[TheForge] anvil pointing

[George Dixon]

I can recall playing around with which way the horn worked best, left or 
right, with my first anvil.  
When I got to Samuel Yellin's shop some years later, I was pointing the 
horn to the right....I'm right handed so perhaps that was why.
Every anvil in the shop was pointed to the left.   I turned the one I 
was to use to the right....force of habit.  The shop forman, the son of 
a blacksmith but a machinist by training, asked "why in the #%$@!" I was 
doing that.....

Maybe a year later, a very old man came to visit the shop.  He had 
worked for Yellin in the 1920's.  He toured the shop and then paused. He 
noted one anvil was pointing to the right.  "At least one anvil is set 
correct" says he.   So I talked to him about what he meant.

He stated, in a manner that made clear that he thought everyone knew 
this......., that industrial blacksmiths set their heel to the right and 
ornamental blacksmiths set their horn to the right.  Industrial smiths 
use more hardy tools and punch more holes (pritchel means punch, 
basically) while ornamental smiths use the horn more for curves and such.

It is interesting to note that he had worked there when only ornamental 
work was done, so accordingly each anvil horn pointed right.  The Yellin 
shop shifted from ornamental to industrial work during WW2, ornamental 
did not come back until the brief period from the 1980's to 1992 when 
the shop was closed.  So, by his reckoning, the anvils were reset during 
the war and the break in continuity in blacksmithing had left them that way.

It seems like there is a lot of what was the tradition in our past that 
may have been forgotten except for an occasional echo.

George Dixon
(it no doubt matters more that one knows the step on an anvil is not for 
cutting, than which way the horn is heading)