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need info on brooks anvil


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just getting into this iron working blacksmithing hobby. recently purchased a brooks anvil 1 3/4 cwt supposed to weigh about 185 lbs. it has had the top milled to put it back to flat. has good rebound and sound , at least to my deaf ears. but the thing that i don't understand is a hardy hole in the center that is about an inch  and about an inch deep.Is this normal, or is this a speciality anvil? must find a forge ready to get started, 

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Welcome aboard Rollingblock, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header it'll make it much easier to network with folk who live within visiting distance.

 

I'm not a fan of milling anvil faces because most machine shops don't know enough about anvils to do it without damaging them. How much face is left? I don't know about a shallow hardy hole in the center of the anvil, that's a new one on me.

 

Yes, pictures, we need pictures. Heck, we LOVE pics. But we need a gander at this anvil to see what's what.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Brooks anvils are cast steel.  In general I advise people to only mill as much off the face of their anvil as they are willing to mill off their own face.  The hardened face is the life and soul of an anvil and is usually not that thick and so removing any of it is chopping decades of use off the anvil.

 

In addition many machine shops don't realize that the face and the base may NOT BE PARALLEL and they cheerfully clamp down the anvil to the milling table and proceed to ruin it making the face parallel to the base---I've personally seen several anvils where they milled *through* the hardened face and into the soft body to make the face flat and parallel.  IF you MUST mill the trick is to clamp the anvil upside down and mill the comparatively worthless base material to make *IT* parallel to the face and then flip it over and just kiss the face.

 

Your description  raises some questions as anvil hardy hole are designed to go all the way through and so are at the parts of the anvil that stick out.  Sounds like someone mutilated the anvil for a specific job---their right to modify their tools!  But it should sell for very little compared to an un-modified anvil

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I'll try to get pics posted tomorrow if i can figure out a way to do that. Thanks for info I don't believe the face is ruined as when I tried that ballbearing bounce test 10 inches off the face it bounced about 10 inches haven't checked it for parallel yet the guy i got it from was going to make knives would that extra hole be for that application.

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what kind of steel would be recommended to plug that hole

 

JMO -  Use the anvil as it is .   Chances are good that you will soon a-custom your work habits in such a way that you will hardly notice the presence of that hole.  The principle use where I could see a problem is using the anvil with a striker.  However since most of us do not have access to a striker it seems that this is unlikely to become a big problem.   If after using the anvil for a while, if the hole proves annoying or of no use, you can always make the re-modification later.  

 

I am curious to hear if a tool that is snugly fitted but easily removeable would quite the anvil's ring.

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