Hi I have been given a very rusted anvil.
Is it worth cleaning up or should it become a garden ornament.
Richard
Depends on how old it is and who made it. I could be worth little, it
could be worth a LOT. Look for a maker, any maker marks, and date of
mfg or “made in XXX” or name of mfg. Some angels can go for many
hundreds or thousands of $$ if “the right one”. Check with any local
blacksmith or smithing organizations in your area. Horse shoe folks
often know a lot about angels too, but not as often as smiths. If you
can find info on the angel, you could post it on any of the
blacksmith sites. If you need more info let me know.
john dach
actually would depend on the amount of pitting on the surfaces and
how much work you will have to put into it to make it usable again.
john
Keep it or ship it to me. Use a small right angle hand grinder with
a sanding disk. Remove the outer layer then oil or paste wax it
Im going to answer you by asking some questions.
where are you?
what do you do?
Looking you up on Google takes us to Texas to a gold and silver
store.
Is that you?
As most folk here on this forum are bench jewellers who either cast
or fabricate.
Very few do wrought work.
So generally anvils are not a tool in your kind of workplace.
So how big is it? what does it weigh?
As anvils come in sizes from 1lb to 5 cwts, and more!!
Age? early ones date from the 1750’s.
The best come from around the 1900’s.
And there signed by the maker. The Swedish always are.
Try and find some marks on the anvil side.
Tools are the key to work.
You could plan on starting a completely new line of wrought work?
clean it up if your nothing better to do.
Id give it a good home, but then I do wrought work.
Bit far to ship.
As long as the rust has not pitted the steel a steel wire brush in
an electric drill will clean it up nicely. If it is pitted you may
want to look into seeing if any local machine shops can surface grind
it for you.
Anvils of good size are very hard to come by these days. I’ve been
looking for one for quite some time now.
Kaleb
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Hey Richard,
Is it worth cleaning up or should it become a garden ornament.
If you put that in the garden I will come to your place and give you
the chippy slap 
Anvils are expensive, and a good anvil can net you some good money.
Be gentle with the rust removal though.
Good anvils in Australia seem to be found in South Australia, very
rarely in NSW.
Fix it up and use it, or sell it.
Kindest regards Charles A.
Richard- Congratulations. Good anvils are hard to come by and
expensive.
Horrible grunt work to re finish one though. Get yourself an
apprentice and have him/her refinish it.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com
Yes! clean that rust off, and put it to use!
Cynthia Eid
I would pay shipping on it off I could see a pic. I dabble in
forging. I built a coal Forge last winter.
Hi Richard,
My memory is that you’re in Oz somewhere? Conversations with others
have led me to believe that anvils aren’t as common down under as
they are in the States. If so, hang on to it, or find someone
crazier than you to refinish it, if you decide not to. Putting it
out in the garden would be a sin, unless it was so far gone as to be
almost unrecognizable.
There is a really good book on anvils, both how they’re made, as
well as how to ID them, called “Anvils in America” by Richard
Postman. In looking at Amazon just now, I see truly insane prices.
Check around, it should be available for about $50 USD if you dig.
Lots of about the technical and historical aspects of
anvils and their manufacture.
The real questions are these:
(A) how big is it?
(B) who made it? (this leads to ‘when’ but that isn’t quite as
important, as long as it dates to before WW2)
(C) how chewed up is it really?
The things to watch out for are hollow faces, swaybacked faces, or
chipped and broken edges. It’s critically important that the face of
the anvil be flat, or at absolute worst, very slightly convex. If
it’s concave at all, you’ll tie yourself in knots trying to work on
it. Over time, anvils compress in the middle, or at least some of
the older ones do, if they’ve been used hard. So you’ll sometimes
see them with either a hollow spot in the middle, or just an
entirely swaybacked face. If the swayback is more than about 3/16"
deep, it’s a doorstop. More on larger anvils.
The reason why the depth matters is that the whole anvil isn’t hard
steel. Most anvils are either wrought or cast iron, with a hard
steel face welded on during final production. If you’d end up
grinding through the hard face plate to get the divot out, or
grinding it down to almost nothing, then there’s no point in
starting. On most anvils, you can see how thick the plate is by
looking at the side of the anvil. There’s usually a line on the
side, parallel to the top face of the table, about half an inch down
the side. That’s the plate. They’re usually about 1/2" thick. If
you’d have to grind through most of the plate, however thick it is,
to get the damage out, don’t bother. A very good welder can build up
limited damage with hardfacing rod, but you need to find a welder
who’s experienced in fixing anvils. (Consult local blacksmiths) The
guy around the corner, even if he’s a good normal welder, probably
doesn’t know how to fix an anvil. It’s trickier than most think. (If
your welder thinks it’s easy, you’re talking to the wrong guy.)
The horn can be ground down easily, unless it’s totally trashed by
horsheshoes. Don’t worry about the horn so much, it’s the face
that’s the hard part.
The next question is: What do I think I’m going to do with it? I
suppose it would surprise nobody to learn that I have five anvils,
all for different purposes.
A baby 40 pounder for shows, a 120 pound Peter Wright that I had
surface ground for goldsmithing, as well as a generic 150 for
blacksmithing, and “Mongo, the anvil of Doom” (Read the story on my
website, www.alberic.net) a 400 pound monster that I used back when
I was doing swords.
The reason for several is that not every anvil is good for every
job. I wouldn’t do blacksmithing on the finely polished goldsmithing
anvil, it’d tear up the polish. Equally, the two big blacksmithing
anvils aren’t polished enough for gold and silver, and the giant
anvil is just too heavy to schlep around with me, which is why it’s
been in storage for 15 years. The little guy is too small,
generally, but I keep it out of sentimental value. (First anvil,
bought from someone who became a good friend.) (For those who’ve
been keeping track, the fifth anvil is a 120 Hay Budden that I
picked up at a garage sale in wretched shape. Eventually, I’ll clean
it up, and either use it, or sell it. Haven’t had time to worry
about it since I bought it.)
Whether it’s worth it to you to clean up is a function of what kind
of work you do, how big it is, and whether or not you think it’ll
help you make your work.
Personally, I can’t imagine not having one around, but I do a lot of
forged work, and of a larger scale than most commercial goldsmiths.
If all you do is rings and earrings, it may not be that big a deal
to you, especially if it’s above 100 pounds. I’ve always found
100-125(ish) pounds to be about right for silversmithing scale work,
if a little light for blacksmithing. Good news is that 125# anvils
are the most common size. They were easiest to make and transport,
and heavy enough for most things. If you do rings, and it’s a 400
pounder, then no, it’s probably not worth cleaning up. It would be
worth trading to a blacksmith who needs it, in exchange for either
an anvil more to your size needs, or enough money to get a really
nice modern one. (there are some, they’re just expensive.)
Speaking as someone who’s cleaned up more than my share of anvils,
the way I’d go about it is this:
(A) figure out what the goal is. Blacksmithing or goldsmithing. If
gold, final finish matters much more than iron.
(B) figure out what I’ve got for tools. Back in the beginning, I did
it all with right-angle grinders. Can be done, but tedious. 4.5"
grinders can do it, but a 9" grinder will make much shorter work of
it. (And you too, if you screw up. If you’ve never used a
right-angle grinder before, use the 4.5")
(You WILL wear ear protection and a face shield and dust mask
while you do this. I figure a good chunk of my hearing damage is the
product youthful stupidity with angle grinders and power hammers.)
I use cup wheels. They cut a little more slowly than grinding disks,
but if you use them flat on the surface, they do a much better job
of keeping the surface of the anvil flat, which is critical. Many
anvils have a sort of step between the flat face of the anvil, and
the horn. Frequently, those are totally shredded. Ignore them.
They’re intended to be a soft iron area for cutting into with
chisels and whatnot. They’re supposed to get shredded. No point in
cleaning them up, just use them yourself. The horn can be cleaned up
with sanding disks. A worn-out 120 disk does a pretty good job of
blacksmithing grade polish.
For true sneaky-ness, take a rough file and spin just the plastic
backup pad of for the sanding disks against the file, (held in a
vise) so that it removes the outer inch or so of the disk. That’ll
leave the outer inch of the disk unsupported, which makes it much
easier to feather out your grind marks.
I’m talking about the ones that are just a flat disk of sandpaper,
not the ones that are made up of flaps of sandpaper. Those are
great, but not so good for feathering, and they don’t wear out like
the solid ones, so they don’t polish.
Just keep at it until the anvil is the way you want it. The only
critical part is that the face is flat. (Or at least not concave.)
Lots of anvils have chewed up edges. You can radius the edges if its
not bad. If it’s really bad, just ignore it, there’s nothing you can
do.
On my anvils, I tend to deliberately radius the edges. Saves them
breaking, and is also useful. Starts out at the tail with no radius,
slowly increasing as I get towards the horn. I leave the last 2-3
inches at the horn square and sharp, assuming there’s room, and no
damage. That way I can forge things with radiused internal corners
(very handy for non-ferris forging) or sharp corners, depending on
need.
These days, if I’m going to clean up an anvil, I throw it on a
milling machine and rough it out there first. But I have that sort
of gear. Surprisingly, the first thing I do for that, is to flip the
anvil upside down, and mill the bottom of the foot to make it flat.
They mostly aren’t, and having a truly flat foot is critical for
clamping it up to accurately mill the top, and especially important
if you want to have it surface ground. The reason for flipping it
upside down is to set yourself up to mill the foot parallel to the
bulk of the top. Saves milling away most of the top to bring it into
parallel with a bottom that doesn’t really matter.
Surface grinders have magnetic clamps, so they have very little
tolerance for things that aren’t flat. If you plan on having your
anvil surface ground, you’ll save yourself lots of money by milling
it first. (Yourself, if you can.) Most especially by milling the
foot flat, and getting the face more-or-less parallel to the foot.
(which is what the surface grinder will grab.)
For what that’s worth.
Brian
PS. > For those within range of the SF Bay area, I do know where
there’s a barn full of big, clean anvils. Lots of them. In good
shape.
The only problem is that the guy who has them knows exactly what
they’ll fetch on the blacksmithing circuit, and is holding out for
the very highest end of the scale. I’ve never paid more than
$2/pound, and normally less than 1. He’s asking 6-7/pound. (so a 250
will go for $1500 USD)
Put it this way: a student of mine took me out there, and I was
standing in front of him with cash in my pocket. Didn’t even bother
starting to haggle. And he had a 450 pound Peter Wright with the
original shipping tag still on it. Unused. (Wanted 3-4K for it, as I
recall.) If you’re really interested, drop me a line, but I think the
smallest thing he’s got will go for north of $600 USD.
Keep it or ship it to me. Use a small right angle hand grinder with a sanding disk. Remove the outer layer then oil or paste wax it
Richard you do this, and it’s the chippie slap. CIA
Many of us love old tools and would see it as a criminal act to “use
it as a garden ornament” sand it down when you have most of the rust
of switch to a wet/dry sandpaper and sand it down the rest of the
way with oil added.
If all that is to much for you please give it to a good home. There
maybe more then a few that would be willing to pay postage to get
it.
Best wishes
Jen lane
Many years ago, before the earths crust cooled, there was a 4th
generation blacksmith that worked for my dad. He was first an
ironworker, and farrier, shoeing the farm horses that hauled the
wagons of grapes from the vineyards to the winery. On weekends my
dad used to take me with him to the winery on Sundays-while he did
some paperwork, and checked on the vats of wine. My grandfather was
a cooper, and many of the original oak casks were still (and are
still) used.
I was about 7 or 8, and was totally fascinated by the blacksmith
shop. As I got older, during the summer months, I was able to watch
Mr. Beam make and repair all of the wrought iron fences, gates,
railings and window coverings. He had so many anvils, from the very
large to some smaller ones. I was just in my teens then, but was a
sponge soaking up water when he talked about the forge, the tools,
the way he moved iron into beautiful forms.
When I was 21, I was getting ready to compete a young horse that had
been used for plowing fields. Initially he was for my mother, but he
was a bit big, and not all that reliable, but I loved him because he
would jump anything on the farm, and he had a kind attitude and was
so much fun to ride. Back then, standard bits were either really
mild, or in the case of cart horse bits, could be quite severe. I
wanted something that was just for this horse for a variety of
reasons, severe prior handling was the major one. I went to Mr.
Beam, and asked if he could and would make a bit for Sam. I think
that was the aha moment for my later search (40+ years) for just the
right anvil to use for metals.
In 2007, a farrier in NC was getting ready to get some new anvils,
and had one that he gave me. It’s a 70 lb. NC anvil that I use all
the time. I took it to my farrier back here at Cornell and he
resurfaced the top and horn and oiled it for me. There was no
charge, because the students in the farrier class, at the time,
needed to know how to resurface and clean their anvils.
I’m very careful with it, and take care of it as I do all my hammers
and tools. It’s a great size, because I can comfortably carry it on
my forearms, myself from the studio to my horse trailer and back if
I am going to be going off the farm for the winter. Dinah Hoyt Taylor
Some angels can go
Ya gotta love autocorrect… 
Brings up the question: How many
anvils can fit on the head of a pin?
I have been wanting an anvil for many years, and one day, I was able
to buy a lot of tools from a jeweler who passed away. One of them
was a 50lb anvil. I had to have it refinished and I still use it,
years later. The coolest thing about my anvil is that it has the
year on it - 1911.
Machine shops can refinish anvils for you if you don’t want to do
the grunt work. I didn’t so it was worth paying someone to do the
work for me.
Joy
I would pay shipping on it off I could see a pic. I dabble in forging. I built a coal Forge last winter.
Wow you sure are brave, Richard lives in Australia CIA
Very cool.
But absolutely a pain to properly clean and recondition for jewelry
work.
With respect to the idea that few jewelers would need or use an
anvil, I would agree unless you were or are a traditional
silversmith.
The few of us that are still around do use anvils, etc. in our work.
My tools, for example, go back to the 1700s. The bulk of my antique
tools come from the 1800s.
I am not against modern tools, CAD/CAM, etc, but I simply find the
artistry and skill in hand forged and woven work more appealing. It
is a niche that I fill as a traditional artisan and craftsman.
Many of my tools come from a goldsmith that survived the
concentration camps of WWII.
His handmade hammer from the camp and his bench anvil, are two
pieces that I use almost every day.
(inherited in 2004 - they had sat in a wooden box from Munich since
1947 when he immigrated to the US) Sometimes the oldest are the best.
I would caution you to get some professional advice before
attempting cleaning the anvil.
I have seen many old tools ruined with a well meaning but ill
informed attempt at cleaning.
I speak from experience and training.
Part of my graduate training was in museum conservation and
restoration.
(metal specialist in archaeology before training as a goldsmith)
Good luck!
Jeffrey and Marcia Jobe
Barking Dog Jewelry Design Studio
I have an old anvil too. It was my Grandfather’s taken from his barn
after he passed away. I was about 13 years old and my Dad said I
could have anything I wanted out of Grampa’s barn. I said I wanted
his well used anvil, even though I could barely lift it. My dad was
surprised I didn’t want the 1955 Ford pick-up. At the time (1973) a
pick-up was the last thing I wanted, what I wanted then was a Datsun
240Z. Now I wish I’d taken the truck and the anvil. Anyway, the
anvil is now a prized possession. An interesting detail is that at
some point my Grandfather cracked it across the “waist” and repaired
it by drilling through it and adding heavy steel straps with bolts.
It’s pretty cool looking. better than a 240Z.
Mark
Note From Ganoksin Staff:
Looking for a compact drill for your jewelry projects? We recommend:
- Reading our guide to the best compact drills for jewelry work here
- Searching for more discussions about compact drills here on the Orchid forum
If you are in Texas, I make my way through the state the last part
of May.
I would be interested in it.
Aggie