evfreek Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 I have been semi-successfully trying to apply TPAAT for several years now, and have finally managed to acquire an anvil of my own. It is fair to say that I have only been looking hard for an anvil for the last 6 years or so. At first, I have complained that the TPAAT doesn't work for me, because nothing has happened for such a long time. Really, I should get with the program, and pay more attention to practical statistics, which states that the likelihood of improbable events can be estimated from the sequence of more probable but correlated sub-events. In other words, coming close counts toward chances of success. Nothing against Thomas, of course. I hold him in the highest regard. But sometimes it is important to realize that not everybody can be like him. Anyway, I was looking for a way to attach the hardy hole to my newest generation fabricated anvil, and I saw an ad for a fab shop out-of-business sale. As I had done for so many years, I responded to the ad and headed over in my car. There was the good half of a nice London pattern anvil welded on to an I-beam. The seller said that the scrapper was coming, and he would sell it for a decent price. I thought back to the discussions about beam theory and welded anvils, and decided that this anvil world work fine for me. I got this funny feeling, and figured that I should buy the anvil and load it in my trunk before I did any browsing. Good thing too, because 15 minutes later, another fellow showed up looking for an anvil and was very unhappy to find out that I had just bought the only one. So much for brotherhood among blacksmiths. The look he gave me was priceless. It reminded me of all the times I had arrived 15 minutes late in the past. So, it is marked "AY-BUDD", has good rebound, the requisite amount of weld spatter and torch cuts in its face, and in total weighs over 170 lbs (can't find my scale, and yes, I'm overweight). Since I have finally bought one, I have an observation to make. I have seen a many interesting posts recently about anvil resellers, including the recent one about matchless antiques. Especially interesting were the ones about Anvils-R-Us from Clinton and others. These guys make it difficult to find real anvils at estate sales, auctions, out-of-business sales, etc. But, since the market for "not real" anvils is not really there, these gems are still available. I don't want to buy an anvil from Anvils-R-Us. It just gives me a bad feeling. I have run into anvil collectors at estate sales who smirk at me after besting me in seizing their latest (40th) anvil. I don't really have a good feeling about these people either. I just want an anvil to use, not to display or collect. So if it is a little beat up or in pieces, as long as it can be used, it is good for me. And it should be good for all you other aspiring beginners too. By the way, for Thomas, I have not been inactive for all these years whining about how hard it is to find an anvil. I have been able to "make do" although without a real anvil of my own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clinton Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 Right on evfreek, I know that I am not the only one that feels this way about the guys who re-sell tools, I am sure you have seen the new guy posting anvils that he cleans up using electrolysis, he has many others just ask he may have what you are looking for, and he even guarantees any face delamination or breaking off off horn or heal. He can keep those anvils, they do not seem to be selling like hot cakes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maddog Posted January 9, 2011 Share Posted January 9, 2011 Congratulations! "half" an anvil? which half? I am guessing from your comments that its a more recent HB that was welded at the waist and you have the top half. If thats the case, you might consider buying a heavy block of mild steel and welding it onto the bottom? In any case it's a great find and it sounds like you got it for a good price. Perhaps even a little sweeter being that you narrowly beat out another guy How about pix? I have mixed feelings about resellers too but I recognize that if it weren't for their tireless efforts, many of these anvils would be rusting away in sheds and end up in the scrap yard. Also, they add significant value by making these anvils easily available online and in some cases backing them with a warranty. Consider all the time you invested till you finaly found yours. The Thomas Method may not cost cash but it ain't cheap. It costs considerable work. And yes, he does have supernatural powers. We are not all gifted that way. That being said, I ended up buying an anvil from a blacksmith who resells smithing equipment. I felt confident because he is well known in the online smithing forums. I am quite unhappy with the way he treated me and have since heard similar complaints from others in my area. It pays to check carefully. Lately I have been dreaming of fabbing a large European pattern anvil from all the steel that I have in my backyard and selling my HB. Again, congrats. It must feel good :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marksnagel Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 Congrats Evfreek! I went a long time using a piece of RR track, (had to quit every time the train came through ), and then graduated to a train coupler knuckle for a long time. I had previously posted about how I got my anvil. I always give away a Fredricks Cross to everyone that stops by and shows interest in my blacksmithing. Well the next day (Christmas eve) after I gave a cross away, there was a 152 lb anvil sitting on a previously empty stump near my outdoor forge. Still don't know for sure who put it there but I have my suspicions. You've got a great find. Enjoy it and happy Blacksmithing. Mark<>< Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 Hi. The good half is the top half, and it came welded (with a fine weld, I might add) to an I-beam. The web is not very thick, but I know how to calculate its max deflection and energy stored, and it should work just fine. If I have any trouble, it is just a routine welding job. But I didn't buy the fab shop's old welder: a DC only 699 amp Hobart. It was three phase. I will attach a photo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodge Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 I have been semi-successfully trying to apply TPAAT for several years now, and... What is TPAAT?? I have googled the acronym but didn't come up with anything meaningful to anvils or blacksmithing.:huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fosterob Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 TPAAT is Thomas Powers Anvil Aquisition Theory ,or something similar. I'm sure he will explain better than I can but I think it is ask everyone you meet about an anvil and after you get one they start to multiply. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fosterob Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 :o Was double post Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fosterob Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 EV, I think you need to try and get hold of Thomas, he recently posted that he got the bottom half of an anvil. Be sweet if you guys could make one out of the pieces. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 Friend of mine came across the bottom half of an anvil many years ago for $25 but passed on it. Well wouldn't you know it, but a couple years later he picked up the top half of a similar size anvil for a song. Kicking himself doesn't begin to describe it. Is there a lesson in there somewhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 EV, I think you need to try and get hold of Thomas, he recently posted that he got the bottom half of an anvil. Be sweet if you guys could make one out of the pieces. Rob Hi Rob. That sounds pretty funny. I saw an anvil that had split in half, and the owner welded it back together again. For some reason, it was really tricky. Something like chasing a crack around and around finally being solved by skip welding. No, this wasn't it. But something unpleasant like that. I got it written down somewhere. Next time I go to the guy's shop, I'll ask him. Anyway, he is a better welder than I am, so it is a little scary. It is worth a try using it as it is. It looks like it will be just fine. Now to scrounge up the wood/metal to make a stand. Just in time too, since the shop I work in has to lend out the large anvil for 6 months. This will go by in no time at all, but it still makes people nervous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted January 10, 2011 Author Share Posted January 10, 2011 Friend of mine came across the bottom half of an anvil many years ago for $25 but passed on it. Well wouldn't you know it, but a couple years later he picked up the top half of a similar size anvil for a song. Kicking himself doesn't begin to describe it. Is there a lesson in there somewhere? You bet there is one. Someone once said that if you pass up a discarded piece of junk saying you will pick it up on the way back from work so that you don't get dirty, it will be gone by then. And, you'll need it within the week! A couple of years ago, I saw an anvil missing the horn advertised on craigslist as pick up at some address for free. It was about two hours away, so I did not think that it was worth the risk. Anyone could pick it up before I got there. So I posted a heads up on Iforgeiron, and one of the fellas successfully picked it up. Hmmmm, I guess that could have been me... Oh well, good karma. One of the local guys really was miffed at me since he wanted a bladesmithing anvil. It seems that with the collectors and all, the damaged but still functional anvils are less likely to be snatched up to be hoarded or resold at a "more appropriate" price. This anvil rush is really getting to be annoying. The local scrapper has started charging $1 per pound for RR track pieces because he heard that they are in "huge" demand by beginning blacksmiths trying to make an anvil on the cheap. It is a better deal buying a new euroanvil than $1 per pound RR track from an overexcited scrap dealer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 That's a beaut! Does it have good re-bound? HB's tend to be excellent in that category. The base I have is from a PW, (according to Postman) and probably a smaller one than that, as I recall mine's weight stamped 1.0.X and has been used as an anvil---it's mushrooming around the edges. Shoot I use it as an anvil sometimes to show folks that they don't need a LPA to get started. My loaner anvil is an old Powell missing the entire heel, great face, fair horn and dirt cheap as it's "damaged". It's also the one that spent several years out back of my house in a bad section of town and never disappeared... I recently made a prosthetic hardy hole for it and now need to make some tools that will sit on the face as the prosthesis is not real strong under downward hammering. As for horns I forged a stake anvil using an old long sledge hammer for the top piece to get a curved surface to work on. As I picked up another sledge like that I really need to use a powerhammer and forge it to conical ends and make another. The basis of the TPAAT is to talk with *EVERYONE* about your anvil hunt: Folks in Church, standing in line next to you at the grocery store, at the hardware store, etc and then following up on leads. Note to get the best deals you need to be able to pay cash *now*. Many a deal has soured if you leave it and come back later...Also note that trying to get inexpensive anvils from other smiths, (or tool dealers or collectors), is like trying to buy their children to chain them to the blower handle. You want to find anvils that are just taking up space in a garage, basement or yard where after banging their shins on it on a regular basis they are surprised that they don't have to *pay* *you* to haul it off... As anvils were a typical tool of so very many areas there are a lot still in hiding---like the one in the sub-basement of a hospital in Columbus OH, I talked with a fellow who had been an orthopedic blacksmith in WWII who had used it and to a janitor who remembered it being there 30 years later, I moved before I tracked it any further, sigh.... My uncles in Law remembered the smithy in the sugar refining plan in Kansas City, I bought a large postvise from an auto repair place that had been in the same location since 1918 and so had a smithy to repair automobiles...Oil drilling used to have a smithy to re-point cable tool drills---they liked the old bridge anvils for that, and lets not forget about the wealth of anvils from shipyards and shipboard machine shops! Quarries, mines, lumber camps, farms, machineshops---(often cities had *more* anvils per square mile than the countryside!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bajajoaquin Posted January 10, 2011 Share Posted January 10, 2011 You bet there is one. Someone once said that if you pass up a discarded piece of junk saying you will pick it up on the way back from work so that you don't get dirty, it will be gone by then. And, you'll need it within the week! Just happened to me, although not with an anvil. There was a bicycle discarded in the center divider of a road near my house. For weeks, I kept driving by it, thinking I should grab it, "just in case." Last Saturday, a friend came by, looking for advice on how to make a spinning wheel using a bicycle wheel as the base. When we walked out to the street to loo for the frame, it was gone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted January 11, 2011 Author Share Posted January 11, 2011 That's a beaut! Does it have good re-bound? HB's tend to be excellent in that category. ... The basis of the TPAAT is to talk with *EVERYONE* about your anvil hunt: Folks in Church, standing in line next to you at the grocery store, at the hardware store, etc and then following up on leads. ... Rebound is good, although I only tried it with a hammer, not the ball bearing. I'm not a huge believer in the rebound theory, however. I've gotten a huge amount of work done on dead anvils, but the metal does have to be hot. As for the TPAAT and talking with everyone, I have not had all that much luck. In fact, I have not even come close, so that means that this technique may not be for me. Perhaps one of my problems is that I talk to the "wrong" people. Once I was planning to go to LA, so I checked the LA area craigslist to see if there were any anvils in town. The Bay Area is pretty anvil poor. Well, there was somebody with an anvil, so I called. A lady answered the phone, and told me that the anvil was gone. Before I could thank her and hang up, she asked me if I was a "real blacksmith". Ah, umm, I guess so. "Wow, a real blacksmith! How did you get started? What do you make? bla bla bla?" About half an hour later, she went on about being a single mom and being stuck around the house are really bored. Then, she wondered when I was coming to town, and so on. I got this creepy feeling, and besides, I was paying the phone bill Eventually, it appeared that there really was no anvil, but she figured that she could get some calls from "real blacksmiths". It was working! I'm afraid I am not all that sociable of a person, and it took me a while to recover from this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clinton Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 thats funny ev, keep calling those adds so we can get some more laughs do you still have the number? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T Ritter Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 I never encountered an anvil like that, but it looks like fun to reconstruct. You will have fun with that one. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evfreek Posted January 13, 2011 Author Share Posted January 13, 2011 Hey Clinton, no I don't have the number. It is funny in retrospect, but at the time, I was pretty angry and almost swore off craigslist. Would have been a shame, since I have gotten so much great stuff there, and sold a lot of stuff at good prices as well. Unfortunately, there have been other negative experiences as well. Once, I called about an anvil, and there wasn't one. But, the guy got my unlisted number from his caller ID. Then, he started calling me regularly, late at night. I was very patient, because he seemed to be a down and out blacksmith who was going through some hard times and had to sell off his stuff. I wanted to come over to give him a hand, but my family wouldn't let me. They also started getting worried about all the phone calls. Eventually, he stopped calling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clinton Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 Ya ev - I have had hit and miss transactions of of cl as well, it is what it is. I get a lot of nut cases calling on my VW items, fun to talk with them if you have the time, which is in short supply nowadays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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