Just had the freight guys drop off an anvil and 2 leg vices I bought from the middle of nowhere in South Australia.
I knew the anvil was a Peter Wright but no idea of the condition really other than how it was described over the phone. The last time the old fella that had it had taken a photo the camera had disposable flash bulbs, his words not mine lol.
Anyway got it here and it looks fantastic. Even better after a quick tidy up with the wire wheel.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing... Oscar Wilde
well I may be getting into it.....
my wife said she wanted to try it so I bought her some tools, built a forge and bought a ton of coal, that's been over a year ago and I just fired it up and made a coal rake and a coal ladle yesterday would make a week ago.
I enjoyed it but a word of advice to folks considering it, if possible get bituminous coal if possible, I got anthracite and it is WAY WAY harder to start than bituminous coal.
happy forging / welding.
the heck with the duty cycle on the welder, tell me about the duty cycle on that grinder !!
Coal ? - well I guess use what you can get at a push but it's coke that I & everyone I know use - if you do use coal be careful how much gas / bitumen etc comes off it - can make some impressive explosions if it builds up ( ask me how I know ! ) as to lighting - some folks do it old school but in truth a gas poker is way easier plus you don't contaminate the fire if you intend to fire weld - though I doubt you will have much luck doing that with coal - not that most of us do any - never worth it except for an exhibition piece - don't think I have since college days.
Nice . I guess I got real lucky. I wasn't really thinking about a big anvil when a fellow I know asked me if I wanted one free! The deal was his father was a scrap hauler and picked up from a local foundry that one of their products were aprox.90lb anvils and defective ones were scraped. He scooped a couple and gave one to me. I have no idea why they didn't melt them down to reuse the metal or why they were defective as they look perfect to me. Maby there's more to the storey? It gets quite a bit of use and eliminates the temptation to hammer on the welding table which I refuse to do anyway.
It's kinda a fine line between the two - I suffer with mates & their kids coming round wanting to make silly shape knives from TV programs out of leaf springs - is that forging or just welting 7bales out of a spring ? - & why do they take the zombie apocalypse so seriously ? really don't see a future with that many that I'll run out of 12gauge.
Score for you! That cleaned up real nice. I did some digging and found a post here: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/an ... il-156284/
...that says the 1-3-21 is the weight, and it translates to 1 x 110 lbs + 3 x 11 lbs + 21 lbs, for a total of 164 lbs.
Yeah I've been on there and iforgeiron deciding how to mount the thing.
I'm going for stuff I have lying around. That will be a fun project in itself. I'm thinking a tripod out of 3" pipe, welded up to a piece of left over 3/4 plate. One under the horn and 2 under the other end, I have a pretty uneven floor and a tripod will solve that. I'll happily steal the idea of filling the legs with oil and sawdust though I think I'll use sand and oil. I also have some 8mm plate thats been lying in my driveway for probably 5 years . I'll make up some feet and bracing out of that.
Will be nice to be doing something out of heavyish steel rather than aluminium. Haven't used the mig, plasma or belt grinder in 6 months.
I got 5" and a 6" leg vices with it that I'm going to mount up to some kind of stand once I've cleaned them up.
Also there's a lot of info out there on gas forges, easy to make and easy to start/stop at will. Seems a cleaner way if perhaps not so traditional as solid fuel forge but I haven't got that far yet.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing... Oscar Wilde
Artie F. Emm wrote:Score for you! That cleaned up real nice. I did some digging and found a post here: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/an ... il-156284/
...that says the 1-3-21 is the weight, and it translates to 1 x 110 lbs + 3 x 11 lbs + 21 lbs, for a total of 164 lbs.
I bought an anvil at an estate sale, but it doesn't have any markings on it that I can identify.
Anvilfire.com seems to have a lot of knowledgeable people on board who could probably identify it or at least narrow it down. There are tell tales on most of them that give you a good idea of its make etc even without the stampings.
The guy that sold me mine said it was 80kgs as thats what he was told when he bought it. But the British weight system is 112lbs then quarterweights at 28lbs then odds so it actually 217lbs, which is a spot under 100kgs. Felt every bit of it carrying it into the garage.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing... Oscar Wilde
Pissed down rain so didn't work today. Went to the garage instead
Still need to cut out some pads for the feet and fill legs with sand. Welded in those M14 nuts so I could screw in some plugs once filled. But otherwise perfectly level both way and its a tripod so doesn't rock on uneven ground.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing... Oscar Wilde
I have a 140 lb Hay Budden I use, but most of my forging work is on this 700 lb anvil, with a 85 lb hammer. This hammer will go up to 300 blows a minute, or single hit, or anything inbetween. Also has a 60 ton press-up forging press, and a 30 ton adjustable table press-down press. The hammer has a selection of dies I made for it. The dump truck leaf springs that throw the hammer are on a small hydraulic cylinder so I can adjust the height of the hammer blows on the fly.
Here's how I lashed my anvil to a chunk of oak. I welded big bolts to loops of chain. I torched holes in the ends of a piece of leaf spring. I chainsaw plunge cut a slot through the oak chunk, with cutouts for the mechanism. and slid the leaf spring bar through. The chain loops go round the anvil base, the bolts through the bar holes, with nuts. So all I have to do to tighten the anvil down it snug up the nuts.
That power hammer combo/press combo is awesome. Fantastic idea with the adjustable spring, sure beats the levers I've seen on some. And nice to tidy footprint for some much equipment. I have zero experience with hydraulics but I'm sure I'll explore it one day. I imagine its not cheap though. Nice work on the anvil stand too. I just happened to have the 1" bar and some high tensile 14mm bolts laying about so I cut the heads off them and welded them to the bars which are now clamping it to the stand. Filled the legs with sand after welding on the feet.
I gave it a hit with some hot steel I heated up with the oxy. Its nice and quiet now
For now I'm just going to make some tools for the hell of it. Tongs, hammers etc. Might try my hand at knife or axe making with all the spare time I don't have
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing... Oscar Wilde
Hydraulic power offers many avenues, I have a few hydraulic tools, here's my twister, a small tractor diff with the spider gears replaced with a chuck run off a hydraulic motor, I can run bars through it and twist up 20 foot lengths of 1/2, or heat and twist 1" with an adapter...
