free to me. trash or treasure

[Retodd73]

grand pa had this in his reloading shop.  looks like the bottom half of an anvil.  havent had a chance to clean it up but i did see a few #s and letters

[quint]

Looks like originally a sawyers anvil but I have never scene pics even of one that bad off.  

[VaughnT]

Not a sawyer's anvil.  Looks like the bottom half of a london-pattern anvil.  If I were to guess, the top half broke off at the waist weld and got misplaced somewhere.  You're left with a wrought iron bottom half.

 

Now, that's not to say you don't have a great anvil.  Remember, the vikings and such were making great works of art on anvils that were, basically, nothing but lumps of wrought iron.  So, you've at least got an anvil that's workable.  

 

Were it mine, I'd either weld it up with hard-facing rods or weld on a fork lift tine being sure to raise it up high enough to sneak a thin rod in the gap.

 

I certainly wouldn't scrap it as unusable.  It can be used as-is if you clean up the face a bit.  Replacing the faceplate wouldn't be too hard or expensive

[ThomasPowers]

I have one of those too---even down to the ledges on the feet.  Mine was weight stamped in CWT showing that it was originally a complete anvil as the weight stamped was considerably more that what's left.

 

Postman identified mine as "Most likely a Peter Wright"

 

The top of mine is mushroomed by a lot of use after it's "accident"  I keep it on my "wall of shame" a selection of badly abused anvils.

[quint]

Yeah your right vaugn. I should have examined it a bit further. 

[Retodd73]

thanks guys. i do have a fork from a lift, and i was gonna chop it up into 8'' long pieces and weldem. i guess i could just weld the 1/2 anvil to the bottom of it,  maybe put my mark on the side and pass it on to my boys

[VaughnT]

Cut a section of tine to match the top of the anvil's "face" and raise it up on some 1/4" round stock.  This will leave you a gap that you can snake a thin rod into so you get a full penetration weld.  If you just weld around the outside, the performance will be less than stellar and there's a good change the welds will pop over time.

 

Confirm that it's wrought iron before welding, obviously, and remember to flip back and forth between the welds to minimize the warpage.

 

One layer of tine would be more than sufficient.  If you could get that baby to around 50#, with a hard face and good rebound, you'd have a dandy of an anvil.  Especially so if you could blend it all together so it looks original!

 

I'm kind of jealous.  I never get a chance at projects like this!