Recently acquired this 90 lb Chain Makers anvil. Its of the old english style and is pretty corroded so i havent found any markings. The surface is in good condition though, having been rewelded after lacking a large chunk of the faceplate.

Getting this as well as seeing some old videos of chainmakers at work has gotten me fascinated with forge welded chain making recently. I plan to make a chain making mandrel for this anvil at some point so if anyone has pictures of such tooling that'd be awesome. 

Or if anyone has other chain makers anvils I'd love to see them

Nice anvil. What did they use the side hole for?

It's to mount chain making tools. There are a number, and different sizes, bending forks, hardies, fullers, etc. 

I tried to find a video how to but all I got in searches were minecraft and jewelry. I know there are folk on IFI who have and use chain maker's anvils, hopefully someone has a video bookmarked too.

Frosty The Lucky.

The hole in the side is for a bar with the hook on the end that's used as a mandrel when shaping the links. Here's a clip from a video that shows one in use (from the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, UK):

And here's a clip from one of Rowan Taylor's videos, showing him using a hardy-hole version of the same thing:

The advantage of the version that mounts in the transverse hole is that once wedged in place, it connects strongly to the mass of the anvil, and can also be adjusted with different sized of hook and at different distances from the side of the anvil to suit the smith.

Here's another video

I got a book on chainmaking too called Chain and Anchor making in the Black Country and its got some good stuff. The place where I demo for work I make lots of chain links, no I just need to convince my boss they need two anvils. 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

This is my first post in 14 years as a member.  I recently purchased this anvil which I believe to be a chain makers anvil and I came across this thread today.  It is marked as 532 lb in the cwt system.

The side hardie hole is 56mm ( 2,3/16") square.

It is great to see how this may have been used in its past life.  Thank you for all the excellent information on IFI

 

 

What a great anvil and if my math is correct she weighs 646 lbs. Looks like whoever had her took great care and didn't abuse her.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.~ Semper Paratus

That one's a beauty, definitely more what you think of in chain makers anvils than mine lol. It's interesting how fisher anvils had two side holes in anvils as small as their #3 at 170lbs.

#4 Fisher Chain Maker's anvil with two bicks.  The tooling is actually more rare than the anvil.  Anvil is in the Fisher & Norris Factory Museum, along with 6 other Chain Maker's anvils.

I'm hoping to visit that museum one of these days, it's quite a ways from me though so the book will have to do.

I made a pretty simple chain mandrel for my 90 pounder, still need to trim the wedge and maybe made the swage a bit deeper