Anvil from Portuguese colonial era?

[Vic Moller]

I live in Mozambique and found this on the side of the road where it was waiting for a truck to take it to Beira where it would have been loaded on a ship to China to be turned into rebar.  At about US$0.20 per pound the seller was grinning from ear to ear, not believing his luck in making so much money off this crazy umlungu (white man)!  Needless to say he is now busy sniffing out any further such items for me!
 

I can only assume that this is from the Portuguese colonial era which came to an end here about 50 years ago, and with a scrap metal industry beginning to take form here, all types of unused metal  goods are being sold off to the smelters in the Far East.

I'm estimating 65kg, will weigh it after I've separated it from its base.  62cm total length, 13cm wide face, 26cm tall.  I cannot ascertain any markings on it, other than on a plate fastened to the side, bearing the words "Fajten URSS", and a sequence of numbers below that - possibly weight, date etc. designations?

Maybe someone here has some idea on its origins?

[LeeJustice]

Good rescue!

[JHCC]

"URSS" probably stands for "União das Repúblicas Socialistas Sov­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­iéticas" -- that is, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics/USSR/Soviet Union. 

"Fajten" is a bit of a puzzle. Google Translate says that it's Swedish for "fight", which doesn't make any sense. My guess is that it's a bad misspelling of "Feita na", which is Portuguese for "Made in".* In Russian, the diphthong "ei" is often written in Cyrillic letters as "ей" ("ej") rather than as "еи" ("ei"), so I'm guessing that someone transliterated "Feita na" phonetically as "Фейта на" instead of "Феита на". Somewhere along the way, someone switched the "е" and the "а" to make "Файте на". This got compressed into "Файтена", the "а" at the end was dropped to make "Файтен", and the whole thing was transliterated back into the Roman alphabet as "Fajten".

If I'm correct, therefore, this would be an anvil made in the Soviet Union and shipped to Mozambique, probably during the period from 1977 to 1990 when the People's Republic of Mozambique was receiving large amounts of Soviet economic and military aid. 

In any event, nice find and a great deal. How are the ring and rebound? 

 

*"Feita" rather than "Feito" because "bigorna" -- Portugese for "anvil" -- is feminine.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Good save on the anvil! 

if I recall correctly I think harbor freight was selling Soviet surplus anvils back in the 90s here in the US, 

I don’t have one but they still pop up for sale every now an then on Craigslist, you can recognize them by that riveted on tag on the side, 

I don’t know if it’s the same but since JHCC said that it makes me wonder

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

The configuration is quite modern and I would throw in with John about being a Russian anvil sent to that area in that time period. HOWEVER if the ring and bounce are good; it's a great anvil and you should have a grin much like the seller does!

[JHCC]

43 minutes ago, TWISTEDWILLOW said:

if I recall correctly I think harbor freight was selling Soviet surplus anvils back in the 90s here in the US

There is a very good article about these on anvilfire. Since the owner of that site has asked us not to link it here, you can google "Russian cast steel anvil" and "anvilfire", and it should pop right up.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Thanks JHCC, I just checked that out 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I have a cast iron with steel face welded on from Russia. One of our home & garden stores Race Brothers, was selling them back in the '90s. It's a 55 pounder and is my traveling anvil which works very well even though it's ugly.