Bay State anvil

[RHolly]

I wire wheeled this Bay State anvil a bit. Top is still pretty rough. I can't tell if it had a table or not. Not sure if the face has or had a hardened steel plate. 

[Hammerfall]

Is that a cast anvil?

[Kevin Olson]

Definatly cast. If it had a face plate its gone now because theres no step were the cutting step should be. And the condition of the face with it being all indented brings more questions. Is all that missing metal from corrosion or did soneone keep using it and bang those dents into it? If she could only talk!  Try the rebound test and see how hard the face is. Its gonna be hard to do with no flat area but us worth a try. Try to file it and see how hard it is. 

[ThomasPowers]

with the raised letters and face "wear" I'd bet cast iron.  (ASOs are not anything new Sears and Roebuck used to sell 3 quality levels of anvils in their catalog and the lowest was a cast iron anvil...)

[RHolly]

Not much rebound with a hammer. Gonna grab a ball bearing and try it this weekend. 

[VanadiumIronsmith]

I just ran across one of these in Granada mississippi. Same look, same lettering, same condition. I saw on your first post where someone said that the author of anvils in america hadn't ever run across any, so I feel free to make some assumptions. 

 

I'm going to assume that they came without a top plate. Theres no way that both of these had the top plate fully separate if they came with one. I'm gunna assume they are cast iron based on the shape of yours and the edges of the one I found, and also it provides almost no rebound with a ball bearing test. So probably a flat, cast ASO, but still rare and interesting!