Anvil identification help needed please.

[Tommytaptap]

Hi

New member just joined. Have bought an anvil in last few days (for a ridiculously low price) and would like to know exactly what it is if possible. Sold to me covered in no less than 8 layers of paint

with no visible marks. Was told it was bought at an MoD sale in the Gloucestershire area 15 years ago. Having removed most of the paint and given it a wirewheel cleanup, there are marks on it.

Hope they are visible here.

Oh and here it is before paint removal. Its 24" long, 11" high, the face is 5" wide and appears to be a cast body with a plate on top. Rings loud and clear.

[the iron dwarf]

should weigh 149 pounds, try to check it on bathroom scales if you can, date visible of 1944, dont know about maker.

some other pics may help, feet, underside inc horn, and heel and base, looks good from what I can see.

did you test it yet with a ball bearing for rebound?

[Tommytaptap]

Don't have a ball bearing to hand but anything metallic even with a light tap on it makes it ring like a carriage clock chiming for a few seconds. The weight is right. A small planishing hammer bounces like a ball on it. Cant get any more photos til my batteries re-charge but, under the horn there is a large square hole (like the hardy on the face) but blanked and about an inch or so deep. Base is completely flat underneath-no other holes anywhere. It also has down both ends and along the base what looks like a casting mark but, as I understand it, that it could still be a forged anvil.

[the iron dwarf]

the square hole is a handling hole, often one each end of the waist and sometimes one on the base as well, on a forged anvil they would be the places where it was manipulated from when it was being made

[Tommytaptap]

so it is a forged anvil for sure but, there is only the one hole that I can see(unless there is one hidden somehow) on the base which as yet remains uncleaned, not painted, just rusted. From what I have seen elsewhere it seems like it is a classic 'london' pattern. I would still very much like to know who made it and where it was made. On the other side of the waist, there are similar weight markings but, to the left of them there is what appears to me to be a very, very faint name stamp, B L A I and then indistinct letter or letters, the 'I' may even be a K. Could it be Blair or Blake. To the right of the weight marks there appears to be stamped 'GATESHEAD'

[the iron dwarf]

" under the horn there is a large square hole (like the hardy on the face) but blanked and about an inch or so deep "

this is what made me suggest handling hole, at the time I could only see the first picture but now I see more

[Tommytaptap]

There are definitely no more holes in the anvil. This is a shot of the handling hole under the bick and one of the hardy/pritchel from underneath. Looking more carefully at the whole base, it appears to be cast. My research has not got me any closer to an id on the make at all.

[matto]

My call is a brooks, did they make anvils for other companies??

[Judson Yaggy]

I agree with Matto, very Brooksish.  Guessing anvil manufacturing in any factory in the UK in 1944 may have been a little catch as catch can?

[FoxFire]

It looks cast to me, parting lines and a lack of hammer marks on the body. My cast Soderfors has handling holes so seeing the handling holes doesn't tell me anything either way. All the Brooks anvils I've seen have a pretty tall step down to the horn from the cutting table but I'm no Brooks expert. that's about all I've got.  

[kyaw.khl]

Im not familiar with lots of anvil brands. But I seen a lots of Brooks Anvils at junkyards sales and flea markets. There is no Brooks that contains carrying holes or holes at the base. I'm not sure that they produce with lifting holes or not. My experience is no holes with Brooks 3&1/2 cwt.