Looking For Advice on Purchase of First Anvil / På Jakt Etter Råd om Kjøp av Første Ambolt

[Alan Longmire]

Exactly.  The name doesn't mean anything if it's been through a fire and lost its hardness.  As long as it has a hard face and good rebound, it's a good anvil. 

[Will Robertson]

14 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Exactly.  The name doesn't mean anything if it's been through a fire and lost its hardness.  As long as it has a hard face and good rebound, it's a good anvil. 

That's an important point that I'd overlooked - a hot enough fire could damage one - I've fought industrial fires that are hot enough to soften structural steel to the point that steel girders are left bent and warped.

Some folk have suggested buying an anvil that's damaged the grinding it down - I'm not sure but my guess is that after grinding off a significant amount of the surface it would have to be re-hardened - my guess is that doing that without knowing the steel specification would have a limited chance of success...?

[Bjorn Gylfason]

It was a couple of years ago and long since lost the contact info for him unfortunately 

[Alan Longmire]

4 hours ago, Will Robertson said:

Some folk have suggested buying an anvil that's damaged the grinding it down - I'm not sure but my guess is that after grinding off a significant amount of the surface it would have to be re-hardened - my guess is that doing that without knowing the steel specification would have a limited chance of success...?

 

Many an antique anvil has been rendered useless by grinding the face down.  Modern anvils can be ground quite a bit more, but it's still an iffy proposition.  The antiques used a very shallow-hardening steel for the face.  By "shallow," I mean the face plate was ~1cm thick at most, of which only the topmost mm or two was fully hard.  That's just a characteristic of steel prior to modern metallurgy.  It's why Japanese swords have that temper line, exact same phenomenon. It's also why I generally don't recommend grinding on an older anvil.

 

By the 1920s, the depth of hardness of the face gets a little deeper, say 3mm. Later anvils cast entirely in tool steel can be fully hard up to 10 or 15mm deep.  At least one modern foundry uses an air-hardening alloy that gets fully hard all the way to the center of the anvil.  

 

One thing people new to smithing tend to think is that the face of the anvil should be a dead flat precision surface with sharp corners.  It is not, and never has been.  The best of the older anvils had a crowned face, slightly higher in the center and sloping to gently radiused edges.  This allows the face of the anvil to act as a large fuller, much more efficient at drawing out length versus a true flat.  The edges are rounded over because they are used to create stepped notches in the metal being forged. A sharp corner will create a stress concentration that can lead to cracking, not to mention cold shuts if forged after creating the step.  A sharp corner on the anvil face is also more prone to chipping than a radiused one. 

 

Kohlswa had an issue with this in the 1990s when a batch of anvils destined for the American market were left both sharp-edged and a little harder than spec.  Since new smiths then and now don't know the importance of dressing the edges, that entire lot of anvils sold by Centaur Forge had problems with the edges chipping.  As a result, Centaur stopped selling Kohlswa anvils, and most other manufacturers started tempering their anvils a little bit softer.  Pre-1995-ish anvils tend to have a surface hardness of between 58 and 60 on the Rockwell C scale, post-1995-ish anvils tend to be around Rc 55. 

 

I have a ca. 1920s Columbian brand anvil, an early all-cast-tool-steel anvil.  It has no edges left that aren't chipped off, and the face is so hard that it won't show a mark from a missed blow.  That missed blow will also give you a concussion if you aren't careful, as the rebound is far stronger than any modern anvil I've used.  I've only smacked myself in the head once, but that was enough.  Compare that to my solid cast steel Refflinghaus dated 2000.  It has decent rebound, but it's not going to lead to a concussion, and a missed blow with a sharp-ish edge of the hammer face will leave a dent.  That's about liability, not poor heat treatment.  

 

Apologies for the lecture, I just like anvils more than may be healthy... 

[Jaro Petrina]

Not to brag, but I got this 1930 Škoda 400# for eq. of 500 bucks couple of years ago.  

[Alan Longmire]

Exactly!  They're out there, it just takes time and luck. 

[Will Robertson]

20 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

 

Many an antique anvil has been rendered useless by grinding the face down.  Modern anvils can be ground quite a bit more, but it's still an iffy proposition.  The antiques used a very shallow-hardening steel for the face.  By "shallow," I mean the face plate was ~1cm thick at most, of which only the topmost mm or two was fully hard.  That's just a characteristic of steel prior to modern metallurgy.  It's why Japanese swords have that temper line, exact same phenomenon. It's also why I generally don't recommend grinding on an older anvil.

 

By the 1920s, the depth of hardness of the face gets a little deeper, say 3mm. Later anvils cast entirely in tool steel can be fully hard up to 10 or 15mm deep.  At least one modern foundry uses an air-hardening alloy that gets fully hard all the way to the center of the anvil.  

 

One thing people new to smithing tend to think is that the face of the anvil should be a dead flat precision surface with sharp corners.  It is not, and never has been.  The best of the older anvils had a crowned face, slightly higher in the center and sloping to gently radiused edges.  This allows the face of the anvil to act as a large fuller, much more efficient at drawing out length versus a true flat.  The edges are rounded over because they are used to create stepped notches in the metal being forged. A sharp corner will create a stress concentration that can lead to cracking, not to mention cold shuts if forged after creating the step.  A sharp corner on the anvil face is also more prone to chipping than a radiused one. 

 

Kohlswa had an issue with this in the 1990s when a batch of anvils destined for the American market were left both sharp-edged and a little harder than spec.  Since new smiths then and now don't know the importance of dressing the edges, that entire lot of anvils sold by Centaur Forge had problems with the edges chipping.  As a result, Centaur stopped selling Kohlswa anvils, and most other manufacturers started tempering their anvils a little bit softer.  Pre-1995-ish anvils tend to have a surface hardness of between 58 and 60 on the Rockwell C scale, post-1995-ish anvils tend to be around Rc 55. 

 

I have a ca. 1920s Columbian brand anvil, an early all-cast-tool-steel anvil.  It has no edges left that aren't chipped off, and the face is so hard that it won't show a mark from a missed blow.  That missed blow will also give you a concussion if you aren't careful, as the rebound is far stronger than any modern anvil I've used.  I've only smacked myself in the head once, but that was enough.  Compare that to my solid cast steel Refflinghaus dated 2000.  It has decent rebound, but it's not going to lead to a concussion, and a missed blow with a sharp-ish edge of the hammer face will leave a dent.  That's about liability, not poor heat treatment.  

 

Apologies for the lecture, I just like anvils more than may be healthy... 

Thank you very much.

It's good to have someone with much more experience than me confirm that the idea of grinding down an old anvil is unlikely to succeed. My reckoning was that with a piece of steel of known specification I can look up the recommended ways of hardening it and choose the best one for my situation, with a piece of scrap I can do a spark test to get an idea of composition then - if it's a composition for which hardening appears possible - test different hardening techniques on little pieces until I find a way of hardening it that seems to work. Trying to harden an anvil of unknown specification and with no test pieces felt like something with a very low probability of a successful outcome. (I'd better not get into quench hardening, chemicals for forge carburizing and nitriding, the history and patents of plasma/ion carburizing and nitriding, boriding processes, or the amazing story of Bernhardt Berghaus - those are for a different thread...)

To what extent am I being rational in my expectations of an anvil? I'd wanted to try forge welding and making simple damascus using only muscle power but I've never seen this done - everyone I've seen seems to use a hydraulic press and or machine hammer. I've got a lot of muscle power but I'd guessed that to be successful in making damascus I'd need a significantly better hammer and anvil than for everyday forging?

Thanks for giving more history about how anvils were made and hardened. The difference in steel metallurgy over the years is enormous - the example I tend to give is that my father was a car mechanic and when he started out a regular task was regularly re-grinding the valves and valve seats of an engine - the advances in steel technology since then mean that for me, re-grinding valves and seats is something I'd expect to do at most once in the lifetime of an engine - usually only when a valve needs replaced.

Thanks for mentioning the crowned surface - I made one anvil by grinding down a small piece of old railway line with an angle grinder and gave it an imperfect slightly crowned surface and rounded edges - I was thinking about putting a larger piece of railway line in a mill and milling it down to a flat surface (indexable carbide tipped tool and light cuts for that - those railway lines seem to be made of tough stuff...) - I'll put that plan on hold.

> This allows the face of the anvil to act as a large fuller, much more efficient at drawing out length versus a true flat. 

Thanks - another important reason for a crowned surface that I'd overlooked.

Thank you for the warning about sharp-sided anvils - I reckon you're definitely right - the first time I tried to forge something things didn't go so well - I worked out that the perfect 45° edges of the new hammer were a significant problem - after dressing them off a little to more rounded edges things went much better.

>As a result, Centaur stopped selling Kohlswa anvils, and most other manufacturers started tempering their anvils a little bit softer.  Pre-1995-ish anvils tend to have a surface hardness of between 58 and 60 on the Rockwell C scale, post-1995-ish anvils tend to be around Rc 55. 

Thank you very much - I hadn't known about that period in the history of Kohlswa and anvils.

>That missed blow will also give you a concussion if you aren't careful, as the rebound is far stronger than any modern anvil I've used.

Thank you - I hadn't realized that there was this risk - that's probably saved me a fairly nasty accident - maybe I should wear an old climbing helmet until I've got to grips with this.

For difficult forging work would an anvil like this with high concussion risk be significantly better than a modern, lower hardness anvil with less concussion risk? For professional tree work sometimes we use saw chains and bars which have a very low kickback risk and sometimes we use chains and bars with a much higher kickback risk - it depends what we're doing.

>Apologies for the lecture, I just like anvils more than may be healthy... 

I reckon an anvil is at the heart of everything that happens - any other piece of equipment can stop working or work at less than full efficiency and the show can go on but if there's a problem with the anvil everything stops. The relationship between the smith and the anvil also seems much closer - a bit like the relationship between a musician and their instrument.

[Alan Longmire]

That 1923 Columbian with no edges is what I worked with for the first three years of my smithing career.  If I needed a better edge to forge on, I just stuck a properly-shaped block of mild steel on it and used that.

 

The risk of concussion is pretty small, and only happens if you're leaning over the work and miss a blow.  That was more a way to make a humorous point about rebound than a true safety warning.

 

The anvil, or substitute anvil you have, is better than nothing.  A friend of mine recently was selling cutoffs from a large rectangular bar of 4140 for use as anvils. Not even hardened.  He had a local place flame-harden the face of one, and while it was more dent-resistant than the as-rolled bar, work-hardening through a lot of peening the face does the same thing.  And all the mass directly below the face made for a very effective anvil.

 

As for pattern-welding, if you stick with variations on twists and think like an early medieval smith (forged objects were always built up from small peices, not forged down from large ones) you can easily make some pretty neat-looking damascus by hand alone.  For instance, these trowels:

were done entirely by hand.  You just have to use small pieces.  I actually did use the power hammer to draw out the twist billets prior to twisting, as they started as 1" square stacks of material, but that was because I wanted to make two long thin bars of straight-laminate at 7 layers prior to twisting them in opposite directions.  If I'd stated with thinner stock and not drawn it out as much it would have the same effect, or I could have just drawn out the 1" square bars my hand.  That just takes time, and I decided twenty minutes at the power hammer was easier on my elbow than a full day doing it by hand.  Just keep the size small and hand forging is no problem.

 

Some of the modern patterns and techniques like cannister and mosaic do pretty much require a press or hammer, but the old ones were designed to be done by hand.  

 

The musician and instrument comparison is close, as long as the instrument is an electric guitar and not a Stradivarius.  As in, my brother regrets ever selling his 1963 Gibson SG, and I still regret selling my 143 pound Peter Wright, but we had others and needed the money at the time, and the sales helped out friends. But that was a great guitar, and a great anvil!  A good smith can work on almost any anvil, or even a flat rock.  But a nice one is better. 

 

 

 

[Pieter-Paul Derks]

I have personally done a fair bit of damascus by hand, a power hammer is nicer ofcourse but not nessecary.

The trick is to forge multiple smaller billets and only add them together at the end, I did a 400 layer short sword this way without to much damage to my wrists.

 

I have a very old (pre 1800 maybe) anvil that I suspect is not hardened at all, the face is mushroomed and work hardened a bit but still very soft. It still is perfectly servicable as an anvil. 

 

I think obsessing over the perfect anvil is a bit useless, I know a guy that has 5 or 6 pristine kohlswa anvils, but none of them made him a good or skilled blacksmith.

 

The best way to find an anvil is still to talk with other local blacksmiths, maybe there is a guild or a living history museum somewhere in your area? Some smiths might even be willing to loan you one, that is how I got my start in this craft.

 

 

[Will Robertson]

On 2/12/2023 at 10:34 PM, Alan Longmire said:

That 1923 Columbian with no edges is what I worked with for the first three years of my smithing career.  If I needed a better edge to forge on, I just stuck a properly-shaped block of mild steel on it and used that.

 

The risk of concussion is pretty small, and only happens if you're leaning over the work and miss a blow.  That was more a way to make a humorous point about rebound than a true safety warning.

 

The anvil, or substitute anvil you have, is better than nothing.  A friend of mine recently was selling cutoffs from a large rectangular bar of 4140 for use as anvils. Not even hardened.  He had a local place flame-harden the face of one, and while it was more dent-resistant than the as-rolled bar, work-hardening through a lot of peening the face does the same thing.  And all the mass directly below the face made for a very effective anvil.

 

As for pattern-welding, if you stick with variations on twists and think like an early medieval smith (forged objects were always built up from small peices, not forged down from large ones) you can easily make some pretty neat-looking damascus by hand alone.  For instance, these trowels:

were done entirely by hand.  You just have to use small pieces.  I actually did use the power hammer to draw out the twist billets prior to twisting, as they started as 1" square stacks of material, but that was because I wanted to make two long thin bars of straight-laminate at 7 layers prior to twisting them in opposite directions.  If I'd stated with thinner stock and not drawn it out as much it would have the same effect, or I could have just drawn out the 1" square bars my hand.  That just takes time, and I decided twenty minutes at the power hammer was easier on my elbow than a full day doing it by hand.  Just keep the size small and hand forging is no problem.

 

Some of the modern patterns and techniques like cannister and mosaic do pretty much require a press or hammer, but the old ones were designed to be done by hand.  

 

The musician and instrument comparison is close, as long as the instrument is an electric guitar and not a Stradivarius.  As in, my brother regrets ever selling his 1963 Gibson SG, and I still regret selling my 143 pound Peter Wright, but we had others and needed the money at the time, and the sales helped out friends. But that was a great guitar, and a great anvil!  A good smith can work on almost any anvil, or even a flat rock.  But a nice one is better. 

 

 

 

Thank you very much. Sorry I've been slow to reply - been in the trees a lot and I'm not so good at typing there.

>If I needed a better edge to forge on, I just stuck a properly-shaped block of mild steel on it and used that.

I think using a block instead of the edge definitely sounds good for a lot of reasons.

>The anvil, or substitute anvil you have, is better than nothing.  A friend of mine recently was selling cutoffs from a large rectangular bar of 4140 for use as anvils. Not even hardened.

I think that's a very good idea. I've been trying to get hold of exactly that but can't - except in 12 meter lengths... The closest bar I've been able to source in 1 meter lengths is only 25 mm thick and I wasn't sure if that would be enough?

>As for pattern-welding, if you stick with variations on twists and think like an early medieval smith (forged objects were always built up from small peices, not forged down from large ones) you can easily make some pretty neat-looking damascus by hand alone.  For instance, these trowels:

Thank you very much - those are very beautiful. I hadn't known that forging from small pieces like that was the medieval tradition.

>Some of the modern patterns and techniques like cannister and mosaic do pretty much require a press or hammer, but the old ones were designed to be done by hand.

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. Canister damascus technique pretty well relies on modern arc or MIG welding as well as on power hammers?

[Alan Longmire]

17 minutes ago, Will Robertson said:

I think that's a very good idea. I've been trying to get hold of exactly that but can't - except in 12 meter lengths... The closest bar I've been able to source in 1 meter lengths is only 25 mm thick and I wasn't sure if that would be enough?

 

No, you need at least 100mm, and more is better.  These cutoffs were like 200mm X 250mm X 300mm.  BIG bars

 

19 minutes ago, Will Robertson said:

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. Canister damascus technique pretty well relies on modern arc or MIG welding as well as on power hammers?

 

And/or a hydraulic press.  

[Will Robertson]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:32 PM, Alan Longmire said:

 

No, you need at least 100mm, and more is better.  These cutoffs were like 200mm X 250mm X 300mm.  BIG bars

 

 

And/or a hydraulic press.  

 

Thank you very much - that's very helpful to know so that I don't waste time and transport costs messing around with anything less than 100mm thick.

I've found some very good anvils but nobody yet who's willing to part with one!

I noticed the video below of someone doing the ball bearing test on a Vevor anvil at 07:10 onwards and both the height of the bounce and the song of the anvil seemed great.

Some sellers seem to be offering Vevor anvils at a lower price than Vevor but I reckoned that it might be better to buy from Vevor direct to make sure it's genuine https://eur.vevor.com/cast-steel-anvil-c_10827/round-horn-30kg-blacksmith-cast-steel-anvil-4-anchor-point-66lbs-double-horn-p_010142839599

What're Vevor anvils like?
 

 

Edited March 5 by Will Robertson

[Gerald Boggs]

It's made in China.  Does that answer your question?

[Alan Longmire]

Here's another review of them: 

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/61199-66-lb-chinese-acciaio-anvil-unboxing-and-testing/

 

As Gerald said, and they point out in that review thread, Chinese castings can be of wildly variable quality.  Everything from flawless with perfect heat treat to big casting voids in the face filled with putty. It's a roll of the dice as to what you get.  Might be decent, might be better than nothing, might not be better than nothing.  The price is decent, though.

[Will Robertson]

15 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Here's another review of them: 

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/61199-66-lb-chinese-acciaio-anvil-unboxing-and-testing/

 

As Gerald said, and they point out in that review thread, Chinese castings can be of wildly variable quality.  Everything from flawless with perfect heat treat to big casting voids in the face filled with putty. It's a roll of the dice as to what you get.  Might be decent, might be better than nothing, might not be better than nothing.  The price is decent, though.

One thing I've found in dealing with Chinese manufacturers is that it's extremely important to buy direct from the manufacturer - if there's a dealer or middle-man involved who you can't independently verify - in China or in Europe - there's a very high risk of them substituting the genuine article from the genuine manufacturer with a cheap fake and pocketing the difference in price - leaving both the buyer and genuine manufacturer in a mess. Chinese manufacturers typically find it almost impossible to effectively protect their trademarks and prevent this kind of fraud.

A bit of digging around can sometimes give an indication of whether the manufacturer does actually appear to have the production facilities needed to make the item or whether they're just faking it and putting their name on some cheap generic junk they've bought somewhere else.

I'm not sure who Vevor is - whether they manufacture themselves, outsource manufacturer, or buy from other manufacturers.
 

"acciaio" is Italian for "steel" so I think may originally have been put on Italian-made steel anvils - I'm not sure why other producers copied the Italian "acciaio" and not another language. As far as I know "acciaio" isn't a trade mark, brand or manufacturer - it just means "steel" in Italian. (Never try to put anything of any value through the Italian postal system though...)

 

[Gerald Boggs]

4 minutes ago, Will Robertson said:

Chinese manufacturers typically find it almost impossible to effectively protect their trademarks and prevent this kind of fraud.

This is rather an ironically humorous statement :-)

[Will Robertson]

On 3/5/2023 at 9:25 PM, Alan Longmire said:

Here's another review of them: 

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/61199-66-lb-chinese-acciaio-anvil-unboxing-and-testing/

 

As Gerald said, and they point out in that review thread, Chinese castings can be of wildly variable quality.  Everything from flawless with perfect heat treat to big casting voids in the face filled with putty. It's a roll of the dice as to what you get.  Might be decent, might be better than nothing, might not be better than nothing.  The price is decent, though.

Given what I'm planning to do with it and the amount of muscle power I'm planning to deploy on it, roughly what sort of weigh range should I be thinking about? I was expecting to get a used one so wasn't expecting to have any choice in this but it's looking like getting a new one may be a lot cheaper and easier than getting a used one.

 

 

[Gerald Boggs]

1 hour ago, Will Robertson said:

what sort of weigh range should I be thinking about?

I'm a full time blacksmith and while I have a 600lb, 400lb and used to have a 215lb, I use a 100lb anvil for most of my work.  The 600 is mostly just to look cool in the shop. 

[Alan Longmire]

100-150lb / 50-70Kg is fine for anything you can do by hand.  Bigger is for bragging rights. 

[Will Robertson]

On 3/6/2023 at 1:00 PM, Gerald Boggs said:

This is rather an ironically humorous statement :-)

I'm trying not to reply because I'll get into a rant about the destruction of European and Scandinavian manufacturing industry.

In January England blew up its last blast furnace - one of the largest and most advanced in Western Europe.

Some Chinese companies do copy other Chinese companies and European and US companies. Some of the big Japanese multinationals started off by copying US products and selling them at a lower price. Large European corporations provide inducements to politicians to bring in regulation which forces smaller, more technologically advanced, more customer focused, more efficient, more agile competitors out of business.

Politicians are obsessed with greenwashing and pollution outsourcing and force potentially polluting industries to other parts of the world where there are little or no environmental or emissions controls while forcing highly efficient local businesses with advanced environmental protection and emissions control systems out of business.

We're told that it's nolonger competitive to manufacture in Europe or the US because of wage costs but Northern Norway - where wage costs are amongst the highest in the world - has successful ship yards focusing on repairing and refitting work.

We're told that we need an endless supply of low quality, cheap, impossible-to-repair junk that needs to be constantly thrown away and replaced and that society will implode if folk have to turn their central heating down a few degrees.

We've got war in continental Europe.

I can't offer any easy solutions to any of this mess.

I just want an anvil that works because an anvil is one of the few things that I'm not able to make myself.

[Will Robertson]

13 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

100-150lb / 50-70Kg is fine for anything you can do by hand.  Bigger is for bragging rights. 

 

Thank you very much - that's a big help.

Any thoughts on what hammers to use with it? I was planning to just use cheap hammers from the local farm supplies company but then watching the video below I realized that I should use hammers made of a softer steel than the anvil so that if I miss it's the hammer that gets damaged not the anvil (hammer very cheap and easy to repair or replace, anvil vastly more expensive and difficult to repair or replace)

From my memory of safe lifting regulations in armed forces, 50 - 70 kg is also on the edge of what was considered safe to lift - so an anvil bigger than that might actually have a detrimental effect on work by wrecking the smith's back.

 

 

[Alan Longmire]

Farm store hammers are fine, just dress the face so it doesn't have sharp corners.

 

Don't overthink things at this point, you haven't even started forging yet. 

[Will Robertson]

On 3/12/2023 at 2:25 PM, Alan Longmire said:

Farm store hammers are fine, just dress the face so it doesn't have sharp corners.

 

Don't overthink things at this point, you haven't even started forging yet. 

 

Thanks! That's great!