There's a salvage yard near me that often has anvils & some other blacksmithing odds and ends for sale, needless to say the smaller anvils that can be lifted by the DFLs (down from London) and put into the back of their spotlessly clean BMW 4x4s sell for stupid money, but the bigger anvils the yard has go for a more sensible price because they're too big for Notting Hill gardens.

Ages ago I spotted this big mother smothered in thick black paint and thought it'd be nice to have an anvil that size one day and left it as pie in the sky. At the weekend I thought I'd go back and have another nosey about and saw it was still there. From the feet, chamfered hardy holes and relatively thin heel I guessed it could be a Peter Wright but I'm no anvil expert and the paint was too redicliously thick to see any markings through. Remember the old paint is what sells these things to most people so I daren't pick at it (too much without being seen).

This salvage yard just so happens to be en route back from the blasting and zinc flame spraying firm I use and today I took a gate along for treating...and then thought well I could use a little treating too. £280 delivered. After a light dusting with a wire wheel on the grinder enough paint was cleaned off enough to read some faded Peter Wright marks and 3 - 2 - 23. In new money I make that 188 kg, 415 lbs. Minimal deformation of the face and generally decent edges. Table = 5, 1/2 wide, heel to tip of the bick = 3 feet.

The pic of my exisiting 1, 1/2 CWT Brookes anvil on top of the new Peter Wright doesn't even do the size difference justice. The real clincher for me was that the hardy holes are nearly exactly the same size as the hardy hole on my Brookes anvil so I'll be able to use all the hardy tools I've already made to fit my Brookes anvil in the new Peter Wright with just minimal tweaking. Joking aside I think this will be a great asset, not just an indulgence.

Beautiful score, hoss!  She'll definitely be a great addition to the shop!

Anvil Envy is a terrible terrible thing and you are NOT helping!

Wow, that's a real bruiser.  Nice score!

Great work your pw in near perfect condition,how rare are the pw anvils with two hardy holes?

Cheers folks. No clue on it's rarerity. I expect that if you were allowed to rummage around some of the old local dockyards near to me you'd find a good few anvils of similar dimensions, probably some PWs too, but PWs with 2 hardies? Je ne sais pas...

Congrats, nice find. I am still thinking of all the tool combinations I would use with double hardies

But I would always try to remove as much paint as possible with a scraper first instead of the wire wheel on old items.

I don´t like old rust protection possible with lead airborne.

If the paint is thick its sometimes even faster

My Fisher has two hardy holes.  I like to have one set up with an insert to use hardy tooling with a different stem size. It's 1.5" so an insert sized for 1" comes in handy and then I use my large stem hardy tools in the other.  Mine was originally an anvil for a Blacker hammer.

The salvage yard you got that anvil from wasn't in Biddenden was it?  If so I believe I may have your anvil's brother!  I have a 4cwt double hardy hole anvil that I bought there for £180 two years ago which also came complete with flaking black paint, though mine isn't a Peter Wright as far as I can tell.  It seems quite a coincidence if you did get yours from the same yard!  Either way, great anvil you have there, I wish you many hours of happy forging on it!

The salvage yard you got that anvil from wasn't in Biddenden was it?

Yep, haha. I'm on my phone a.t.m so I can't see your location - are you aware of Mather and Smith down the road in Hothfield? I only just discovered them the other day. Apparantly they're one of the oldest foundries in the country.

Yep, haha. I'm on my phone a.t.m so I can't see your location - are you aware of Mather and Smith down the road in Hothfield? I only just discovered them the other day. Apparantly they're one of the oldest foundries in the country.

​I don't know of them no but I'll check them out!  I'm from London (one of your DFLs I'm sorry to say) but my parents are from Kent (Cranbrook and Hawkhurst).  They might be one of the oldest foundries in the country but the one I work at is older, the oldest manufacturing company in Britain to be precise!

My Peter Wright 3 0 3 also has two Hardy holes. It was very handy to use the one nearest the bick with the foot hammer before the standalone frame was made.

I haven't been able to find it again, but one day when I was browsing anvils on here I came across a catalogue image which listed the various styles of anvil and there was a specific name for those with two hardy holes…carriage wrights or something.

Anybody remember the sheet and have a link to it?

Alan

I think this is what you mean, though it doesn't show an anvil with two hardies and a step, think "soho pattern" is the closest to my own anvil.

Yes that's it. Thank you.

Mine is a Soho then as it does not have the step down to a cutting table. The hard facing goes all the way.

I wonder what a Soho looks like or does?

Alan

I wonder what a Soho looks like or does?

I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but whenever I see products named "Soho" I always think the word must have a 2nd meaning because why would you name something so ordinary after an area of London that specializes in "gentlemen's entertainment"?

 

The salvage yard you got that anvil from wasn't in Biddenden was it?

Bethersden I meant actually. That's been bugging me and I couldn't think why.

The heel hardy on my anvil is not tapered, the one nearer the bick taper down to a round hole underneath. Both start out fraction differnet sizes, the bick end one is smaller and conveniently takes 30mm tube for hardy shanks without any wobble.

I think the point of having 2 hardies so you can forge 2 little bowls & weld hardy shanks onto them then put savory nibbles in one & sweets in the other, then you never have to stop for lunch.

Wait just a minute...I saw that one on Monty Python in the late seventies!

Nice score Joel. That's a real beast for sure. 

 

I think the double hardies are pretty uncommon but not that rare. It will serve you well I'm sure. 

 

All the best 

Andy

Yes that's it. Thank you.

Mine is a Soho then as it does not have the step down to a cutting table. The hard facing goes all the way.

I wonder what a Soho looks like or does?

Alan

​May relate or not, but Soho was home to a smal gunsmithing industry that was still just about on its last legs when I was small (1980's).

 

​May relate or not, but Soho was home to a smal gunsmithing industry that was still just about on its last legs when I was small (1980's).

 

​Ah interesting, I did do a cursory and fruitless google search just after posting to see whether there had been a specific industry associated with Soho. The gun trade was what I had in mind.

Alan

Two hardie holes, possibly that's so the tough boys from down under can carry them like a '6 pack'  

Two hardie holes, possibly that's so the tough boys from down under can carry them like a '6 pack'  

​That would be a bit of a "strine" even for them… ouch sorry.

Alan

 

http://www.textfiles.com/humor/strine.txt

Edited May 3, 201511 yr by Alan Evans

​Ah interesting, I did do a cursory and fruitless google search just after posting to see whether there had been a specific industry associated with Soho. The gun trade was what I had in mind.

Alan

​Though I would be surprised if they would have need of such an anvil. Those two-hardy anvils seem always to be on the big side, and I think the gunsmiths of Soho were very likely exclusively fitters and machinists (the barrels being made in Birmingham, probably?).

One of the cleverest and most skilful examples I have ever seen of blacksmithing was in the now-sadly-closed Museum of Science and Industry in Birmingham. It was in the jewellery quarter, and I used to regularly pop in to ogle the exhibits when I went in to the assay office and bullion dealers in the seventies. Most exhibits in metal and basically everything a small boy in his 20s would be fascinated by... Trains, planes and automobiles, guns large and small and the machinery that made them.

My favourite piece was demonstrating how a damascus barrel was made. It was around 700mm (30") barrel length and divided into 50mm- 75mm (2"-3") sections. The muzzle end was frayed out showing 50mm (2") of the 12mm x 3mm (1/2" x 1/8") strips, the next couple of inches were then shut together into a 10mm (3/8") square; the next showed them twisted; the next paired up and shut together and twisted again; the next wrapped in a spiral around the mandrel and so on progressively until in the length of the barrel it arrived at a machined and polished and etched breech/chamber. One thing to take every process through and make a barrel but quite another to show all the stages so clearly in one piece…brilliant.

Alan

Edited May 4, 201511 yr by Alan Evans
Punctuation improvements

Hey! They had one of those at the Pitt-Rivers museum, but now it's gone! I asked after it last time I was there, but I might as well have been speaking classical Nahuatl for all the sense I could get out of what uniformed wanderers I was able to corner.