I used to think any old anvil would work until I spent 6 months fighting a cracked one

Picked up a beat up anvil at a farm sale for $80 about a year ago. Figured it was good enough. After months of bad hammer strikes and wondering why my work looked sloppy, I finally had a guy at the Eugene meetup take a look. He pointed out a hairline crack running through the face. Switched to a borrowed anvil last month and my hammer control improved overnight. Anyone else ever wasted time on bad gear before figuring out the problem?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_murray3d ago

Oh man, you just described my first year of blacksmithing to a T. I picked up a beat up old anvil from a flea market for cheap and thought I was getting a steal. After months of fighting with it, I finally borrowed a friend's anvil for a weekend and everything just clicked. The hammer blows felt right, my metal moved where I wanted it to, and I felt like I actually knew what I was doing for the first time. I ended up taking that old anvil to a machinist who told me the face was actually delaminating from the body, which explained the dead spots I kept hitting. Sold it for scrap and put the money toward a proper anvil from a tool supplier, and that was the single best move I made for my work. What finally made you realize it was the tool and not your technique?

dylan1242mo ago

Man I feel that. I wasted almost a year on a beat up old Fisher anvil with a chipped face before I realized it was the tool not me. A guy at the local blacksmith guild pointed out how the face was actually dished in one spot and it was messing up every flat I tried to make. Soon as I swapped to a decent anvil my hammer work got way cleaner almost overnight.

ben_shah932mo ago

That Fisher with the dished face sounds like a real pain. Did you ever figure out if it was from years of bad technique or just a factory flaw that slipped through?