William Foster

[njanvilman]

William Foster anvil, made in England.  One of the few anvils that were dated with the year they were made.  This one was bought at an auction in 2015.  It is an 0 3 6 = 90 lb.  Dated 1833.  Does anyone know what the WW stand for under the date?  This anvil is in pretty good condition.  Some of these early English built-up anvils were prone to break on the forge weld lines.  I have another Foster that is missing the heal, broken at the hardy hole area.

[ThomasPowers]

My 1828 WF is also missing it's heel and most of the face too.   I hope  to someday try the old fashioned repair for the face and Postman suggested I try forgewelding the face to a wrought iron plate and then weld wrought iron to wrought iron as the WF used a fairly low grade of WI.

[Nobody Special]

Love my 1816. Broken heel and all. The WWs continue on them well into the 1840s, and Postman suggested they may be an inspector stamp. Mine's a big C instead, but a little older. 

Is that the faint hint of an anchor I see? Mine has one....might not be clear without rubbing a little flour or baby powder into it.

Decent rebound, and VERY quiet when staples are tight (and loud as heck when they're not...).

 

[njanvilman]

Nobody:  How big is your anvil?  Could you post a picture of the whole thing, missing heal and all.

I have 4 other Fosters in the collection.  My earliest in a 1829, also with a broken heel.

[David Einhorn]

Wife's family William Foster anvil.  They bought it new when they built their barn.  The smooge is mud.  It was found buried in the mud in the foundation.  

Edited March 4, 2015 by David Einhorn

[njanvilman]

I just checked my collection, and I found that I have 5 Foster anvils.  1829, 1833,1834,1836, and 1840.  The 1840 is a Coachmaker's design.  My 1836 is almost 200 lb.  This is one of the biggest Foster I have seen.  Pictures coming.

[Direwolf]

Here is my only William Foster, dated 1851, 2-0-25 on the off side for weight which works out to 249 LBS. I have owned it for a while it is 5-1/2" wide face and 25-1/2" long. A stocky anvil with a big sweet spot to work on. It is in quite good shape for 164 years old. It has been used for what it was meant for, for many years, I'm sure a smith or two made a living with this William Foster. It was -15 F in the shop this morning once again so I only took one picture which I hope I attached correctly. It has a great rebound and ring and any smith, this one included, can't help but feel proud to work on this one. It seems to have the letters IH stamped below the logo. I have no idea what the letter stamps mean, perhaps inspection marks?

Cheers

[njanvilman]

Direwolf    That is a nice BIG Foster.  What I am most impressed with these and other forged anvils is how well they maintained the overall shape, no matter what the size.  The proportionality and standardization of shape is amazing considering the methods they had available to use.  I take my hat off to these unsung craftsmen of another era.

[Danny Kuykendall]

I have a foster anvil dated 1817  with a large c under the date. the anvil also has an anchor stamped on it. the anvil has no breaks just some edge ware,

[Frazer]

Do you have any pictures you would like to share?

Also, welcome aboard!

[Jnwhrt13]

I have my great great ....grandfathers anvil it is a William Foster 1836 - grandfather was a blacksmith and a judge in Cherokee county Georgia - Judge Joseph Donaldson 1807 -1892 - he was also a founder of Canton Georgia he built the marble courthouse there it still stands today  - I'm not sure how to post a pic of the anvil  , the furnace he built in 1860 the anvil reads  William Foster 1836 wt on the other side it's got the numbers 032 - 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Mod30
change italics

[Frazer]

At the bottom of the dialog box where you type your reply there is a hyperlink "choose files..." if you click that it should open up a second window where you can select your images. Once you click open the images will appear in a tray below your reply. If you click an image it will be inserted into your message wherever your cursor is at the time. 

You can resize the image before submitting by double clicking it in your message and changing size field.

Welcome aboard! It's very cool to know the history of your anvil so well. Looking forward to seeing it.

 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

That’s pretty cool that the anvil stayed in the family through the generations

[ThomasPowers]

Probably:  0    3    2   that's the weight in the old CWT system: 0x112 + 3x28 + 2   Does it weigh around 86 pounds?

(Old anvils tend to be a couple of pounds off from their stamped weight when weighed on a modern calibrated scale.)

I have an 1828 WF; but it's severly damaged and spends most of the time sitting with my "wall of shame abused anvils" 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Great to have the history of your anvil. Are you still located in Cherokee County GA ? If so add it to your profile and you may be surprised how many members are near enough to make contact with you. You might want to edit your post and change the font's to match the standard forum font and save a moderator from doing that. Changing the standard font is frowned upon.

[Jnwhrt13]

Not sure how to do any of this but here is my best shot - nice to meet you all thank you for your comments 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many members live within visiting distance. Do you have a nick name, name, etc. we may address you with? Your login is a tongue tangle that transfers to my fingers.

I'm not sure what you were trying to do but what you did worked nicely. 

Pretty nice old lady you have there, she's got lots of life in her with a little care and use. I HOPE you aren't thinking of "restoring" her, especially not with a grinder or welder!  Any steel you grind off the face is gone forever and you can't run an arc bead on the face without risking serious damage to the hardened steel face.

forging hot steel will smooth and shine up her face nicely. There are plenty of un-chipped edges to use, just avoid heavy blows on them. If you need a better edge weld a square shank to a piece of steel for a bottom tool and you're home free.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Wehr1850]

G,day guys, I have been reading your posts on William Foster anvils and because I have just purchased one I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you. I was visiting my old home state of SA a couple of weeks ago and looked up Anvils for sale in that area. Back in the early 1800s South Australia was the only Australian state that required migrant's from England and Germany to have a trade qualification such as Blacksmiths, boot makers, farriers etc. so many German Blacksmith's moved there in the early to mid 1800 hundreds, my Great Great Grandfather being one of them, arriving in South Australia from Germany in 1850. As a consequence it is easier to find old anvils in SA than in some other states of Australia. I found an advertisement for a 120 kg (260 lb ) William Foster for a good price and so I grabbed it and transported it back to Northern Australia where I now live.

This is what is confusing me ... on all the photos of these Anvils that I have seen, they are marked in a similar way, with the bick to left there are the 3 indented numbers indicating the weight in cwt.  In this anvil I've purchased, it is  2  1  17  so... 259 lb.  With the bick to the right in all pictures I have seen, there is the full name ... William Foster.  Under that is the year the anvil was made.  Under the date is the initials of the inspector (probably).  On my anvil instead of the full name, there is only the initials WF.  And thats it.   I can't find a date or any inspectors initials.  I would really like to know the date it was made. It certainly looks to be a William foster.  From my research I think at some stage the waist has changed from the proportionally wide waist to a narrower waist a bit more like a Peter Wright, who as you know was producing Anvils before William Foster.  I think this change may have been around 1860 but I'm not really sure. Any thoughts or corrections would be appreciated.  And if everyone knows when William Foster first started to make Anvils and when production ceased, I would like to know that too. 

Thankyou    Rob.

 

 

[George N. M.]

Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming, USA.  Glad to have you.

Unfortunately, I can't help you with your questions about your anvil but I am sure that the anvil geeks here may be able to help.

Good to know about the higher density of craftsman and anvils in SA.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Wehr1850]

Thankyou George for your warm welcome. Didn't know how you American's would feel about some bloke from down under joining your group. One thing we have in common though is how those big hunks of metal we call anvils seem to have something that we can't quite explain but we tend to feel this desire to run our hands over them as we stand alone in our workshop and think of all those who lived and died before we were even born, and how they loved them as much as we do. What the heck is that anyway? greetings to all those in your great state of Wyoming.

[FlatLiner]

Welcome Wehr1850 from Utah, USA. You will find people on here from all corners of the planet. We would love to see pictures of your anvil. I have ancestors that immigrated to Australia and South Africa before they immigrated to the USA.

[George N. M.]

Wehr, we've got folk from all over the world here.  Look up the thread titled "Oz Roll Call" to see how many folk you have on your side of the planet.  And I will refrain from making jokes about downdraft forges and using the bottom of the anvil.

I'm not a touchy feely kind of guy but I feel like there is some kind of spirit or karma in old tools from their previous users.  I feel like I do better work with an old tool than I do with an identical one which is brand new.  And in some way I think the tool wants to be used for what it was intended.  It always hurts my heart to see tools used as decor.  My late wife perefered her treadle sewing machine for most things over her modern one.  I repaired and renovated several treadle machines for her and friends.  Now when I see a treadle machine converted to a plant stand it seems sad.  Same for spinning wheels that have been disassembled to make a chair or something.  Sometimes we can salvage old tools and get them back to their work which seems to be a "good thing" which makes us and the tools happier.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[swedefiddle]

Happy New Year Rob,

Greeting from a little bit North of you, just around the corner and up the pond a bit.

The problem with Tools that can't talk, you have to look at them sometimes for quite awhile, to read their Story. In the end, it is better to let them wake-up slowly and treat them for what they were made to do. There is no Magic Dust and their Birthday doesn't really matter. William is glad to be with you.

There is a group that get together occasionally in Aus. We had Glenn Moon come to Canada in 2017 for CanIRON. I actually spoke to him last week. He is in NSW, north and a little east of Sydney. There also were three Aussies who stayed with us after the ABANA Conference in Seattle. The bigger the world gets, the smaller it is.

Enjoy your Journey, Neil

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Welcome from the Ozark mountains. Pictures of your W F anvil will help the anvil guru's give better information. I did a Google search like this

(william foster anvil site:iforgeiron.com) without the brackets and it returned 225 hits about them. There a great bunch of folks on the OZ Roll Call thread.

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/7176-oz-roll-call/

 

[Craig M. DeLong]

Hello All...reading the posts and hoping to gleen a little info on an old anvil I have.  This William Foster was my GGgrandfathers here in the Catskill Mountains of NY.  It is stamped  0*3*18   ad a large"C".  The year marking is incomplete (or worn off)  and shows 184*.   I thought I could make out a partial  "  2 "  for the last number.   I know for sure it was owned by my Ggrandfather who was in the  4th NY cavalry in the Civil War and pretty sure it was his fathers, who was a blacksmith up here in the mountains.  The condition looks (to me) as pretty good for a  180 year old tool.    Any thoughts on this old anvil by the experts here as to why the last number of the year is missing and the overall condition.   Am going to clean nit up and make a new base for it this spring.

   Thanks,  Craig M. DeLong                       I hope I can figure out how to post pics below........