German anvils -AMA

[Frf]

I am a professionally trained German journeyman blacksmith. I went through my full apprenticeship under a German Master Blacksmith and have worked professionally for 40 years in this trade. I specialize in the use of the South German Pattern double horned anvil with the sideshelf(voramboss). Ask me anything.

[Branding Iron]

Beautiful anvil.  I’ve always been drawn to this style, and hope to have one this year or next.

Since you opened the doors, here are some questions!

What are the benefits and drawbacks to this particular style versus other styles?

How do you typically use the side shelf?

Has the type of blacksmithing work remained consistent for you over 40 years?  If not what can you discuss general changes?

How long was your apprenticeship?

 

 

[Frf]

The benefits are endless when using a proper size of 200-230kg. This anvil is particular to the South German Kunstschmiede or wrought iron art blacksmith. They made gates, window grills, fences, railings, signs, door and gate hardware, cemetery/tomb decoration, room dividers, chandeliers, sculptures, household tools like fireplace pokers, and all manner of hardware for building construction.

The proper stance when forging is to stand at the square horn, hips/body facing the round horn, hip resting against the anvil(for balance/accuracy and to quieten the ring). Your feet make an L shape, the hammer side foot is perpendicular to the anvil, tucked against the stump, the other facing forward. The anvil should be mounted with the face at middle of the wrist height, not bottom of your knuckles. This allows you to work standing upright and relaxed, not hunched over.

 

The many different parts and surfaces act as different swages for different forging processes. The graduated transition between the face and round horn gives you every radius you need for bending and gives you a concave swage. This is where you do a lot of spreading and drawing out.
 

The placement of the round and square holes allow for proper forging overtop of them as the feet of the anvil are underneath them for support, they have better rebound than the heel of london pattern, and their separation allow for the use of two hardie/swage tools at once.

The side shelf is everything, the front crook is a convenient rest for sighting along a workpiece for straightening. You can create bends or straighten pieces by resting the work piece on the sideshelf and face and hitting the unsupported area. The crooks also act as a 90° concave swage, and the outside corners act as 90° convex swage. If you stand perpendicular to the anvil facing the side shelf you can form scrolls over the far edge. It also gives a spot where the face is 6”+ wide. The uses are endless. Once you have been trained on how to use it, you feel like a limb is missing when you work without one.

The length of the anvil is about 3ft and allows you to work on long pieces easily.

The square horn is infinitely more useful than a heel, the different widths of the face allows you to straighten small areas of your workpiece between bent or raised sections.

The upset block comes in handy for any kind of upsetting, large and small. Typically this was done by leaving the workpiece long and standing on the anvil face dropping the workpiece onto the swageblock, using the weight of the extended workpiece to do the work for you. 
 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHA-cMoDv8O/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
 

The only drawback to this pattern is trying to source one in good shape.

 

Repair work, tool making, and hardware making are always consistent, as is decorative wrought iron work. The biggest challenge and change is that North American society has forgotten about the capabilities and use of a blacksmith. People are used to throwing things out instead of having them repaired or having parts made to fix them. In Europe, there is still a strong tradition of employing the town blacksmith for parts, repairs, and custom metalwork.

 

My apprenticeship was 3 years full time, and then I went on the traditional journeyman’s journey for 3 years and 1 day.

I apprenticed under Meister Klaus Walz with a team of 8 journeymen and apprentices in the forge. We used coal forges and worked in teams of two, one man to manage 6+ steels in the fire and act as striker, and the other to forge at the anvil.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O378347/grille-klaus-walz/

[FlatLiner]

Very interesting and informative.

[Anachronist58]

The spirit of Blacksmithing lives on in the heart of the heart of the U.S., in Donley County, in the Texas Panhandle. A 1925ish 125# Soderfors Sorceress, to whom the People have been coming for decades, and still do, last I checked.  You have given a wonderful presentation, in my assessment...

I hope you run into Dan Hurd, he has claims on the Fraser...

Hey Mr. FlatLiner..

Robert Taylor

[Frosty]

Do you have a pic or link to the 125lb. Sorceress, Robert? Mine was cast in 1926, 125lb. Soderfors, Sorceress #5. I'd like a pic of another as a shop pinup. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Anachronist58]

Jerry, found six pics 1929, 121#, Sorceress proud on one side, Paragon stamped on the other...

I can PM to you the six full res (<2Mb) images if you would like...

Robert

Would you like risque pics of my 1906 157# Soderfors?

Edited April 12, 2022 by Anachronist58
addendum

[Frosty]

They don't need to be full res but yes, I'd like to see them. RISQUE anvil pics!? OH YEAH, Please PM them Robert!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Frf]

On 4/10/2022 at 10:20 PM, Anachronist58 said:

The spirit of Blacksmithing lives on in the heart of the heart of the U.S., in Donley County, in the Texas Panhandle. A 1925ish 125# Soderfors Sorceress, to whom the People have been coming for decades, and still do, last I checked.  You have given a wonderful presentation, in my assessment...

I hope you run into Dan Hurd, he has claims on the Fraser...

Hey Mr. FlatLiner..

Robert Taylor

Greetings Mr Taylor,

Glad to hear that blacksmithing is well and alive where you are! We are busy here in Vancouver, working to ignite the embers.

We at Fraser River Forge have not as of yet had the pleasure of Mr Hurd’s acquaintance, the Fraser is but a scant 850mi, so I am sure it won’t be long until we do.

[Stash]

Hey Frf- could you tell me (us) how you relieve/ round over the working edges of a South German style anvil? I know there has been plenty of discussion on easing edges of London style anvils, but I'm curious as to how you treat the flat tapered horn edges as well as the table. 

Steve

[Frf]

You don’t.

This would be the equivalent of keying your new Mercedes or using your anvil as a torch cutting table. 

You try to keep the edges of your anvil as sharp as possible for as long as possible. These eventually wear over time and you miss them when they are gone. This is what the round horn transition is for, and lower swages. A swage is easy to replace, an anvil is not. 
 

We are not the owners of the anvils we use, we are a steward for the next blacksmith. They belong to the trade, just like the knowledge that was passed on to us.

[Frosty]

Interesting, you're saying you've used the anvil pictured above long enough to radius ALL the visible edges so evenly with so little wear elsewhere? 

I don't recall what you said the rebound on this anvil is but pretty high, 85%+ I THINK. That hard with no edge chipping but worn to a nice differentiating radius across all the visible edges? 

How do you compensate for the sharp edges you miss? 

I would appreciate an explanation of these seemingly contradictory things. Please.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Frf]

The anvil is 100 years old +/-. I am blacksmith number 4 or 5. Yes, they were worn into that shape over time.

Here is a picture of the anvil as we received it. We cleaned it up and polished what was there. 85% rebound is quite soft for a german anvil, most of the anvils we have are in the high 90’s.

Edge chipping is a result of poor heat treatment and poor hammer control. This is what makes a used anvil that is still true so valuable. It has been tested. The old anvils were hit and miss. 30% failure rate was not uncommon during production. Refflinghaus currently rejects 7 out of 10 castings.

 

We use swage tools to replace the sharp edges.

 

[FlatLiner]

That's the first time I have ever heard that you want the sharp edges as long as possible in an anvil.

[Frf]

This is how Refflinghaus sends their anvils, this is the gold standard for anvils.

For sharp edges on my anvil this is the swage tool we use.

 

[ThomasPowers]

European companies send hammers that need to be dressed before using expecting the smith to know how they like it dressed better than the manufacturer.

When working real wrought iron with sharp edges don't you get lines in the metal that then need to be dealt with before they form cold shuts?

[Frf]

I don’t understand. Yes, hammers need dressing before use. A hammer is a wear item like a hot cut hardie. A German anvil is not the same. What are you asking? 

[ThomasPowers]

That everything shipped by a manufacturer is not in the condition they expect it to be used in.

[Frf]

Apples to oranges in this case. Professionally trained german blacksmiths do not add a radius to the edge of their anvil, this is just not done, it is seen as damaging a perfectly good anvil. 

[Jonnytait]

so you are saying very sharp edges are ideal for the anvil? how does this not cut the steel when forging set-downs/shoulders?

[FlatLiner]

This discussion is interesting and I have no experience on a German anvils but I truthfully don't see how and for what you need sharp edges on an anvil. If those edges arn't sharp enough and you need an anvil block with sharper edges than my 100+ year old Sisco is well worn out by your standards.

[Frf]

With edges that sharp, you can use them to cut steel if you want. Being able to create a nice tight shoulder for set downs is very useful.
 

How do you avoid cutting the steel? Working at white to yellow heat when forming the shoulder and hammer control.

We forge with metallurgical coke, all of our forging is done in white heat. We stop forging at orange heat, this is for straightening/bending only. 
 

[Frf]

28 minutes ago, FlatLiner said:

This discussion is interesting and I have no experience on a German anvils but I truthfully don't see how and for what you need sharp edges on an anvil. If those edges arn't sharp enough and you need an anvil block with sharper edges than my 100+ year old Sisco is well worn out by your standards.

For accurate, tight set downs and shoulders. It is very nice for things like shoulders on nails and tongs made from 3/8” round bar.

Sharp, crisp edges greatly improve the value of anvils amoung German smiths. It is very highly sought after and the mark of a good anvil.
 

Come for a class, we can show you.

[FlatLiner]

It's interesting to hear the differences in forging methodology, purposes and how to use the anvil differently between countries and what is being forged.

[Frosty]

Do you work tool steel at white heat? Or are you working wrought iron? 

Are all German smiths too rushed to use a hardy and so good they don't miss blows?

I'm not picking on you, honestly. What we see here is a cultural issue. I've known a number of "classically" trained craftsmen in my life. Dad hired mostly German metal spinners and every darned one a proper guild certified Journeyman or higher ranked metal spinner. What we called "stick" spinners, (for some reason now called) "manual" spinners. A tool rest with a series of holes and a single pin to lever a single tip spinning tool against. Old school metal spinning. 

Dad ran a professional production shop and we used scissor tools which are compound levers with full 2D motion and provide HUGE pressure to roller tools. I met many of them right off, Dad assigned me as their personal helper till they got to  know how the shop worked, where everything was, etc. It became an expected cliche' that scissor spinning wasn't really metal spinning and once they showed us how it was REALLY done we'd become a proper metal spinning shop. 

It didn't take Dad long to get their re-training started. He'd demonstrate how Our shop spun a part, usually one in production but for the insistent he liked to mount a candle stick die. He'd spin several parts at shop speed and let the new fellow pick his tool, adjust the rest and demonstrate how a REAL metal spinner did it.

It used to scare me when I was young, they were so sure and adamant about how it SHOULD be done. A couple demonstrations of just how fiercely loyal they usually became once he showed them stick spinning was a specialty method, not a way to make a good living. 

So, yeah I grew up around and working with German apprentice trained guildsmen and they all talked like this thread. There's nothing wrong with it, these guys were all legitimately MASTER metal spinners and it rarely took them more than a day or so to learn scissor spinning, they were Dad's bread and butter spinners.

Were I going to be snide I'd go Sgt. Shultz but I mean no, ZERO disrespect I know for a fact I can't hold a candle to your training and skills. I'm a mostly self taught hobbyist far from a professional smith. I'd love to stop by and be a fly on the wall. I don't do much hands on smithing since the accident, my eye hand coordination and vision wonky from the brain and nerve damage so I've slipped a bunch.

We do things differently and your shop your way or there's the door. PERIOD. That's how it is in my shop, I listen to different ideas sometimes watch a demonstration but don't you DARE use the edge of one of MY anvils as a hot cut! There is a hardy, hot or cold within reach, use it. Use the chisel plate, it doubles as the bolster, it's within reach, the steps on my anvils are NOT for cutting.

I have a short 86 rule list and always give people a second chance for breaking one. Only one though. When I visit someone's shop I follow their rules, PERIOD. I expect no different.

Most of you reading this thread "know" setting shoulders over a sharp edge causes a stress riser and is a mistake. Knowingly doing this is just crazy. There's an old axiom that covers this nicely. "If it's crazy but it works it isn't crazy."

My above questions are sincere. I prefer to talk with people I disagree with or do things I think don't work. It's how I learn things and why I have an opinion about so many things.

Frosty The Lucky.