[TheForge] Re: Tool sale near Milwaukee

[Mike Spencer]

CGRAF <adveniam at att.net> wrote:

> I sometimes wonder if the resurgence of smithing we saw years ago
> was it for a while. At least as far as amateur/hobbyists go.

When I first got interested in smithing, about 1967, anvils and other
gear were sitting in closed shops, abandoned barns, junk heaps, in the
back rooms of garages that had been repurposed for automotive in the
30s and so on.  I bought my first anvil from a drunken junk dealer for
$25. He threw in an excellent rivet forge for an extra $10.  I found
my first power hammer [1] in a closed-up shop.  Owner had sawn his right
thumb off, working a table saw with gloves in an unheated shop, some
years before, had just closed up and gone home.  $100 including line
shaft, bearings and belts.  Only $100 or so for a Greenfield cone
mandrel, swage block and several other treasures, including a Foley
saw filer.

In Port Medway, NS, in '77, I learned of a sow [2] that I could have
for free.  Story was the Miz Whatsername's grandfather had been a
master smith, her Dad an indifferent smith and she had inherited the
shop.  Hired two guys to take everything but the anvil (which she
wanted for her living room) to the scrap yard.  The sow was the only
thing that two men couldn't lift so one guy dragged it home to his
shed on a stone boat and he'd been barking his shins on it for years.
So it came to my shop on the same stone boat, dragged behind a pickup.

Since the resurgence of smithing (Lumpkin, GA, 1973 is some kind of
landmark) almost all of the smithing gear that didn't go to the
smelters during WW II has been ferreted out and is in use or in
collections.

There was a Blacker hammer -- severely abused but in restorable
condition -- sold here in the late 70s that has disappeared.  I'm
still looking for it.  And a shop that I tried to buy -- maintainance
shop for a millwork that had once generated its own electricity with a
steam engine -- allegedly went to "this guy", some kind of hoarder, in
the Annapolis Valley who had "a whole barn full of blacksmithing gear".
Haven't been able to locate him, either.

And recently a Kuhn air hammer became available for C$4,000 but the
only guy that knew about it hemmed and hawed and waffled until the
dealer shipped it off to the States for US$6,000.  Dang.  I woulda
bought it for C$4,000 if that "only guy" hadn't been so close-mouthed.

First anvil: $25, 1 1 4 Hill. 1967.  Given to my son now.

2nd anvil: "I reckon that weighs a hunnert pounds so I want a hunnert
            bucks".  Done.  Helping me lug it out to my truck, he
            says, "This [puff] weighs more [grunt] than a hunnert
            [puff] pounds, doesn't it?"  305# PW. Late 70s.

3rd anvil: Picked out of sea water on the shingle. $10 to the blind,
           retired fisherman from whose collapsed "fish store" it had
           come, for the privilege.  Heel broken off through the hardy
           hole. Probably a 1 1 ? Hill.

4th anvil: Recently, C$250 for a PW look-alike, ca 250#.

I might never have gotten properly into smithing if I'd had to buy a
thousand dollar anvil, encountered commensurate prices for other gear.
As it was, as a novice lucking onto all that equipment that I didn't
even have a shop to put it in, I got right into it, even moreso after
going to the 1976 ABANA conference.

- Mike

[1] http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/old-hammer.html

[2] http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/img/sow.gif

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