here are some anvils I have managed to get in the last few months . They are not the normal English london pattern anvil. They all have one thing in common dovetailed cut outs.
I saw some file makers anvils in a museum in Troyes in France I believe one of these is a file makers anvil. The others?
the first is the most normal of the 3 and is now my personal forging anvil, I have not had time to make any tooling for the cut out yet.....but it comes in handy for straightening. The anvil weighs 517lb its very tall and narrow and from Germany.


The second is an English anvil I just got on ebay Just over 200lb and old . I would be interested if anybody has seen another and knows its function? It has 2 cut outs one has a central step (in my mind to take a tool either side.....I think it may be a cutlers anvil of the kind used by pen knife blade makers.








I think the third is a file makers anvil. It is cute and chubby with 2 tool slots. around 400lb .


very squat a loverly profile(to my mind)


I would be interested to see if any of you have any specific ideas about these anvils.
all the best Owen

I can't comment on those specifically but I can tell you that one evening while talking to Grant Sarver on here about repairing an anvil face he suggesting cutting dovetails in it. He did so when I asked how to reface a fisher as well (I thought jokingly because of his anvil) But he said that if you had an anvil that didn't quite fit your needs he saw no problem with cutting a dovetail or multiple dovetails in them so that you could slide in tooling for specific tasks. Flats, fullers, Swages etc.

Now, I'm hardly an experienced smith and I am certainly not knowledgeable enough to comment on those anvils specifically but I believe Grant was quite knowledgeable and when those people tell me how to do something I generally try to pay attention. I wouldn't be surprised if whomever had those anvils had the same ideas that he did once upon a time and this is the result. Very nice haul IMO.

I think this will be a very interesting thread.

I thought about bidding on all of those anvils, and I'm glad they went to a good home. It is the second one that is the most enigmatic, though. Dovetailed recesses are not so uncommon in continental anvils, while quite rare in English. But to have an English anvil with two dovetails AND two bicks! Wow!
As to their respective uses, I expect your thoughts as to what their use was are as good as anybody's.
Dan

Sometime ago on here someone had a large anvil that had a dovetail in it and it was an industrial anvil that held tooling that was changed per job requirement. That is what the bottom one really looks like from the general over all shape of it like it was used under a power hammer of some kind. The other two, the middle one in particular, looks like it was used in smaller industrial shop and is much older than the other two.

Not allowed to post links to his site, but Jock Dempsey at Anvilfire ("across the street") has one of the best online photo museums of anvils and swage blocks around.

the part that has me curious is the fact the both anvils have similar twin cuts? they are made to do a similar job. I expect they were in competition at one time or side by side in production?

here are a couple of file makers anvils from that Museum in troyes.

you know basher i have to say yours has more style
and as you said its got some nice lines