[TheForge] Re: Cheap anvil & forge in NE Ohio

[Mike Spencer]

Andy quoth:

> My 200# HB is also pristine with the exception of the tail being
> broken off, but there's part of the tail to one side of the hardy
> hole that remains.  Turned out to be very good for small work. :)

I have an Unknown ca 180# with the tail broken off leaving most of the
hardy hole.  I have another just like it (but not broken), a
good PW 300# main anvil and no plans to attempt a real repair so I
arc welded on a piece of 1/2x1 to close the hardy hole.  Handy for
demos, don't worry about it getting lost or damaged at meets.
Probably not great for all-day hardy hole applications but fine to
hold a hardy or a few simple tools for a demo.

[YAK begins here]

There's a yarn to how I got this anvil.  Someone reported to me that
there was "an anvil laying in the ocean" at a certain place.  Took a
drive over there, walked along the shore and found it, laying wedged
in the rocks below the high-tide mark amongst other bits of iron and
detritus.  Obviously, a wharf and "fish store" belonging to the nearby
house had fallen down into the sea years before.

I went up to the house, noting that the paths from house to road,
house to woodshed and so on, all had "hand rails" of stakes driven
into the ground with heavy twine strung along their tops.  Knocked and
was greeted by an elderly woman.  Introduced myself, explained that I
would like to have the anvil.  So she turns from the door and shouts
into the house something like, "Henry, a man here wants that anvil".
A male voice from inside yells back to the effect that "none of that
stuff" is to go away.  She repeats this to me.

The conversation progresses this way for a few exchanges, she shouting
what I say into the house, he shouting back and she repeating his
reply to me, as I explain the the anvil is just washing gradually out
to sea and is broken anyhow.  All amounts to civil but cranky refusal
to part with the anvil, a posture that I perfectly appreciate, being a
bit cranky myself.  So finally I say, "Well, okay.  I reckoned maybe I
could give you ten bucks and you wouldn't mind me lugging it away.
That's alright.  Sorry to have bothered you."

Her: "Henry, he wants to give ten dollars for it!"

Him: "Well, if he wants it that Jesus bad, he can have it!"

She doesn't repeat this verbatim. :-)  But I give her $10 and go lug
the anvil away under my arm, a task slightly more difficult than I had
expected.  (And I inferred from the wife-mediated conversation that the
old fisherman was blind and used the lines strung around the yard to
guide himself from place to place.)

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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