On a local craigslist ad a guy has a forge with hand cranked blower a leg vice and a 'bridge' anvil on a hardwood stump. Looking at the pictures it makes me think the anvil use to have a horn and heel but I cannot tell for sure. I'll send the guy a message and see if he can get some better pictures of it. I do know as it sits I don't think I'd pay the $200 he wants for the anvil and stand.r

Not a bridge anvil, but yes, it's like a London-pattern anvil with heel and horn broken off. Looks like part of the steel face is broken off as well.

A bridge anvil really does look like a bridge, as in this post from last July.

I cant tell if it originally had a horn and heel but the roughness where the horn would have been suggests that there could be something missing. If nothing else it looks like a section of the face plate has broken away.

$.25 a pound is value in this condition.  (in my local yard) other than conversation piece, or bad example is of very limited use.    

I haven't gotten in touch with him yet so I don't have any additional pictures. However I'm glad other see that it looks like it might have been a London pattern at one point. He didn't mention a weight in the ad so I'll have to see if I can find that out when I finally get an answer. I imagine if the rebound was decent it would make a good striking anvil. 

1 hour ago, Michael Cochran said:

I imagine if the rebound was decent it would make a good striking anvil. 

Probably, except that it's missing the hardy hole.

8 hours ago, JHCC said:

Probably, except that it's missing the hardy hole.

That could be remedied with some time and patience and much more skill than I have and maybe even a little luck might be needed. 

Does that top plate look downright dented or is that a trick of the reflection from surface cleaning?  If it's deep dents, it implies a pretty soft plate. If I had to venture a guess, this was used for a specific rough sledging job rather than general smithing.  They beat it like a Michael Jackson tune.

Yes, they did make an anvils which were that shape--this isn't one of them.  It's a handy beating surface but so is any big chunk of steel from the scrap yard, hence it should be about scrapyard pricing.  Doesn't mean it isn't potentially useful, just not worth anvil prices.

yup; not a "collector"  barely a user. Mandatory check the hardness of the face and check for more delamination.  If anything it looks like a saw truing anvil save that it once did have extensions.  Dunning Kruger effect  in action!.  I wouldn't pay over 50 cents a pound and I have bought broken anvils before cheaper than that!

Oral history passed down through the years tells us that during the civil war the union army went from town to town destroying any blacksmith shop they found. Before burning them down they would wreck the anvils with sledge hammers so they couldn't be used. Might this be a wrecked confederate anvil? Doubt it but might make for a good blarney tale.

I'd be inclined to trust my own eyes which tell me it's just an old POS. Pass on it

George

4 minutes ago, George Geist said:

Oral history passed down through the years tells us that during the civil war the union army went from town to town destroying any blacksmith shop they found. Before burning them down they would wreck the anvils with sledge hammers so they couldn't be used. Might this be a wrecked confederate anvil? Doubt it but might make for a good blarney tale.

I'd be inclined to trust my own eyes which tell me it's just an old POS. Pass on it

George

Oral history can't always be trusted either. Why wreck an anvil like that when there are so many easier ways?

That "ancient" oral history has been traced back to a Virginia antique dealer in the late 1990's. 

Mark Twain said that a lie can race around the world twice while the truth is still getting it's shoes on. Smart man.

Yes the "urban legend" was that it was to prevent them from making shoes for the CSA cavalry; However you don't need a horn to bend metal...

I believe that the truth in why so many anvils in the south are damaged was that the South was *very* poor for many many years after the ACW and reconstruction and so damaged and broken tools were not replaced but used as they were. This pretty much lasted until the anvil was a rather subsidiary tool as technology had passed it by and so still no push to get them repaired.  If you look at the old ads many manufactures offered to reface/repair anvils; however I know of no business offering those services reasonably now days.

Guys,

That's been said since long before the 1990's. I first came around the trade in the '70s and it was common belief then.

Truth of the matter is it makes sense. Blacksmith shops were the industry. There were no factories. Shoeing horses was important yes but there was a lot more to it than that. Farm equipment, weapons, you name it the Blacksmith did it. When an enemy army shows up they're not there to have tea. The primary job of any army is to kill people and to wreck things. Why in the world wouldn't Blacksmith shops be a primary target of destruction to neutralize a town? Of course they would.

I believe that stuff happened because it makes perfect sense and is logical. What I don't believe is that so many wrecked anvils we find are confederate because I think they'd have been scrapped long before any of us were born.

As an interesting point that I'd hope Josh Kavett might comment on is after all this happened, the south needed anvils. Fisher Anvil Company for a time made anvils without their eagle logo on them just for the southern market.

So why wouldn't they have made them unusable rather than just a bit of damage? if they had them under that much control they could have wrecked them totally.  Shoot even burning down the blacksmith shop around them would have added to the damage; but many of the ones I have seen still had hard faces---the one I own does for instance.

Just toss 'em in the bonfire with the railroad tracks.

Or throw them in the nearest body of water. 

Or take them with.

Frosty The Lucky.

Gentlemen, gentlemen.

I believe that ya'll have gotten it wrong. It looks, to me, like it's a very sturdy, dwarf. park bench. Check it out again and I'm sure that it will now make sense.

Regards to all.

SLAG.

I have one I might donate if you'll tie it in a bow tie JHCC...