http://www.ebay.com/itm/140-lb-TRENTON-FARRIERS-BLACKSMITH-ANVIL-Forge-Iron-/110823557000?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19cd994788

C'mon! Please!! Here is one of matchlessantiques anvils I found on ebay today. Maybe I'm just seeing things but did someone grind/machine a rope twist swage into to face????????? I don't do a lot of rope twisting, but even if that's all I EVER did, cutting the swage directly into my anvil face would not have even crossed my mind. Poor trenton!

Sometimes people modify anvils to suit thier work....

That's a farrier's anvil, it has a clip horn at the base of the horn. Some farrier's anvils come with a grove as shown for pritcheling out the nail holes in the horse shoes.

almost cut through the tool steel face. But hey someone will still pay $350 for it...

That was done to forge horse shoe stock with the crease in them. If you shod horses and forged your own shoes with that being all you did it makes sense to try to do it as efficiently as you could. Often times a swage moves in the hardy hole this reduces your forging efficiency also the heal offers less support than the center of the face. So if this worked better for you why not? Also remember that most likely at the time the farrier who did this could run out and buy a new Trenton anvil any time he wanted. They were not the antiques that some of us see them as now.

I agree with the efficiency of forging horseshoes, but a saddle that fit over the face and bolted down to the anvil stand or some sort of configuration would have been better, I would think!
Anvils were not antiques, but proportionally, I doubt they were any cheaper then, than now. When you get paid in milk and firewood for iron work, I imagine a new anvil was as serious an investment then as now.

Dave,

You have a point for a village blacksmith but this could have come out of a business. If the person was paid to make pre-fabbed horseshoes then modifying an anvil to make it efficient would make sense. If the person is paid by the piece then any time saved adds to the bottom line. While we lament the "defacing" of an anvil today, it probably would have just made good business sense to do it then. It wouldn't be much different than making different dies for a power hammer or even having multiples for different stages in the manufacturing process.

Most of us (including myself) have a very romantic idea of blacksmithing and the village smith usually is the picture we have in our head. We tend to ignore or at least forget that there were industrial blacksmiths that specialized in just one aspect of the trade. We might go mind numb just being one smith in a large factory of them.

Also there was a time when there were a supply of anvils were higher than the number of smiths that wanted them. If a smith could get them for used car prices then someone might be tempted to customize a spare to make their life easier. This would be in the 20th century when blacksmiths became mechanics and the need for an anvil in the shop waned. They would be more likely paid in cash and not barter.

That all said, I can't imagine a small smith/farrier doing that for eggs and butter either.

Brian Pierson

$350 plus $70 S&H

When brand new that anvil was about .08-.10 cents a pound...a large sum back then to be sure,but nothing like $4-6 a pound today.

That was bread and bacon there I bet. It is a tool, and the owner probably thought long and hard before making the modification. It was worth it to the owner, and did not destroy the anvil, just made it a "why did he do that."

Phil

Its hard to think of it now but in the uk now you can often get an anvil for a lot less than a hardened and tempered bit of steel the same size so altering one would make good sense.....
these things are after all just tools and I have a large german anvil with a large dovetail in the face for tooling and the gap does not hamper with the working of the anvil one bit.

The guys that use that type of shoe often move from barn to barn or track to track and may shoe as many as 10 or 12 head a day. Any thing that lessens the pieces you have to handle save time and makes you money. FF when you were posting about your demo trailer you applied the same ideas. To try to make it as effienct as you could. If I were a farrier doing that type of work and needing an anvil I would pay more for that one than one without the grooves. Its a tool and it was his tool. By the way farriers are not usually short on money. When you turn $1000 per day dealing with horses and there owners often times who have poor manners a new anvil that makes your work easier is not a problem. I like and appreciate good old tools, but I like to use them for my work. This very well executed modification reminds me of some of the things I have done to tongs, wrenches and hammers . You do great work and I hope you don't think I'm trying to put you down, Just offering a different point of view

It was used for making what we called swedge shoes. When serving my apprentice in Kansas in the early 60's,my instructor had a a lower swedge like that in a Little Giant #25. We would pull measured lengths of that with ends left blank(unswedged) all Winter long. Made them in pairs and wired them together. At a job you threw a pair of swedged blanks in the fire then shaped them. Since the swedge was deep it was easy to finish punching holes with pritchel even at a black heat. The blank ends could be used for heel caulks or brought around and forge welded if a therapeutic bar shoe was needed. I've never seen anybody do that to an anvil face before.Workable modification if that is what you do for a living.I've swedged a zillion half round shoes too. For swedging in the field I had a piece of railroad rail on a stand with grooved and half round swedges filed into it.

Many moons ago, I was a farrier and began to gather tools. The two large horseshoe swages (also swedges in the U.S.) came from New Jersey where I was told they were fixed in a power hammer. The width of the swage on both is 5/8" and I believe that these were used on the harness tracks for trotters and pacers. The length of the swage is 2 9/16". The smaller swage on the right is tapered front and back so that a plate with rectangular hole can be placed over it. The hole would drop down about halfway of the tapers, and two bolts swivel/attached to the anvil stand would protrude through two holes in the plate. A washer and nut on each would suck the swage to the sweet spot of the anvil face. When hand hammering, the farrier would use an annealed 5 # hammer, assuming he didn't have a striker. This swage measures 9/16" wide by 2 1/8" long, and I think it was used to make training plates for race horses on the track. The proper sized stock was pulled hot through the swage with flat overlapping blows. If pushed through, you got an inertia bend which was undesirable. As one would imagine, these shoes were fairly light and were often turned hot with a wooden mallet to prevent hammer marks.

The anvil with swages probably belonged to a farrier who was a track shoer, either harness or running, and he either stayed in one place or followed a circuit. See "Grand Circuit" for harness racing.

My own view, as a guy who makes a living with metalwork, is if you have to modify a tool to make something more useful for your work and able to work faster- DO IT. When it comes down to can I pay the rent and get food on the table for the kids and me or not (the or not is when you cannot make your work quickly enough to be able to sell it profitably) guess which way I'll pick to do something??

Frank: Interesting. Even though I am basically a product of Western states,I was born in a very rural part of New Jersey by the Pine Barrens. We left there to work in ranch country when I was still a pup.My first contact with shoeing was watching a friends dad in New Jersey who shoed trotters and pacers. VERY intricate shoeing to keep a horse that is Racing at a trot to keep him from speedy cutting etc.. Those shoers are also very concerned with how a foot lands and friction variables. I remember my friends dad making shoes that were swedged on one side and half round on the other. That being 60 years ago I might be remembering some of this wrong. I can't even remember to turn off the stove burners half the time these days..
I remember my friend's family were as poor as church mice. That was back when itinerant racers could leave and continue on the circuit and not pay a shoer! These days a phone call to a stewart would keep them from racing.I remember having thin potato soup over there and helping clean pidgeons his mom was going to cook for supper. Didn't learn my lesson as I should have!!!!

Eric, I taught blacksmithing at Peters Valley Craft Center in Layton, NJ, in the 1970's. Nice country around the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area. There was some old Dutch hardware still on a few of the old buildings in that region.

You are right about the half swaged shoes on the hind. The lateral swage "held them wide," I was told. I shod for a brief time for two old bib-overalled gents in Brooks, Oregon. They had Standardbred pacers and their own track and barn. They had their own swage which they wanted me to use. We did the half swaged shoes with small trailers behind. In front, we used plain light shoes with a curved, fullered crease on the toe. They took their horses to the Bellingham, Washington, fair to race them. Those men were real sticklers for a good trim and good nailing.

Your friend's family meal reminded me of my dad, an old Missouri corn cracker, who would often talk about them eating "chicken shadow soup." I guess you just passed the chicken over the hot water LOL.

I remember my friends dad saying " one bad clinch can cut a horse wide open". Since just about all gait faults show up at the trot it must have been a nightmare to keep some of those horses going sound. I'm still intrigued by horseshoeing but am glad I had to quit twenty years ago. I'm just getting sound enough to play at being a blacksmith and probably don't have enough time left to become a "real" blacksmith!!!
Sorry-I guess we kind of highjacked this thread but the tools mentioned WERE about horseshoeing..

I've always heard The difference between a Farriers hammer and a Blacksmiths hammer is the farriers hammer can make you money

WOW! This has turned into a real history giving interesting thread. I do suppose if day-in day-out you are turning out horseshoes, modifying an anvil would be more efficient. I am always looking for ways of making things more efficient, so I can't blame the guy!

Very interesting.....thanks all for chiming in, and educating me!

Glad I had a chance to return the favor you have taught me a few things.

Sorry-I guess we kind of highjacked this thread but the tools mentioned WERE about horseshoeing..

Don't apologize. These are exactly the kind of stories that keep me coming back to this site.

Don't apologize. These are exactly the kind of stories that keep me coming back to this site.

Yeah really! This really turned into an interesting thread!