[TheForge] Old tools

[Mike Spencer]

> I have never seen a $20 anvil...

Yarnin' about anvils, are we? ;-)

When I was working as a foreign car mechanic ('67, when "foreign car"
meant something) I had been hanging around with Bert Shaw, an
incredible old (not much older than I am now) blacksmith and he
already had me hooked on hot iron. One day, an old guy, staggering
drunk, came into the shop to buy defunct car batteries for scrap.  I
asked him if he might have an anvil and he allowed as how he did.

So after work, I found his junkyard and he had, not only a 1 1 4 Hill
anvil but a rivet forge with a great crank blower.  $35 for both.  In
today's money, of course, that'd be something over $200 and it was
more than a day's wages for me then.  But not nuch more.  I recently
gave that anvil to my son for a Christmas present.

My "good" anvil I found in Bob's Antiques shop, a big PW sitting next
to a badly baffed out farrier's anvil.  How much?", says I.  "Well",
says Bob, "it's a dollar a pound and that must weigh a hunnert
pounds. So it's a hundred bucks." So I handed over the $100 and went
off home for the truck.  When we were carrying it out, him on one end
and me on the other, we're bent over, going shuffle shuffle skritch
and Bob says, "This weighs more than a hunnert pounds, don't it?"
"Seems like it", says I.

At home I found the 2 2 25 marking, for 305# or 33 cents a pound.
Nice for me because at that time I didn't have $300 to spend.

Then there's Hill anvil I got for $10 but had to drag out of the
ocean, heel broken off through the hardy hole.  Another yarn.  I'll
save that for another post.


- Mike

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