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Posted

I just bought an old Mouse Hole anvil around 180lb for a price I wasn't comfortable passing up. It has a great sound and appears to have great rebound but the face looks bad along one edge. The only way I have to repair it would be with hard surface welding rods but I don't want to make it worse or ruin it completely.

Should I try to repair it or just dress it up and use it?

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Posted

No need to repair,
Just give it a dress up with a flap disc on an angle grinder (take the mushroomed edges off and smooth out the radius on the edges. then use as is - there is plenty of lifetimes left in that anvil just the way it is with a little dressing. Once you know how to make steel move, you'll be able to work around any inprefections in that anvil easily. It's a fine looking anvil and there has benn great work done on anvils that are in alot worse shape. - Just my honest opinion - Jeremy K

Posted

Is that the 1830's version of the Mousehole? I have a 180 lb Mousehole. I cleaned it up and used it for a year. Mine had a real bad sag in the center. In fact, I just replaced the Mousehole (yesterday!) with a 400lb+ Trenton. But that Mousehole is a tough anvil. Enjoy!

Posted

Music to my ears, fellers. It was the only anvil I could find within 300 miles and it was less than a dollar a pound. Now I need to get started on my forge.

Really appreciate the quick responses.

Posted

Is that the 1830's version of the Mousehole? I have a 180 lb Mousehole. I cleaned it up and used it for a year. Mine had a real bad sag in the center. In fact, I just replaced the Mousehole (yesterday!) with a 400lb+ Trenton. But that Mousehole is a tough anvil. Enjoy!


I'm assuming (yea, I know) it's a 1914. It has "1.2.14" stamped in the side under the name.
Posted

The 1.2.14 means is weighs 182 lbs
1x112 + 2x28 +1x14
The first number is the hundredweight - 112 lbs this number can be 0 to who knows. Yours is 1 so it = 112
Second is quarter of hundredweight - 28 lbs , this number will be 0 to 3. Your second number is 2 so there are 2 x 28 = 56
The third number is single pounds and will be 0 to 27. Yours is 14 so it = 14.

112+56+14 = 182 pounds

The anvil is about 175 years old, I believe.

Posted

That's what I get for assuming. :)

Thanks for the info. I had no idea it would be that old. It looks like it's seen a lot of use and I'm looking forward to putting it back in service.

Posted

Playing a round yesterday, I noticed that the center of the face has a different tone than the heel or the edge closest to the horn. It's not a flat tone, just not as crisp as the other sides. Anything I should be worried about?

Posted

Not likely---if you can do enough work on it to cause problems we will be amazed and envious!

And if you do ever want to repair it as per the first post read up on the Rob Gunter method of anvil repair. (Tis a pity that all you have is hardfacing rod as plain old 7018 is what you should use, never knew a weldor that didn't have some plain rod around and only had the fancy stuff...)

Posted

Great! I'll start testing it out as soon as I get the stitches in my hand pulled. Had a Kaiser flat head 4cyl with a mean streak in my shop recently.

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