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| Alex Bealer, The Art of Blacksmithing, Funk and Wagnalls, 1969 |
The most familiar anvil design is known as the London Anvil, introduced in the 18th century. The numbers found on the side (shall we call it the cheek?) refer to the weight on the tool. The measuring system unique and probably ancient, the first number refers to the hundredweight (112 lbs actually), the next number refers to the quarter hundredweight measure, and the last to pounds. So as an example, an anvil marked 123 is; 112 lbs, 2 quarter hundredweight is 56 lbs and 3 is the stray pounds left over. so the weight is 171 lbs. Something you should know before finding a bargain and trying to carry it to your car.
Ok someone tell me about the anvil craze? Guy around the corner has one for sale for 1200 bucks, I don't get it. I mean who collects anvils? Ok same kinda guy that I saw last night that collects florescence light bulbs....really - florescence light bulbs?
ReplyDeleteI believe it's a case of "they don't make 'em like they used to." Apparently, and I don't know if this is true or not, cast steel with the desirable qualities for making a good blacksmith's anvil simply isn't available anymore. So turn-of-the-century and older anvils are held in high regard and priced accordingly. An analogy is the Japanese chisel maker. They don't believe the steel they like to use to make their chisels is available anymore, so they keep old hunks of large maritime anchor chain in their shops and cut off pieces as needed to forge into their chisels. And I can't remember what they do with them, but some craftspeople use very old, large circular saw blades to make something. That's why old sawmill blades have a high value.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a wild guess at the fluorescent lightbulb guy. Maybe he thinks there's gonna be a mercury shortage, and one day they'll have a high recyclable value?
Back in the 80's we did a lot of GM 5.7 liter diesel to gas engine conversions and the guy who owned the shop kept every single one of those crappy diesels because he was sure there was gonna be another gas crisis and everybody would want to convert to diesel. There was a bit of interest in diesels at times after that but absolutely nobody wanted one of those 5.7 liter pisspots.
I met a guy at a friend's shop, Besides music (his business) he had two passions, anvils and 40s Ford dumptrucks. Me? I use an old piece of rail. :-)
ReplyDeleteI like my hunk of rail too. I really like the two matching cross-sectional slices of rail I picked up somewhere that are laid flat and used as small bench anvils. I use those things for something pretty much every day.
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