Any decent quality, low price anvils?

Matt Shade

Matt Shade

Joined
Nov 24, 1999
Messages
4,981
I've looked around for used anvils for awhile now and I'm not having any luck. I started my 2nd forged knife yesterday and I'm completely fed up with my hunk of railroad track. Sure I could do some welding and grinding on it and make a better base for it, and have something useable, but thats a lot of work for something thats still not what I need.
I've thought about going to the junkyard and finding a big hunk of plate and welding something up, but I really want to have a horn on it since I'm into making spurs and stuff too.
So I'm about ready to just bite the bullet and buy a new anvil, if I can find one I can afford.
Anyone making a decent anvil thats not real expensive? Doesn't have to be huge. I looked at a harbor freight anvil and wanted to puke. It was so full of pits and holes you'd have to worry more about anvil marks than hammer marks.
 
Matt, you're going to outlay some pretty serious cash to buy a new one.

I doubt you'll find anything decent under $500 or so.

The Nimba anvil I just got, retails for a little over $1200 after tax.

I think their 120 lb. model is around $700-800.

I used one that worked pretty decent for almost 5 years, before just recently finding MY ideal anvil.

If you put a want ad in your local classifieds (around here it's called "The Nickel") you should be able to track something down.

-Nick-
 
Nick,

Just wondering about your ideal anvil. It seems you use the horn and hardy enough to prefer it to the Chuck Robinson/Japanese-type bladesmithing anvils(?).

I don't use the horn and hardy (that) much, so I have gone to a two (plus) anvil system where I use my old Hay-Budden (about 185#) for hardy and horn and a Chuck Robinson for bevels. I find London patterns in the way/inconvenient for forgin bevels. Oh well.

Also, the face and edges on the HB are not perfect so I don't mind using it to wail on when doing rough shaping/breaking down bigger stock. That way I can keep my CR all nice and purty for finish work. I can also have the HB mounted a bit low for power and the CR a bit higher for control.

Any thoughts,

John
 
Yeah that Nimba you've got looks pretty sweet Nick. They're not toys for a part timer like me though. Way out of my price range :grumpy: Tools only make money when your usin em, and mine sit alone too much while I'm off at school or work to have too many high priced ones.

Thanks for the link Greg, some stuff on there I might have to look into further. I wonder what shipping would be on an anvil though, that could put a dent in the budget :eek:

There's a farrier/blacksmith supply here in ohio that carries a lot of stuff (www.ken-davis.com ). I looked over one of their NC anvils at their booth at the quarter horse congress last fall and it looked pretty nice. For the time being I probably can't afford anything bigger than 55 lbs. What would you guys consider a minimum weight?
These anvils geared towards farriers are meant to be hauled around so they've got pretty decent sized faces on them for the small size.

Some good news is I can probably hold out a little longer. I was just talking to my neighbor (he heard me hammerin today) and he has a small anvil I can borrow.
 
John-

I've only seen pics of Chuck's anvils... but they seem to be great for what we do.

I can forge the profile with hammers on a flat face, but I find myself using the horn a lot to bring the point up/down and on the Nimba, there is enough mass under the horn you can use it for really effective drawing. There is very little dead space on the Nimba.

Also, as you mentioned, it's got the hardie and pritchet holes, which I have tools for and do use.

I would love to try out one of Chuck's anvil...

-Nick-
 
This is just an example of shopping around. I priced the 40 kg O'DWYER anvils for students at our knife making clases about 6 months ago

all of these guys were withing 30 miles of each other and the prices were very different. These are in australian dollars so if interested you may have enough exchange advantage to pay shipping or may be not.

Moral of the story is shop around
Anvils O’DWYER brand have a web site however a 40kg O'DWYER Ranges in price as below
$438 phone 9525 2478 Serpentine
$475 phone 9277 2624 Ascot
$395 phone 9328 6004 Perth Rosman Agencies.

All in western Australia. The manufacturer is in the state of victoria.
 
Thanks guys, appreciate all the help.
I'm gonna continue looking for a used one, and try to save up some more cash so that if I do bite the bullet I can at least get one around 100lbs or more.
That 2" plate trick is pretty good sweany. There's a chunk of steel about that size laying in a junk pile at work....it might come up missing ;)

Now I have to figure out how to clean up this anvil my neighbor loaned me. Its pretty small, probably under 50 lbs, but is a lot better than small gauge railroad track. The face is dished/gouged out pretty bad (too much to just grind out) and has a large chip off one side. File test says the face is pretty hard, and a spark test seems to say its lower carbon than my railroad track. I think that would mean its not cast iron. So I'm wondering what my chances are of either welding the face back up and grinding it flat, or welding a plate on top after attempting to fill the hole a little bit.
Might try to run a couple beads on the bottom of it and see how it welds. I don't have any hard facing rods, but I've got a bunch of 7018 that might do the trick.
If nothing else, its got a decent horn so I can do some bending, and it has a hardy hole so I could make some stuff to use in that.
 
There are some descent anvils on ebay...it's just a matter of finding something close enought to you to avoid shipping.
 
I have been using a 110lb Russian made anvil during a blacksmithing class I am taking, and I just bought the same at Harbor Freight for $89. It is definetly not the highest quality, but much better than the Chinese jobs, but if you are a weekender like me it will do the job, atleast for awhile. You might have seen this model on ebay for alot more than $89, some con artist has been selling them with about 200%-300% markup. Good Luck Frank
 
check out matchlessantiques on ebay. He always has at least one anvil for sale. He has 3 for sale right now. He is only 300 miles from hilliard ohio, you could go pick it up.
 
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