Saved from the fate at the scrap yard!

J

JohnnyMayhem

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Aug 6, 2006
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I dropped by one of the local recycling places just on the off chance that they had an anvil. It turns out that they did! The hardy hole is still square, but slightly abused a bit though. It's 125 lbs, has some odd markings, and I'm not quite sure but I think that somebody messed with the face on it. (I haven't seen anything like it before.)

And the best thing is I paid 13 bucks for it!

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Cool! I don't know anything about anvils but I'm fairly certain that's worth more than $13 :)
 
Looks like she was in a wreck. Can you forge knives on her like she is? - Yes!
Can she be fixed? again Yes. But it will be expensive and you already have something you can work on now and if you don't listen to those who demand perfection in all their tools you will be more than happy with her. I have forged knives on anvils that looked a lot worse, but you could not tell by looking at my knives.
 
Like Ed said, it's one heck of a lot better than nothing; or, better than a piece of railroad track, like a lot of us used.
 
Johnny, the way these old anvils were made was by forge welding a high carbon steel face plate to a forged wrought iron body (some later designs used cast iron or cast steel bodies with the high carbon face plate). What's happened to yours is that the plate cracked across the face and also delaminated from the body. As others have said it is still usable, and in the future you could repair it (not very cost effective unless you are an excellent welder or a best bud is). There are tutorials on Iforgeiron and other sites concerning such repairs.

BTW, it is worth more than the $13 you paid.
 
One thing you could do- try to flatten and square up the broken out area with an angle grinder, then weld a piece of leaf spring into it. Dump truck leafs or something similar are often up to 5" wide x 1/2" thick. If you can get a full stack of old ones from a heavy equipment company like I did, several will already be flat.

Bevel the edges of everything hard so you can get deep penetration with multi-pass welding. Pre-heat to 450 degrees or so before welding. This can be done with a rosebud torch, check temp with a tempilstick of the right temperature.

Use 7018 for welding the face plate to the old one on the top. Use 6013 or so for welding the plate to the wrought body. Such a repair may not make it rebound as well as it once did, but will at least give you a hardened face that will resist denting and marring.

This is what I remember from reading stuff on anvil repair. There is a very good article on this in an old issue of Hot Iron News, a publication of the Northwest Blacksmith's Association. Perhaps you can track it down. Or, at Ron Reil's blacksmithing page (currently hosted by ABANA) you can probably find more about it, as well as TONS of other great smithing knowledge, in the volumes of TheForge that he has compiled and available for free download as .zip files.

Anyway, great score for $13! It's great for a hardy tool holder, if nothing else.
 
Chris and I were just talking about her, she may have been made that way for a special purpose. Good buy, wish you many happy hours with her.
 
Get a large ball bearing and drop it on the face that's left and the other part and you can see the difference in the rebound. You still have enough to work with till you can find something a bit better on down the line. At that price its still a steal.

Jerry Fisher
 
Ok, I just blew up the pictures on my computer to take a better look (viewed them on the phone before). I am starting to lean towards what Mr. Fowler has said, that this anvil is as manufactured. The surface of the low section of the face is very flat, regular and smooth. Also, it appears that there is a line of demarcation (from the weld) between a hardened face and the body of the anvil. Jerry's recommendation of the bearing test will help you figure this out. This all said ~ your score seems better than ever!

Do you mind if I post your photos on one of the smithing sites to see if they can identify the purpose, and mfg, of your anvil?

Steve
 
I posted your pics on another forum that has members that have doctorates in anvils. They said your anvil was made by Hay Budden for BIC Omaha, and that it was not mfg'd as it sits now. The face was broken and then someone dressed the damaged areas.
 
Even as a broken anvil, there are a lot of uses for it....besides a door stop.
It is fine for things like peening pins, hot cutting, etc.
The bick is still fine for drawing and fullering.
You can still use the hardy hole for hardie tools. Consider making a "Godzilla" or "Smithin' Magician" style fullering tool. Also, all sorts of bending jigs will fit the hardie.
Drop the bolt from a bench vise through the hardie and bolt the vise to the anvil. That will work a lot like a post vise with about 140 pounds under it. Great for twisting .
 
Thanks for all the info guys! I gotta get some better pictures of it, and some ball bearings to drop onto it and test it out. I'm still going to look for more anvils as well, because somehow I have the feeling that somebody has been scrapping them out. (that and I need to pick up some leaf springs, and saw blades as well.

Also about fixing it, If I still lived back in Crescent at my shop, I would of yelled "to the bat cave" and started away on it. (unfortunately that place has about 10 feet of water in it.) Now to just put together a forge and get my bench grinder changed out. (oh and bolted to my table as well)
 
You could always get the last of the original face off there and have a piece of 1" steel(O-1, A2 or something similar) And slowly weld it to the main body.
 
If an object is a partner to man in his quest it is always a she. Human females have many references.
 
I know this may be a stretch....but here goes. In 1898, Hay Budden, who advertised their anvils as "solid wrought", won a gold medal in Omaha, presumably for the quality of their anvils. Now the B.I.C. I have no clue about except to guess that it stands for a company that maybe owned the anvil along the way, or it came to me that it might stand for "Best In Class". Dunno...just thinkin'.
-Mark
 
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