can someone ID this anvil ?

rocketmann

rocketmann

Joined
Dec 24, 2005
Messages
1,254
I picked this little guy up today, It weighs 90lbs on my scale and is in pretty good shape.. It doesn't ring much but has great rebound..
 
Congrats! Looks like a pretty serviceable anvil. Could be the pics, but hopefully the hammer marks in the face aren't too deep to cause you problems. She should work great though! Sorry I can't help with the ID part. -Matt-
 
looks like you might want to regrind the surface true. id be afraid to work on that anvil with as many dents as it has. im sure if you cant true up the surface that a machine shop could do it. nice looking anvil tho. how much it set you back?
 
That's an old Fisher Norris anvil. Good little anvils, though the faces are sometimes a bit hard and prone to chipping, similar to vulcans
 
I would second the Vulcan name, looks like an arm and hammer logo.

Vulcans, and their cousins Badger were cast iron with a tool steel face, if you still have the face plate you should have a nice anvil for bladesmithing, if the face is missing then what is left will bee too soft. Either way, check the horn for cracks, these anvils liked to break their horns about 2/3 of the way to the tip. You shouldn't need the horn much, but you don't want it breaking while you are working, you don't know where the tip might land

Good luck, Have fun
Ken Nelson
 
Oh, and just for future refrence, the log on it, the eagle over an anchor, is the trademark of Fisher & Norris, there were many variations over the years of the logo, but there can be fisher & norris anvils without the logo, usualy labled Fisher along the foot.

Like vulcan anvils, Fisher anvils are a tool steel face welded to a cast iron body, hence why it wont ring, even if it has good rebound. If you get heavy chips on the edge of the face during use, it's actulaly safer to put a very heavy chamfer on the edge, or round it down completely, to grind the chip out than it is to keep using the anvil and avoiding the chip, because it will just get larger. I've got a 75lb vulcan which i've ground probably half a lb out of on 2 edges to round it down (not quite finished reshiaping it yet but have the rough done with an angle grinder) Using the flat between it is still fine now that the damage is being prevented from being spread.

EDIT: From the logo in use, and the shape of the anvil, looks to be a rather old one, probably late 1800, Fisher actually made anvils up till the 1970s, however for the last 50 years or so of the company most of their anvils were made for the government, Most ship anvils used by the navy were fisher anvils
 
This is the logo on a vulcan anvil. I still need to true up the 2 edges i ground with an angle grinder , but there are still good edges on the rest of the anvil to use as a fuller or such, so i'm in no hurry. It's the anvil I let other people bang on if they've never done metal work instead of my peter wright.

vulcan.jpg


The shape is similar

vulcan2.jpg


EDIT: I found a pic from before i ground out the chip as well to show what i was correcting

anvil2.jpg
 
So Justin, Do you still say it is a fisher-norris ?? Or a vulcan ? I'm confused now !! That was't hard to do !!:D ;)
 
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