? soft anvil

F

farmrbrnboy

Active Member
about 5 years ago i bought an anvil from ? old world anvils. it looks like an Austrian with the exception of a pritchel hole. i bought it and never used it. since it has been a stump weight for 5 years, i decided to get back into knife making. actually i wanted to buy a browning crowell/barker knife and then i thought, heck i have all the stuff to forge one, why not?? so i started by forging a hunting knife and a couple other ugly pieces of steel. now my anvil is showing a bit of rounding on the edges. is my anvil too soft? i don't have a ball bearing to test rebound.
hunter.jpg
 
I am not a Anvil expert,

but I do know not to buy a used one of cheep new one without doing the Ball Bearing bounce! Some old ones have been in a barn or shed that burned down and took the hardness of the anvil with it. If its rounding at the edged it sound soft to me? Sorry, I hope I'm wrong about this.

Laurence

www.rhinoknives.com
 
If it's from Old World Anvils I doubt that it's too soft, though they may not have the rebound of top of the line models. These are not the El Cheapo Russian made cast steel models that places like Harbor Freight and a lot of Ebay sellers carry. I have one of those at 110 lb and it won't move steel any better than the 30 K anvil I got from OWA. I take it that you never dressed the edges of your anvil when you got it and left them sharp. They will round over to some extent if you don't go ahead and round them with an angle grinder first. I wouldn't be too concerned unless the face starts to form a dip where it takes most of it's use in a short period of time.

Doug
 
Doug Lester said:
If it's from Old World Anvils I doubt that it's too soft, though they may not have the rebound of top of the line models. These are not the El Cheapo Russian made cast steel models that places like Harbor Freight and a lot of Ebay sellers carry. I have one of those at 110 lb and it won't move steel any better than the 30 K anvil I got from OWA. I take it that you never dressed the edges of your anvil when you got it and left them sharp. They will round over to some extent if you don't go ahead and round them with an angle grinder first. I wouldn't be too concerned unless the face starts to form a dip where it takes most of it's use in a short period of time.

Doug
Click to expand...

what do you mean by dress the edges? why dress the edges?
 
Basically the sharp edges that come with a new anvil will chip or roll over if left in that condition. Also some smiths put different radii on different sides for to produce different tight curves. You can round the corners over with an angle grinder or even a file. The curves need not be radical you just need to round over the edge a little. I got a block of steel to use as an anvil, actually it's become my primary anvil, it had corners so sharp as it came form the dealer that it cut me. They really needed dressing.

Doug
 
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