Hey guys been a while since I was around here. A short deployment and a bunch of stuff at home (house needing renovating, my first baby on the way, ...... house needs a nursery lol......) anyways happened to be browsing CL like I do on occasion always search for anvils. They are usually either very pricey or are gone in about 5 minutes or both. 

 

  Well got to this one first for a change, its a 160lb HB picked up off a gentleman for $300. Seemed like a fair price and thats what I told him while we talked about price and such. I didnt bother trying to talk him down as around these parts it is actually a little under what they usually go for. 

 

 Questions, from looking at it the anvil looks like the upper half is forged onto the bottom half. I am under the impression that some of these were done that way with a tool steel upper and cast iron or wrought iron bottom. Is this a correct assumption? 

 

Also the serial number is 212247. Can someone with the BOOK let me know when this was manufactured. I would greatly appreciate it. 

 

Here are some pics, oh and it came with this little red guy which I assume is one of those chinese trinqets, also came with a little tiny hand made brass anvil about 2 inches long but didnt get a pic of that. 

 

Thanks guys. 

That is a very good score. The Hay Buden looks to be in very good shape and the price is good.

 

It is a high carbon steel face and forged wrought iron body. Pretty normal construction for the day, though others did cast bodies but not HB, I think.

 

Frosty the Lucky.

Thanks Frosty, the face is very clean and darn near perfectly flat, well flat as I have scene. Its had I think pretty minimal use compared to my other anvils. I cant wait to give it a go after I clean it up a tad. 

 

Is it just the very top face that is carbon or the upper half? There is a definite line of sorts between the upper half of the anvil and the lower half (just under the brooklyn letters). Its harder to see in the pics. 

The top plate aka "face".

 

Please don't ask me how they forge weld that on..........Don't make sense to me as they heat it to 2,400° and then have to reharden it. I suspect they drop the entire anvil into a vat of oil and the top plate gets hard as the wrought iron won't harden at all. But makes me wonder how they can do that and not have to carbon face seperate from the iron when it cools.

 

Many new anvils are solid steel; cast. Thus no top plate.

The traditional method was to quench under falling water, which makes sense if you are working in a waterwheel powered shop. Sometimes got hot enough to poach the fish in the millrace, though.

Cool stuff thanks guys. If anyone has the AIA around would still like the rough date of this guy. 

 

Its always interesting watching videos of the old iron working in progress and how they did things. Think it was around here somewhere but saw how they were making the old anchor chains for the big ol ships from wrought iron. Looked like some hot rough work thats for sure. 

Wow, you got a really, really good deal on that one.  It's a beauty!  At some point didn't Hay Buden start making the upper half of their anvil all out of tool steel with the bottom half wrought.

Funny thing today I was cleaning it up and saw that the 1 on the weight 160 is actually upside down. Guess the guy doing the work goofed on this one.

I think the date was answered already in the Hay Budden topic but I always like thumbing thru the book. Approximately 1914. This would be a 2 piece anvil, top half tool steel and bottom was wrought or low carbon steel. They made the change around 1908 according to Mr Postman.

Has anybody heard how his progress on the next book is going?

Ahhh you forge weld up all the pieces---including the face---BEFORE you heat treat it.  Yes it's rough on the face/body weld and so that acts as sort of a quality control test.  If the face pops off the weld was bad and you clean it up and try again.

 

(However delamination of the face from the body is a fairly common issue with many old anvils.)

 

Also for heat treating you only need to heat up the face region as the low carbon wrought iron won't profit from it any.

Quint, the number stamped on the side of the anvil may or may not be the actual weight. I have two HB's, one is stamped 011 on the side but I know that it weights 163 # because I weighed it. Looks like a good tool whatever it weighs.

IIRC, the number on the 3 digit number on the heal indicated a heat number.  HB's were usually stamped with the weight (in pounds) under the name stamping.

Got it weighed last night right at 159.8lbs so goes with the 160 under the budden letters. 

 

So far the only other numbers I saw were the serial number and then 02 on the opposite side of the anvil from the name. 

Take that back there is also a number 2 on bottom side of horn and a number 4 below that farther done on the body. Thats it though.