[TheForge] Home made anvil

[Bob Ehrenberger]

I just wanted to share something esle that I saw at the recent BAM
conference.

The Brizeal borthers that made the wonderful horse heads had made their own
anvil. It was designed to compliment the type of work that they do but would
work well for a lot of blacksmiths.

The basic design started as a block of steel 16"x16"x3" set on end. They
divided the top into 4 working sections. The first section was a butcher,
the second section was a flat surface, the third was a gradual fuller with
maybe a 4 " or 5" radius, and the final section was a tight fuller with a 1"
radius.

They came up with this design because they used the fullers a lot and on a
standard anvil the horn is unsupported. With their new design they have the
full weight and support behind the fullers and say that it moved metal a lot
faster with less effort.

The draw back of course is that there is no horn, heal, hardy hole, or
pritcheral hole. But if you don't need these or have a standard anvil as
well you may not care.

This anvil was made from A36 and the say it has held up well as long as they
keep their work hot and don't hit the anvil with their hammer (always good
advice).  They have plans of having one cast from tool steel. They also said
that the 3" wide face was too big for their work and would make make the
next one 2" wide.

They are currently staying and working with Tom Clark (Ozark school of
Blacksmithing). So we may be seeing these anvils offered along with Tom's
other blacksmithing tools. (Only speculation on my part)

Bob Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo