the markings later, but I am not at home at the moment...

18701.attach

Edited by MarkC
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holy cow droppings, i bet you're right... i recall making out the letters "US" on the markings, and wondered what the heck that was all about. It's probably the US in "MOUSE" wow... I need to go take a closer look. thanks a lot.

Edited by MarkC
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Thomas,

It has no pritchel... I always thought a good portion of the heel had broken off at some point, and the pritchel going with it. Now that I google images of mousehole anvils, I see that their heels were rather small... seems my heel is mostly intact. i'm shocked to think it might be that old

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Hey Mark, I'll give ya $75.00 for it. It's just sittin' in your garage takin' up valuable space, besides ya got 2 nicer ones. Right? :) reminds me of the time several yrs back. I had seen an ad in the local paper about a garage sale; "old anvil with stand". He wanted $50.00 for it, weighted nearly 150# IIRC, but it had part of the face gone!...I know now that it was a "Plow maker's" anvil and the "missing face" was on purpose! Ignorance sure hurts sometimes....
You going to bring it back into use now?

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haha, that's a good story. bring it back into use...man, i don't know. That bad edge would be one hefty repair. Guess you're right though, I should clean it up and see how it looks... I always thought it was a junker, best used to moor a boat with. I tried to get my hands on a better anvil as soon as I could.

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Looks perfectly usable to me. Why you worried about the edge. Just use the other one if you need to.

So many folks mess up anvils trying to put sharp edges on them and then you read the old smithing books and they tell you the first thing to do with a new anvil is to *round* the edges!

I have an 1828 William Foster anvil that is missing 90% of the face and had the complete heel broken off. I demo with it every now and then to show what you can do with an angled 2x3" working face.

It's a great anvil to use for historical sites in America as it covers most of the time period pretty well.

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I'm with TP on this one, don't worry about the edges. If anything just soften the sharpness of the "chip" with a sanding disc on a 4" grinder. This will allow you to use it and if needing to work over the edge it won't leave shunts. 160# anvil even with bad edges can give you a lot of service! Oh and BTW, that offer still stands...;)

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