Hardy Hole

[metalhead]

Hello All,
I just bought a Peter Wright Anvil, ~120#. From looking at the Hardy hol, the opening is 1", but the diameter tapers as it goes into the anvil (~7/8-15/16"). My 1" square tubing will not fit and my 3/4' square bar is too small.

Is this a standard 1" hardy hole or do I need to get special tapered hardy tools?

Thanks in advance.

Todd

[Marksnagel]

Hey metalhead! You can take make new hardy tools to fit and/or trade with someone. I would look at it as an opportunity to make new tools. You can also taper the ones you have to fit.

Mark <><

[ThomasPowers]

The old ones were hot punched by hand and can be a bit off in several ways.

Why not dress the hole to fit what you have easily available to use as hardy tooling stems?

Everything under the face plate will be soft wrought iron

[Timothy Miller]

Where did you get the outlandish idea that anything in blacksmithing is standard?

[Neil Blythin]

My anvil has a 7/8" hardy hole ... which seems to be one of the more common sizes. You can make your own hardies to fit, or can grind or forge down the shanks of 1" tools. I've also seen adapter sleeves to allow 3/4" to fit (Centaur sells some).

[ironwolfforgeca]

Its 15/16" I run in to this often with PW anvils --- I die grinned & filed my 2 anvils out to !" ID a bit of work but worth it
all my hardie tools are !" I have a small demo PW 7/8" hardie yet to work up to 1" ANY IDEAS on an EASY WAY
to do this anyone ???? :mellow: yea been told Ian crazy :D

PS-- 2 other friends here also reworked there anvils so all are tools fit any anvil :)

[John McPherson]

Standardization of everything in the modern world leads us to believe that it has always been that way: That ain't so!

Absolutely everything used to be a custom fit. When my grandfather built houses for people before WWII, they first built the shell, say 30' x 40' and any porches. Then, when it was under roof, they sat down with the owner and figured out where to put the walls for the rooms, cut in doors and windows, etc. A far cry from today's precut, prefab McMansion world.

That was the era that anvils come from: some assembly required? Ha! Recipe for a chicken dinner. Step 1: catch a chicken.......

That is the mindset that you need to acquire for blacksmithing: self-directed tinkering, and making and modifying tools to fit the task. Otherwise you may as well go down to the hobby shop and buy some plastic models and glue, 'cause you will never do anything original.

Start with a hammer and an anvil, make some tongs, then make or modify some hardy tools to fit **your** anvil. Proceed from there. Blacksmithing is: a way to heat metal, a way to hold metal, and a way to hit metal. Everything else is just details.

[ramsies11]

i dont know if you could do this or if they make a fitting for it, but a file on a recipricating saw might work. and if not, why not buy 1" square stock, re-make your hardy tools. and then just simply grind it to fit? since it would be 1" at the top, it would fit most anvils anyway.

[ThomasPowers]

There was also a secondary type of standardization where each manufacturer had their own standard and claimed it was better than everybody else's (and they liked it even better if it precluded the buyer from using other manufacturer's stuff with it and you had to buy everything from the same manufacturer---we see this today in software!)

As for the easy way---use a 1" broach and a honking big system to move it through the anvil!

[Perrin Aybarra]

I've read a lot on different hardies and even seen them used in some situations. and I know that it's apparently dangerous to leave tools in them. what would be some of the uses of hardies and different hardy tools?

[bionicarm]

Hardie tools are a quick way to "hold" a tool down. A hot cut is a chissel you don't have to hold in a hand to cut material. There's an unlimited number of possible hardie tools...kinda like the standardization (is that a word?) discussion above, everyone has their own way of doing things and so everyones hardies are a bit different.

Seems like a lot of filing to resize a hardie hole, did a bit of a clean up on mine and nearly didn't make it, that was mostly the hard face I had to file though. If you're really attached to your hardies and have a bunch than reprofile the hole, otherwise make new ones. Having 2 sets of hardie tools can never be a bad thing.

[Frosty]

I've read a lot on different hardies and even seen them used in some situations. and I know that it's apparently dangerous to leave tools in them. what would be some of the uses of hardies and different hardy tools?

Perrin: There are lots of bottom tools, hardy is the proper term ONLY for hot or cold cutting bottom tools, However, it's common to call any bottom tool a "hardy" tool because it fits in the hardy hole.

Is it dangerous to leave a hardy in the hole when forging? A lot depends on your work habits and hammering technique. I NEVER come close to hitting the hardy with my hand, the hammer handle or anything else because I never swing a hammer with my hand over the anvil. Just think what it'd be like to give the anvil face a seriously hard bare knuckle punch. On impact my knuckles are nearly at anvil face height plus the thickness of the stock. My hardy is a good 3" high so I'd have be inconceivably out of position to hit it with my hand. Another is I almost always swing at about 90* to the face so my hands are beside the anvil, never over it.

Other bottom tools? I suppose if you're hammer technique leads you to hit them then I'd have to say yes, you're in danger of doing yourself an injury just like punching the face, horn or a trailer hitch. Never put your hand in danger and you're golden. Swing so your hand isn't over the anvil on impact and that kind of injury will never come up.

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Frosty The Lucky.

[SReynolds]

One of my anvil's hardie hole is 13/16 another is 1" and another is 15/16.

I really need to do something with them, but instead I have chosen to make anvil specific tools. It is a big PITA, but that is what I have done.

[Aaron J. Cergol]

In the past when I worked on a London or American pattern anvil, I would make an overly long hardy shank with a slit through it. Then I had a large flat wedge I could drive into said slit that would tighten it under the heel of the anvil.

Now I have German anvils, and it's a bit more material to go through 4-6" of heel material plus another few inches for the wedge. Now I make the hardy to fit the anvil so I don't have to use a that extra stock.

Aaron

[SReynolds]

Got another anvil and this hardie hole is 1/2"

Going to look at another this next week I can guarantee that it will be different from my others!! What fun. I'm looking at two different Blacksmithing catalogs and they only offer 1" and 3/4 inch hardie shank tools. Odd......

[ThomasPowers]

It's a good idea to colour code your tooling so it's fast to identify which anvil it fits

[SReynolds]

I was fooling around with a hardie cutter w/the 3/4" shank. I need 15/16" and so I was going to weld a shank of square 1" square tubing to the hardie cut shank. Upon fitting the tubing, I had to remove 1/16" from the OD to fit into the anvil hole.

The thought then came to me that I really need to fit the tubing into the hardie hole and so I drove it down flush and spot welded it to the anvil. I have not heard of anyone performing this action, but so far, it seems to have worked. The hardie hole is now 3/4" and it is now square as opposed to out of square like the original hole. I like 3/4" size better anyhow.

To fix it "right" I'd need to machine the out of square 15/16 hole to a square 1" hole. That just seems like a lot of work.

[iron woodrow]

i have only a european church window anvil with a very small hardy hole, and a small 50lb london pattern anvil, but the hardy tools i have aquired are all 1 1/2" stem, so i plan to make a separate "Hardy hole in a stump" ,as the work required to reforge all the tools to fit such a tiny hole by hand is just a waste of time, and who knows.... i might end up with an anvil with 1 1/2" hole one day and curse myself!

[ThomasPowers]

Woody; wish you were closer as I have a couple of Anvils with 1.5" hardies and would have loved to traded you smaller stemmed hardies for your big ones! As it is I'm taking beat up old top tools and forging the hammering on end down to fit the large hardy holes. (If I ever want them back as top tools all I have to do is to drift the eyes again...)

[Jack Evers]

My newest anvil - cast steel, modern mfg - has a fairly true 3/4 inch hole. My big 280 lb shop anvil apparently had an original hardy hole 1-1/4 at the top and near 1-1/2 at the bottom. It had been peened to somewhat smaller at the top and I just filed it out to 1-1/4, then built a sleeve with a top plate to use my 3/4 inch hardies. My other anvil, (a 1914 Trenton) is about 15/16ths (0.95). I only had one tool with a 1" shank so I ground it to fit that one.

[SReynolds]

I have noticed that the older anvils have irregular sized and shaped hardie holes. Like they just took a whack at it in the dark..........
I set a 1/2" round stock rod into the pritchel hole of my Black Jack and can't belive the angle it was punched. The square hardie hole is anything but square. I found that PTO shaft (solid stock with rounded corners and 15/16" O.D.) will fit nicely into this hardie.

It also appears to have been punched from the bottom as the bottom of the hole is quite a bit larger than the top. It tapers very nicely to the top. Very happy to have driven a sleeve into this. The 3/4" shanks fit quite nice with very little wobble room.