Bought first anvil. have a couple questions

[Philip Snyder]

Hello, I bought my first anvil tonight, I been going to auctions for years and been waiting to come across a decent looking anvil to buy for my workshop to putz around with. Its about 145 pounds. I didnt see any markings on it other then what looked like a C stamped on the bottom. My main concern is the rust pitting on the face and horn. Is that normal and its there anything i should do to it?

[CurlyGeorge]

Philip, I had a small Vulcan that was like that when I bought it. I just welded in the pits on the horn and face and then used a flap disc on my 4" grinder to smooth it out. Don't do a lot of welding on the face, at one time. Mine didn't seem to soften any and it turned out pretty well. :)

[Timothy Miller]

It looks like an older peter wright anvil. It has little historical or collectable value and it is a good starter anvil. The pitting on the face is going to make your work look pitted as well. You don't need this working against you you have enough things to deal with as a beginning smith. If it were mine I would take a right angle grinder with a 36 grit sanding disk and smooth it out a bit. I would finish it with a 100 grit disk. I would not remove more than 1/16 of an inch of material. If there are deeper pits I would work around them. Some people will say don't do that as you are removing some of the steel face plate. The plate is 3/8" to 1/2" on an inch thick on anvils like this if the plate is not worn away. If you are careful and don't grind away too much you should be OK. Though I have found that that rusty pitted surface is generally harder than the steel underneath though I don't really know why. It could be that surface is work hardened or that the steel on the surface was cooled faster when it was hardened It could also be that the rust just makes my abrasives not want to cut well. It doesn't need to be flat to do good work on it but it does need to be reasonably smooth. This is a steel faced Wrought Iron Anvil If you grind away the steel face plate you only have soft wrought iron underneath. You could go the path of welding up all of the pitting. I would only weld if the anvil was totally messed up and unusable. To do this requires semi advanced welding ability and some expensive rods as well. Not to mention keeping the anvil at or about 500 degrees wile you weld it. As far as the horn it is soft wrought iron so there should be no problems welding or grinding it to what ever shape or level of smoothness you desire. This all reflects my personal experience in dressing up worn but not worn out anvils. I have cleaned up about 5 anvils this way that got used dally after this treatment. I have also welded two up as well. Others will give you other advise some worse some better than mine.

[Philip Snyder]

Thanks guys, I took a 36 grit flap disk i had on my grinder and geez that metal is hard! I think i need its gonna take more then the worn out disk that i had to get it looking better.

[ThomasPowers]

I'd stop there and *USE* *IT* for a while to see what you really need. For ornamental work some pitting is OK for knives or non-ferrous metals forging you may want a quite smooth surface.

Note that even so the entire surface does not need to be "clean" as long as you have a "nice" section the rest can be "not nice".

Before grinding on the face you should determining how much face is left by finding the weld line between the face and body. If it's thin DO NOTHING! If it's fat then a bit of clean up will do little harm.

I have one anvil that was stored in an unheated shed in OH in a boggy area for 50+ years before I bought it. The face had fine pitting from temperature change condensation all over it---I left it alone as working hot steel on it will grtadually polish the face clean and smooth---scale is an abrasive you know---as it rust!