132 lb mystery anvil. Help needed.

[piedmont]

Hi y'all. I just picked this up a few days ago and it's a bit of a mystery to me. I've looked through a lot of online resources and photos and nothing's an exact match.

Clues:
1) Body is cast steel, definitely NOT cast iron.
2) No readable trace left of any logo, and no numbers on the base, though they could have been there at some point and corroded away.
3)There's no depression in the bottom, oval or otherwise.
4) Horn is somewhat duck-billed and pretty blunt.
5) Face is approx. 3/4" thick at the heel where there's no wear, and mushroomed down to about 5/8" on the far side next to the horn.
6) Raised circle on the base-- easy to see in photo 1.

Despite the mushrooming, it appears to be a very hard face. At some point I may resurface to get a 9/16" to 5/8" nice flat face. Somebody was using/abusing the hell out of it for a number of years. There are hundreds of small cuts and chisel marks all over the base. I'm out of town now so I can't do any more tests or measurements on it for a few days.

Thanks in advance!

[ThomasPowers]

Question: are you in the Piedmont in Italy or the USA? Makes a big difference!

[Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver]

Never heard of a cast steel anvil having a separate face plate. They are often cast with a bit of a shelf that looks like a plate. Don't know if that is done as a "fooler" or so the edges can be machined square. As many have cautioned here; machine the base parallel to the top before machining the top.

[piedmont]

Question: are you in the Piedmont in Italy or the USA? Makes a big difference!

Thomas, I used to be in the piedmont region of Georgia. I'm in MS now and the anvil was bought in Birmingham AL.

Grant, I don't know if the face plate is separate or not-- I know very little about cast steel anvils. So did they just flame harden the face? The body of this one is a good bit softer than the face.
I'm kinda thinking it's a Columbian anvil because the raised circle looks like this one: http://blacksmith.or...olumbian-Anvil. But it doesn't seem to have the other identifying marks of a Columbian.
As far resurfacing goes, I wonder about how well it would work to do the bottom first if the top is very sloped because of wear. Mine slopes down from the heel to the right front corner. I guess they shim it up to get the sides straight up and down?

[ThomasPowers]

The problem is that more than a few folks have had their anvil milled so that the top is flat and parallel to the bottom. However the top and bottom may not have been parallel in the first place! So they may mill off excessive amounts of the valuable hardened face to true it to low grade bottom material.

I personally have seen anvils that had this done several times (one where they milled through the face and into the wrought iron of a traditionally made anvil leaving the entire "working" area wrought iron with the only face left being in the heel!)

So yes you are *supposed* to mill the bottom FIRST and then just kiss the face ever so lightly---if you must mess with it at all.

Cast steel anvils are generally differentially hardened/tempered so you can remove the hard layer leaving it too soft to be a good anvil.

If the face was ok, but sloped I would probably deal with it with the anvil stand, followed by milling the bottom as a lower choice.

I contend that machinists and weldors have ruined more anvils than blacksmiths! You can be an excellent machinist or weldor and not know about how the face of an anvil is made and so mess it up "doing what comes naturally in your craft".

[piedmont]

Thanks for the advice Thomas. The milling won't happen any time soon-- I first want to use it as-is before messing with it. BUT the face is in bad shape-- I can't use it for flattening because it's nowhere near flat, and it's pitted enough to make planishing problematic at best. It's mainly the pits that make me want to resurface it. I was thinking of only going down far enough to get rid of most of the pits, even if some of the right front is still sloped. I wonder how thin that hardened layer is.

And what about the horn? I've heard that a steel horn can be heated and forged into a better, more conical shape rather than having to grind off material. I wouldn't dream of trying that by myself, but my mentor has over 25 years' experience.

[Bentiron1946]

Some questions first before you go messing around with this anvil a whole lot. Is this your only anvil or is it your first? If it your only anvil to work on and you need to do really "pretty' work then you may need to fix this one up a bit. Now if this is your first ever anvil, well you ain't going to hurt it a whole bunch with your beginners mistakes are you. Another question, just HOW bad do you think this little anvil is? It pretty obvious that you think it is an awful, terrible, ugly anvil, it is not that bad. Yes, I agree that it has had a lot abuse in the form of being worked too hard with a bid hammer most likely. No, the horn is not that bad either. If you need a small cone go buy one as that will be easier than reworking that horn and they aren't all that expensive. Now there are some welders on the forum that would be just tickled red, white and blue to weld a new face on that little fellow and that may be what it needs but it can sure do a lot of work the way it is and if you find it that offensive you can always put it up for sale at about a $1 per pound and put that money toward a bigger better anvil, you know like a good Fisher cast iron anvil of about 200 or 300 pounds with a nice smooth face. It sure would save you a lot of hassle. :P

[bajajoaquin]

Can't see it clearly, but the face looks to be at least as good as the one on my anvil.

I say use it as-is.

[Sask Mark]

Just a thought here, are you sure the entire body is cast steel? The reason I ask is cast steel anvils usually aren't know for having sags or 'wallowing' in the face (although perhaps it is not sagging, but just mushrooming?).

Some manufacturers like Trenton and Arm and Hammer used cast steel bases with wrought iron tops and hardened steel face plates. Perhaps yours falls into this category of construction?

[pkrankow]

I would consider dressing the edges back to eliminate the mushrooming and provide proper radius edges, then put it to use.

Or just put it to use.

Phil

[Frosty]

How did you determine it's a cast steel anvil?

I have a 125lb Sodorfors with a HC steel face on a cast steel body. It has no sway and absolutely no mushrooming, chips yes but no mushrooming. Even the horn point is relatively unmarked.

As I recall Sodorfors placed the face in the mold, preheated it and poured the steel. After waiting the proper time it was removed and placed under a water tower and quenched, residual heat tempered the face. The fellow I bought it from had the info in paperwork from Sodorfors cir. 1935, my anvil is dated 1933. The model is a Sorcores #5.

There's already a lot of good advice on how to deal with your anvil as it stands. What you actually choose to do is your choice of course but you might consider just using it if you're beginning the craft. I've certainly used worse, down to a boulder a large cobble and split willow tongs but that was to prove a point.

Frosty the Lucky.

[piedmont]

Bentiron,
It's my first and only for now, which is why I'm not gonna mess with it too much. And don't get me wrong-- I LOVE the thing. It bounces a hammer back as good or better than the anvils at the smithy I'm learning at and it's bigger than I thought I could get for the money in this area. Beautiful lines and a 1" hardy. I got it and a NICE champion blower and a well-made shop-built forge for $350. Depending on how you value the other two, I've got about $1.50/lb or less in it.
But the photos aren't showing the defects very well. The face pitting is bad-- lots of them and up to 1/16" deep. I've worked on an anvil with pitting that bad and I'd much rather it be smooth. If I can get even a small area smooth and reasonably flat, it would be nice.

Sask Mark,
Yep, all steel, from face to bottom. And the casting lines can be seen clearly in the second photo.

Still no comments on the maker-- here's another Columbian with that same raised circle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-h7HYOYadA. Think it's a match?

[bigfootnampa]

If it were mine I would grind off the mushroomed edges and radius them neatly as they are otherwise somewhat dangerous. I would leave the horn as is. I'd use a large file (STRAIGHT) to lightly mark the high spots on the face and then peen them down. I'd repeat this step until I got a reasonably smooth face. As far as flattening goes a slight curve is often more helpful than a perfectly straight surface... so I'd not worry too much on that score. Finally I'd drawfile the face slightly and sand it a little. A little time and care will get it tuned better and also allow you to get to know it pretty well. Machining is cold and hard and rough on anvils. If you really need a MUCH more perfect face IMO you'd do better to save the milling money for trading up to another anvil in better shape to begin with.

[David Einhorn]

The folks above have given a lot of good advice. The anvil looks fine for work as is. As bigfootnampa said, I too would clean up the edges and radius them to increase the anvil's use and safety, and personally I like using an anvil with a bit of a curve for straightening as it is very handy.

[ThomasPowers]

Kiss the face with a belt sander to get the rust off it and then re-evaluate.

[piedmont]

Kiss the face with a belt sander to get the rust off it and then re-evaluate.

Yeah, that's my plan for when I get back. I'm away from it for the next week, so all I can do is look at my photos of it and do vacation-type things to take my mind off it ;)

[ThomasPowers]

Most of my vacation type things involve an anvil and hot metal at least part of the time---even when traveling internationally!

I have one HB anvil that was stored for about 50 years in an unheated shed in a marshy area. The face was extremely good but 50+ years of condensation on the anvil when the weather changed let it with a fine even pitting. I has a substantially thick face on it and I could surface it to *perfect*. However I decided to leave it alone and just the working of hot metal on it is polishing out the face. (Scale is an abrasive you know).

Most anvils don't need to be dead flat as in straightening it's helpful to have a bit of sway as yu need to push the metal just a tad too far and have it bounce back to straight. I still tend to use my anvil longest in my possession to straighten blades as I'm so used to it's sway it seems easy and with other "newer" ones I still have to fiddle a bit.

[Bentiron1946]

One sixteenth inch deep pits! Now that is some kind of pit. I have an old .30-40 Krag rifle that was built in 1898 and has seen a lot of travel and I tried to give it a friend's son for his first deer hunt and he wouldn't take, "Why that barrel has pits in it!", he refused a rifle that will shoot a 3/4", five shot group at a hundred yards because of some rust pits? Well yeah pits can be bad but your aiming to be a blacksmith not a whitesmith, there is a difference you know. If your work needs to have a fine finish on it then of course you need to have a fine finish on your anvil and therefore you will need to spend some effort in getting a finer finish on the face of it. I have an anvil that half of the hard face missing that I used for the first five years I did forge work in my sculpture and then I bought another and then finally bought a 300# Fisher, you just never have enough. I took old half face and put a very fine finish on it two years ago for making jewelry, the horn no longer has any pits and the hard face has most all of them gone. And as Thomas suggest a belt sander does a very good job at this but if you are just going to be making normal(what's normal?) objects with you anvil it will soon polish out the pits. I agree with the others on clean up those jagged edges and putting a nice radius on them. One of the problems of having a shinny bright anvil is that it is a rusting nightmare, look at it with sweat on your brow and it will grow rust instantly. :(

[piedmont]

To get back on topic: Does anyone know much about Columbian anvils? I know they were made in Cleveland and only between 1905 and 1925 or so. Did the logo change much over that period? Mine doesn't have the C in a triangle, though it could be due to the rust. The pictures of Columbians that I've seen that have the raised circle are never accompanied by pics of the other side, so I don't know if those examples have the triangle C.
What's the alloy of steel in a cast steel anvil? How deep does the hardening go on the face?

And Thomas, I'm trying to get some smithing-related activities into this trip. I'll be in Austin TX all next week. My wife will be at a conference there and I'll be exploring the town and hill country. I'll visit the Zilker Botanical Garden, where they have some really extraordinary pieces of forged work, like this one:


It's apparently a pretty active town for professional blacksmiths, and I'd like to tour a studio or two if it's no bother to the artists.

[clinton]

I have seen much worse condition of anvils, I agree with what others have said- clean up the edges, belt sander or flap wheel and use it.
I did look at Anvils In America and I would say yes it could be a Columbian, hit it with a wire wheel on the side and you may find something that you do not see now. I does not make a big difference who made the anvil as long as it is use-able- and I would call that anvil use-able. A perfectly flat face is not needed, good edges is way more important in my opinion, but you can forge a hardy with good edges and use that also. You can spend allot of time and effort trying to make a "Perfect anvil" when you could be using what you have = time well spent