The Gun Counter

So you jerks have made me want to take up another expensive, time consuming hobby. I love the beautiful knives made by ZeroGravitas and gandalf23 recently, so I bought both of the books that ZG recommended. I tore through "The $50 Knife Shop", and as my wife put it: "It costs $50 if you have all of the stuff to make it cost $50." Goddard talks about welding parts together, cutting things with a torch, bandsaw, etc. I don't have any of those. I do have a drill press that I rescued from a yard sale, a vise, and a bunch of hand tools. Oh, and both propane and MAPP torches, but they're the self-contained small ones. I can easily build Goddard's small forge, but buying a piece of railroad track, mounting it to something, and weighing it down seem to be more trouble than it's worth.

Anyways, when we were at Colonial Williamsburg last Thanksgiving, my wife and I were truly enamored with the blacksmiths and gunsmiths. We bought a few books on forging and metal working while we were there. We've decided that we might want to try our hand at both stock-removal and forging techniques for knife-making. One of my many jobs while my wife is deployed is to acquire the necessary main parts to begin some of the fun when she gets home. I'll probably also buy a Craftsman belt sander/grinder, as was recommended.

Here's the real question: Just for grins, I checked to see if there were any anvils for sale on some local sites. There is a guy selling one for $250 OBO, and it looks like this.

I've looked at some of the FAQs at http://www.beautifuliron.com/gs_anvils.htm and http://www.anvilfire.com/. If I go to check it out, I plan to drop a ball bearing on it to check the bounce to ensure that it is steel. The guy claims it weighs 100-120lbs. Think it's worth it?

Weight is everything. Certain Anvils are more desirable than others from a working standpoint. The face and horn should be unblemished, and in the case of the face, FLAT, and it should be HARD(big issue with the chinese anvil shaped lumps of slag). Do a drop test with a ball bearing. Hardey hole shouldn't be egged out. Weight should be stamped on it somewhere, if it's an english anvil, remember it's in stone not pounds. I wouldn't buy an anvil under a 100lbs and I'd try to get something heavier, 150-200 is good.

Avoid the chinese anvils. They are JUNK. Supposedly there were some decent, if not great Russian made anvils imported about a decade ago, but I've never seen them.

Good luck! If it's a decent anvil, it's a very good price. A propane forge, an anvil, and a power hammer are all on my list of "when my numbers come in"

The guy says that it's been in the family for 50 years. I'm worried that the face is too pitted-you can see it in the picture. Is that a concern?

If you are mostly interested in making knives check out the Tim Lively style forge. This forge is longer and deeper than the traditional round forge. Being deeper makes it work especially well with charcoal and the extra length makes it easier to heat the longer blades.

As for anvils, unless you are making your own Damascus or working really big blades you can get by with an 80-100 pound anvil that is of decent quality. Bigger is better but I'd take a smaller anvil with a nicer top over a bigger anvil with a lot of surface flaws. Speaking of flaws, don't reject an anvil that has some edge damage, you can usually find usable edges somewhere, it is the face or top of the anvil that you need to be flat and not too pitted.

Yeah, that's a bit too chewed up for my tastes. I'd buy it for less money, and then fill it in with hard facing rod, and then either grind it, or mill it smooth.

But then, you'd need a welder and a milling machine to do so.

Maybe I could get it milled smooth? Would that be expensive, assuming I can find a good machinist?

Edit: Cool, I found this guy about an hour away: http://bircherinc.com/

Unless it's fairly minor pitting, you don't want to simply mill it down, because it will probably start cutting off the top of the horn You want to fill it in with Hardface rod, and then grind it off, usually with a cup wheel in a milling machine.

Thing is, unless you can get it cheap(and for what it's gonna cost you to have it done, it's almost bordering on free), it'll be cheaper to simply buy a decent anvil in the long run, unless you can supply your own sweat equity.

I'm surprised noone has said anything about German anvils yet...

Doc Nickel had a long, involved photo essay about how he repaired on of his anvils, welding the pits up and squaring everything off. It's been some time and I did try to locate it using the Tinker Guilds search function on the forum, but had no luck. Maybe your search-fu would be stronger....

Found it!

Damn it, I was going to post that, but got distracted by other things.

<EDIT> Anvil Repair by Rob Gunter