I picked up what we determined to be a sodofors anvil for sure after I cleaned it up some. I measured the hardy hole and I think it is 1 1/4" and all the tools that go in there are either 3/4 or 1". Will the 1" tools work ok with my anvil.

Sorry this may be a simple rookie question but I am just starting out and dont really know much, I am sure there will be plenty more.

Thanks all.

You can make adapters to allow tools of smaller shafts to fit into your 1 1/4" hardy hole.

Would that be just like a wedge or an L shape piece of metal to take up the extra space?

1 1/4" square tube .120 wall slid over and staked on would probably work well.

Or short lengths of angle iron. Cut the angle iron half way at the bend, then bend those cut pieces back to form a lip to keep the angle iron pieces from slipping through the hole.

Same with the tubing---hacksaw the corners down about 1/2" and then heat them and fold them out 90 deg so the adapter can just be dropped into the hardy hole and will rest on the fold outs---helps keep strange tooling from wallowing out the hardy hole too as any damage it does is to the easily replaced adapter!

My shop anvil has 1.5" hardy holes and I had to double sleeve it to get down to 1" to share tools with my smaller anvils.

One trick I learned is to buy old top tooling with badly mushroomed striking areas and grind/forge it to fit the hardy hole as cheap bottom tooling. (Fellow at Quad-State the last couple of times with a mound of old tooling that gets cheaper every day has supplied me with a bunch of such tools...the last day in particular!) my large screw press is very helpful in making nice parallel sides on old top tools!

Great advice thanks guys.