Never seen an anvil like this as pictured.  Any idea what it was designed for? It weights a little over 300 pds.

Double Bick, one round and one sq, is pretty common in Europe, the side exiting hardy holes are often found in French anvils and a few other places as well.

It's used for blacksmithing!

I know about the horns and blacksmithing, but the holes on the sides must be designed for a particular purpose I'm guessing.  No hardie hole,k no make.  Thanks for the French part.  One more piece to my puzzle.

That is certainly not a common design not even for Europe, but if you can get it cheap, 300 lb is a nice size

I already own it.  I have about 14 anvils.

The holes in the sides are probably hardy holes; one of which has broken out. So 2 hardy holes not none!

the holes are round thought not square.  why in the sides?  Nice wide face.

A hardy hole in the side can be handy when working long stock for architectural work. Must avoid abuse it though.  

14 anvils? Wow ... I have 5 and some of them are in the way ... but 14?

Why in the side?  You have to have a way to remove slugs when you use the hole for punching holes in hot metal.  Hard to make a hole all the way through the body of the anvil.

14 anvils---but do you do any smithing? I know a guy that has over 500 anvils and doesn't smith; always seemed odd to me...

Look around for an old catalog with all the variations on anvils that used to be sold in a wide range of sizes too.

I own a blacksmithing business, teach privately and use my facility for teaching with a college.  I have been smithing for over 20 years.

It says I'm a newbie, but on was this sight probably back 15 years ago.

 

Ok; but the why on the side seemed to be a newbie's question.  I started forging in 1981 myself; but have traveled quite a bit and seen a lot of variations; (even did a demo for an 82 year old smith on billet welding in Germany where he was working at an Open Air Museum once.---My wife is VERY understanding; she took the kids and did the rest of the museum while I spent a couple of hours in the smithy...)

Do those holes connect to the outside somewhere?  (The French side exit hardy holes tend to be curved and used curved stem hardy stems.)

I will admit that I assumed that the far side hole was square but with the top wallered out, Couldn't tell on the near one.  Of course any smith is allowed to order a custom anvil or to modify their anvil for their own use---look at all the old anvils with pritchel holes retrofitted in them!

Where are you at?  I teach an intro class a couple of times a semester at NM Tech---just a set the hook class and then consult on folks working on more advanced projects. I have a friend who is the instructor at the Fine Arts Metals classes and asked me to teach about a decade ago now.

Ontario, Canada. Website is:  www.forgedincanada.ca. Forgedinfire.ca will get you there as well.

Do you know Darrell Markewitz of the Wareham forge?   I used to meet him at Quad-State regularly; especially when he was stocking up on equipment for his school. As I moved 1500 miles further away I don't get to Q-S as often these days.

Welcome to IFI. To the forum you are a Newbie. If you edit your profile to show your location, we won't have to pester you about it and us old timers will forget where you are as soon as we leave this thread.

Oh and you can change your title while editing, or PM Glen to get it changed. Good looking web site you have, had to use the second address first one came back with an error though.

6 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Do you know Darrell Markewitz of the Wareham forge?   I used to meet him at Quad-State regularly; especially when he was stocking up on equipment for his school. As I moved 1500 miles further away I don't get to Q-S as often these days.

C

 

6 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Do you know Darrell Markewitz of the Wareham forge?   I used to meet him at Quad-State regularly; especially when he was stocking up on equipment for his school. As I moved 1500 miles further away I don't get to Q-S as often these days.

I have m t him once a number of years ago, but that's it.  I don't live near him at all.

11 hours ago, Don Mackay said:

I own a blacksmithing business, teach privately and use my facility for teaching with a college.  I have been smithing for over 20 years.

It says I'm a newbie, but on was this sight probably back 15 years ago.

 

That refers to membership to the forum, not years in the craft. So let's see, a long lost brother returns! Where'd I put that fatted calf? 

Pretty cool anvil, wish I knew something useful about it but. . . 

Frosty The Lucky.

You can put me wherever you want as long I am near the heat of my forge and can hear the ring of the anvil.

Having a hardy hole on the edge also allows you to work the elbows of bent items as the one leg can hang over the side. Say if you needed a full vee , or round shape profile as opposed to a flat that could just be done over the edge of the anvil.