I'm not a blacksmith. I couldn't do it as my right shoulder support lifting a hammer for more than a dozen repetitions.
I've got a couple of short length or railroad tie, they work very different than a real anvil.
Similarly the anvil shaped objects are different.
Can anyone explain in metallurgical terms what the differences are?
Daryl
MN
Daryl, The primary difference is mass. For heavy pounding you want a big anvil. For dinking, a small one will work fine. You want the full impact of the hammer to reform the workpiece and need a large mass backing up the work. It also helps to have elasticity so the micro deformation which occurs in the anvil rebounds, working the piece from the backside. A good anvil has a bell like tone to it when struck. A hammer allowed to pivot and hit the face will rebound nearly to its starting height. Kind of like the difference between a lead hammer and a steel hammer.
Similarly, the shape. Anvils have a great many shapes but the best ones have well defined horns. Farriers anvils are designed primarily for working horseshoes and some have a larger flattened section on the horn and possibly a small ledge of to one side for drawing clips on horseshoes. Aside from that, there is a step on the anvil which can be used as a stop when upsetting iron increasing it's cross section. There is usually a hardy hole, the square hole toward the rear which is used for various accessory tools, the hardy being one of them. The hardy is essentially a chisel mounted upside down where a piece of hot iron is laid and struck with a hammer to separate. Finally, there can be a small round hole a little further back and to the side that a blacksmith would use for a backing when punching holes. The rectangular punch used to make holes in horseshoes is called a pritchel, hence the name. The anvil curves are somewhat like the curves on a drafting French curve; many different radii to make different curves in the workpiece.
From a metallurgic standpoint, anvils evolved from rocks to wrought iron to cast steel. Wrought iron was practically the only iron available and is fairly soft. Anvils were made by taking lumps of iron and forge welding the to make larger lumps. Pieces of chain a sometimes visible in old anvils. Somewhere in the past (I don't know exactly when, but probably 17th or 18th century) iron workers figured out how to make steel and they then forge welded a steel plate to the face of the anvil to provide a more durable work surface.
As steel making technology advanced, as well as more sophisticated methods of hardening the face, cast steel anvils were made and are the most common type of "professional" anvil today. The transition occurred in the early to mid twentieth century.
Cast iron anvils are poor caricatures of a real anvil. The horns are usually poorly shaped without a slender and sharp point needed to work small curves. Cast iron is not really good fro impact and can chip fairly easily if working on the edge of the face. The only good feature is they can be made cheaply.
I have a small anvil that I made from a section of rail that I have used for almost forty years. I cut the basic shape then forged the face to a squared and flattened form. Afterward, I hardened and tempered it. I use it mostly for sheet metal. My large anvil is a 100 lb. Mousehole pattern. It was a common anvil style in the eighteenth century. It has a shorter, wider face and the heel comes down to the waist at angle closer to vertical the more modern anvils. It is the anvil that a forge welded a new face on. It is also the anvil that I use for heavy iron work and can take working with an eight lb. sledge.
Bob
