Picked up a new toy last night. Very few markings on it that I can find which is shown in one of the pictures they are 1 2 2 and 8 (1 or I) 5 underneath the first line. Not sure of the weight, the gentleman I picked it up from said it was 135 lbs. It has a nice rebound on it as well as a good sound. The size is 19" x 4 5/8" x 9 3/4" overall, with a cutting face of 11 1/2" x 4 5/8" with a 7/8" hardy hole. Hopefully Saturday I can get a weight on it as well as seeing how well it does when forging. Paid a little over $2.50 a lb. for it. I had been looking for an anvil for a while now but nothing worthwhile to be found or no money when I did find a decent one. The gentleman I bought it from gets a lot of blacksmithing stuff from Pennsylvania near Amish country, and once or twice a year gets a trailer load brought down here. He had a larger Fisher anvil, and Champion blower with stand, and a lot of hammers, tongs, and swages. Just goes to show you that if you are hunting for an anvil don't settle for something less than what you want, just keep hunting and it will turn up.

That's and old one, no pritchel hole, but has lots of life left in it. I'm not even going to venture a guess on the weight since I was so far off on the last estimate, blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. Price may have been a little high but that is an old one so it may have some additional value as collectors item. Happy forging and enjoy! :P

How is the ring/rebound?

welder19

The typeface of the stamps looks 18th cent, although the same stamps could have been used for years.
The hammer marks under the bick are interesting; are they from some unusual working practice or left in after manufacture?

Nice find. congrats!

The rebound is very good and it does have a decent ring to it.

As for the hammer marks on the underside of the horn, not sure where they came from but it does add a bit of character to the anvil.

The price may have been a little high but it was within my price range and it is one of the better anvils I have seen for sale in the past two years or so, so that didn't bother me so much. As for it having collectors value, I will worry about that more after it has been used for a while and if I find better, I plan on using it quite a bit till then though.

I would like to find out some more about where the anvil came from, which I plan on doing some in the coming days, so I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas about it or even where to start.

That's a neat old anvil. It very well could be 18th century. Good buy! :D

Well if I was going to make a guess I would go with English, late 18th century/early 19th century.

The hammer marks on the underside of the horn are not construction marks from the forging of the anvil and so are marks left by a smith who did a lot of work with the hammer underneath the horn (probably explains the over/under strikes too as hammering up on the off side is difficult.

That's and old one, no pritchel hole, but has lots of life left in it. I'm not even going to venture a guess on the weight since I was so far off on the last estimate, blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. Price may have been a little high but that is an old one so it may have some additional value as collectors item. Happy forging and enjoy!

That looks like a Mousehole to me ...

Anyone else?

Sam

I would agree with late 18th or early 19th century. From what I remember from Postman's book, the table was not added until after the 1780's. I think it is around 1830/1840 for pritchel holes to become common. There is a tendency for the earlier anvils to not be marked with a maker's name. Also if I remember what he said about weight markings, the earlier method typically center punch dots with chisel lines connect the dots. It was into the 19th. century (maybe late 18th. century?) that number stamps become common in marking anvil weights. So these points would back up early 19th century, unless it came from an anvil maker that was still making them "the old way." Mousehole is quite possible, but nothing definitive without markings. Obviously, these can be hard to date. Now I will have to pull out "Anvils in America," and "Mouse Hole."

Mousehole I would say.

1 2 2 indicates 170 pounds but it looks maybe a bit lighter than that although that shape are often heavier than they look- like women when the weight is low and broad.

I would very much like that one for the collection.