I like anvils and am a bit of a collector. This is a two horned Fisher "insonora" anvil about 280 lbs. This is the exact anvil featured in the book anvils in America"

If that was a little taller, I'd say it's the Nimba Anvil's great grandfather. Nice chunk of steel you got there!

I don't have a camera; but I would guess that my weirdest anvil is the one I made from a RR spike hammer and some 2.5" sq stock I forged out into a shaft with a spike on the bottom and a tenon on the top that the spike hammer was rivetted onto making a small flat section with two cylindrical horns of differing diameters.

I used to have the broken knuckle off a RR car couplet than made a dandy anvil; but I gave it away.

I have a bridge anvil too but can't really call it weird as it is a commercially produced beast.

I have a 350 lb Double-Heel Fisher. Two hardy holes, two pritchel holes. Custom job. No horn. Also have a 100 lb Double heel Fisher. I guess someone needed them. I will try to get photos to post.

Are we talking commercially made or home-made?

Mine isn't weird at all but I did stop by and say hello, give it a pat on the horn and say see you later, now that's a little weird. It's just a 300# Fisher, sweet little thing.

Anything you want to post is fine by me. If you think it is weird its weird.

My current wierdest is a 73-lb block of D2 that has been fully hardened and heat treated to between RC59 and 61. The block is about 6x10x10 and was supposed to be a geared hydraulic pump body for a rather large earth moving machine that nothing else runs like a...

I was inspecting a guys house (my regular job is as a home inspector) and he mentioned that he was a machinist. Being who/what I am, I asked if they ever had any accessible scrap bins. He brought me the block and a couple of, again fully hardened and heat treated, D2 blanks that are about 2.25x4.5x.625 inches. Great beater anvil for the littler smiths in the household. I will post pictures in a bit.

paul

G'day all,

not especially weird but these are what i could come up with;



Marble anvil is a gravestone in country New South Wales from 1912, the angle smith's anvil is at my old TAFE. It's 14" square, 10" high- i admit i covet it!

AndrewOC

That grave marker is nice in a sad way, if I read it right he wasn't very old, 27, is that right?

Yep, 27 years old in 1912. My mum looked up some family history lists and we saw Mr Ross senior and wife moved around that region having 5 children (if i recall correctly) all in different places. The father outlived most of them; into his mid eighties into the early nineteen twenties. He and his wife are buried next to this monument. The detail is great; right down to wood grain in the hammer handle. Also the anvil proportions are pretty well spot on- far better than many other artistic interpretations.

AndrewOC

That grave marker anvil looks like it was modeled on the design of a 500 lb Fisher. Even the shape of the feet is like the Fisher. My kind of tombstone.

There was one in Ohio where the old smith rode the village smithing train to the end and essentially died penniless. They used his anvil as his head stone with his hammer and tongs welded to it. One of the SOFA smiths pledged to replace the hammer handle as needed and did so until the entire thing was stolen.

My wierdest anvil is a 100# sawmakers? anvil. Appears to be cast steel, hard enough that a new file barely bites. I leave it loose on the floor or on the bench for a backup block when assembling tennons, etc.

dont know what it is but good shaping block must be a good 40kg

It's not mine although I did try to take it home. Here's a headstone I found in a cemetary in Pocomoke, Md. I did an Internet search and the only info I found was an article in a New Zealand newspaper from 1899! I called the cemetary's church and they said that I now knew more than they ever did.

When I first saw it before I found the article I thought that it was a bronze casting of the original anvil. The second day I got close to it and it looks like it's coated with something. There's very little rust showing. The hammer is fitted with a hardy and the chain to keep it from walking away. The label looks like it probably says Peter Wright.

"An odd tombstone is to mark the grave of J. G. Angelo, a blacksmith, of Pocomoke City. It will be the anvil and hammer on and with which he began work as an apprentice in 1828. They were presented to him by his employer on the completion of his apprenticeship, and he has used them constantly ever since. His age is 84 and he is still vigorous."

There's a very spindly bridge anvil towards the end of this:

Apart from cheapness what was the point of them?