![]() Any anvil face will have some dings and marks, but a good hard anvil face will be pretty smooth. Primitive smiths have and do use all sorts of substandard surfaces for forging, from rocks to mushroomed and dished pieces of metal of various descriptions, but a good quality anvil should have a quite hard face that is not easily damaged. If it's more than that, or the flat surface of the face is significantly narrowed because of encroaching chippage, then bargain hard, but don't necessarily write it off. if it's light enough that you can grind it out to a 3/8 inch smooth radius or less, I would say don't worry about it. When shopping for an anvil, do look at edge damage. Would I do exactly that on a brand new expensive anvil? Probably, but I'm not ready to recommend it unequivocally. Youtuber and viewer Broadus Thompson says this is exactly what the best smiths he knows do. This would offer a wide range of radii for bending different curves into workpieces and it would protect the most vulnerable part of the anvil. My suspicion is that the best compromise would be to have continually diminishing radius put onto a new anvil edge varying from about 1/4 or 3/8 inch near the horn, down to 1/16 inch at the tail. In other words, if I smack a rounded edge, it is less likely to take a deep chip than If I strike near a squared edge.īut, how much should the edge be rounded. A factor that may not be understood by many people is that the sharp delicate edge is not only vulnerable to crumbling itself from a hammer blow, but it also creates an initiation point and geometrical weakness that can lead to deeper chips. Edge damage usually stops or is minimal near the hardy hole and down to the tail. ![]() This is often where you see the greatest amount of chipping. Vice jaws or any various pieces of metal that are usually lying about a smithy, or can be kept on hand for bending small radii, or modified specifically for that use.Īn anvil is used hard enough to cause real damage mostly in the zone just down from the horn a little. If a sharper edge is needed, the tail of the anvil, or the portion of the long edges near the hardy hole, can be left more acute. Having used anvils now for significant time with very rounded edges of at least 3/8 inch radius, if not more, I find myself inclined to think that a significant pre-rounding of anvil edges is probably preferable and that working on an anvil with fairly large radii is rarely a problem. At the very least, a slight rounding of edges will help prevent this problem. I tried using it and it was leaving nicks all over everything I did. The face was milled perfectly and the edges were very square. My friend once imported a beautiful European anvil. ![]() A very square edge is both more fragile and can lead to deeper damage by chipping, and it can nick up your work and damage inside corners in bending. It may seem tempting to restore the anvil to it's original new condition, but a good argument can be made that the original square edges were more of a detriment than an advantage. Being someone who continually bounces their hammer off the anvil between blows, I have a great appreciation for anvil bounce. This hardness insures that the work surface remains flat and smooth. A good anvil will resist denting when doing cold work to some extent and will not easily be damaged by other tools, certainly not hammers, which are about the only other tools that should hit an anvil face regularly if reasonable care is exercised. Given this limitation in material performance, brittleness is the natural cost of having an anvil face that can withstand hard use. Tool steel is not bad at achieving both at once, but it still becomes more brittle the harder it is. ![]() Most hard materials are also brittle to some extent. To find the two embodied to a high degree in any one material is a rarity. There is a difference between hardness and toughness. ![]()
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