RR SPIKE HAWK

[paulvallandigham]

YOu are correct on both counts. It is called a hardy, and it will work. The Cold roll chisel can be used for one or two axes, but then the edge will gett too hot, and soften. Either reheat and harden that edge, or better yet, make your own chisel out of harder steel, as suggested.

One of the things I don't see blade and axe makers doing when forging on an anvil, is moving the work around the surface as they hammer it, so that they don't create a hot spot and take out the temper from the surface of part of the anvil. While current anvils are made of cast steel, the old ones are cast iron, with tempered( that means someone added carbon to the surface, hardened it, and then drew the metal back to make it tough rather than brittle) surfaces on the top. The really cheap models, sold mainly to farmers for small jobs, have a steel plate welded to the cast iron base. Flat is a very difficult thing to find in nature. The surface of an anvil was what you used to put flat surfaces on metal tools you worked. Yes, you could do it with files, but they were much more expensive, and of course, it takes just as much sweat to file something flat today as it did then. High labor costs. A forge with a good anvil could get many times the work done that can be done with hand tools. The song of the Anvil is about the practice of old European blacksmiths hitting first the workpiece, and then the surface of the anvil next to it, to listen to and for any change in pitch. If the pitch begins to drop, the temper is in danger of being lost. Its still a good technique to use, but has been lost to modern blacksmiths, and knifemakers. I am told that with the modern steels used to make anvils today( new ones) you don't have to worry about losing the temper from the surface. I have not been able to test this new idea. I still think it makes sense to brush the scale off the surface of the anvil, every time you put the work back in the forge to bring it back to heat, and to make sure that surface, now ground very smooth, stays smooth, and without gouges, nicks, and cuts. New or old, the anvil is still a tool to make round things flat.

 

[anvil1231]

The older anvils were in fact made of wrought iron forge welded together with large trip hammers from 5 different pieces with a carbon steel plate forge welded on top. This is based on the book Anvils In America. These anvils from my experience, 18 years of of blacksmithing are the better anvils. When the ring starts to die only the hammer rebound is lost.

 

[dlemaster]

anvil1231
I believe that the addition of a steel plate is what I read about in the manufacture of anvils.
In you experience do you have your anvil ever so slightly canted on the stump or stand so that in use the scale is constantly sliding toward the edge and you don't have brush it off very often? I ask because I seem to recall being told that, by the blacksmith, while I was working as an apprentice in the gunshop. I plan to retire next may and I'm setting up a forge for making parts and other work like knives and tomahawks.

Regards, Dave

 

[anvil1231]

I do have it slightly canted. I also still occasionally have to brush it off. anvil1231