Soderfors

[ThomasPowers]

The tang mount for the postvise means it's an earlier one.  How is the screw and screwbox on it?

Soderfors are a HIGH QUALITY anvil and your buy is nothing to be ashamed of.  A 150# anvil is a good shop sized anvil and might be the last anvil you buy too---unless you pick up a travel anvils to do demos on the road with.

[JHCC]

1 hour ago, Frazer said:

First post here

Welcome to IFI! If you haven’t yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!!

[jlpservicesinc]

what year did soderfors go out of anvil production? 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I would say you did very well indeed. To quieten the anvil when you reset it on the stand, put a bead of cheap latex calking compound around the underside of the base. That will help hold it solid and dampen the ring.

[Frazer]

5 hours ago, JHCC said:

Welcome to IFI! If you haven’t yet, please READ THIS FIRST!!!

Yessir, been a fly on the wall for a while now. Then I made an account thinking I had a question, but I looked a little harder and found the answer. Funny how that happens.

The screw looks pretty good, the screwbox however has likely seen better days. It looks like someone may have done a repair a while back, perhaps brazing, looks like brass on that seam under a nice layer of rust, but it could just be the light. However, it is mostly intact, the threads look to be in very good shape and it works, which is a good start. Might just need a bit of a clean up and not to be torqued down as hard as possible when it comes out of retirement.

  

 

Also, I ended up going with this one over a 100lb mousehole that was in much better condition because I liked the size. I've only been taking classes and working from home for about 10 months so for me and for what I'm capable of doing with my current setup and level of experience, either certainly would have been fine. This one just seemed like the right choice.

5 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

what year did soderfors go out of anvil production? 

According to Sea Farmers post found here https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-and-history/i-bought-anvil-today-what-do-i-have-photos-154946/ [third to last comment on page 1],

"Finally, got around to looking in my book, Anvils in America by Richard Postman. Richard devotes almost three pages to the Paragon anvil, which was made by a Swedish company names Soderfors. The advertisements claim that they are solid forged steel, but Postman feels they are cast steel. He says that it really doesn’t make any difference, because they are excellent anvils. Soderfors has supposedly been making anvils since about 1200 AD; however, he could only find records of the Paragon anvil dating from around 1902 as the oldest and about 1934 as the newest."

I don't have the book myself yet and this only says the most recent records, nothing definitive, so I'd defer to someone else's response if they can provide something more concrete.

1 hour ago, Irondragon Forge & Clay said:

I would say you did very well indeed. To quieten the anvil when you reset it on the stand, put a bead of cheap latex calking compound around the underside of the base. That will help hold it solid and dampen the ring.

Yes that will likely help, before any of that I will probably be forging out a few J shaped hooks I can drive down into the wooden stand to fix it in place. As it sits now I can actually move the anvil around a bit within those straps, so they aren't applying much, if any downward force and therefore are doing little to dampen the vibrations. It's also not particularly helpful when working on the horn to have the anvil shifting on its stand. It's not moving a lot, just slightly, but that's enough to justify a quick fix. 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Frazer
minor additions

[JHCC]

A layer of silicone caulk between the anvil and the stand will do a LOT both to keep it in place and to keep the ringing from making you go deaf.

[ThomasPowers]

Actually I'd guess that the forge brazing dates to the original making of the vise.  The earlier ones did forge braze up the screw box from a lot of pieces and would also forge braze in the screw thread----made by winding sq/rectangular stock around the screw and then un screwing it and brazing it into a tube.

Perhaps not as tough as a solid box, lathe cut, one but it's already lasted probably 150 years....

I have a 3" gracile postvise with tanged mount, (Frank Turley told me he thought it was "pre-1800" and probably came over with an immigrant craftsman who was taking his tools with him.)  As I recall the box on mine was made from 6 pieces: tube, screw thread, key, stop, + an ornamental one..  The tube was rolled sheet like that one.

[Frazer]

I agree that silicone will help on both fronts, and that protecting the ears from unnecessary noise is very important. I'm actually quite surprised by how well the two magnets killed the ringing. I ended up locating the one under the heel all the way on the end, on the vertical face and now there is no prolonged ringing at all. It is not a dull thud sort of affair, but I think securely fastening the anvil and the base with a nail hooked nail or something like that will get it as close as possible. I'm not sure caulk can hold the two together securely very long as I'm working at the horn. It isn't really made to resist the moment that will be applied during normal use, unlike a steel fastener. However, for the purposes of noise reduction, and really generally speaking, it certainly can't hurt.

 

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

The earlier ones did forge braze up the screw box from a lot of pieces and would also forge braze in the screw thread----made by winding sq/rectangular stock around the screw and then un screwing it and brazing it into a tube.

Very interesting information, thanks for sharing.