66 pound amazon/eBay anvil. Is it any good?

my books John Harold Hickory Farms welcome back if it's first time here welcome let's go on our day I'm down here in the workshop and I got something pretty cool what I got here is a little 66 pound cast steel anvil that can be purchased brand new on Amazon for under $3 a pound so we're gonna review this little baby real quick so if you're looking to begin to blacksmithing one of the first big obstacles you're gonna run into is you need an anvil no it's worth mentioning that you don't necessarily have to have something that looks like what would traditionally be considered an anvil to forge metal there's all kinds of creative workarounds out there but if you've been around and you shopped around you know that buying new can be a pretty big investment and if you want to go the antique route the market is all over the place you have people asking seven or eight dollars a pound sometimes higher than new prices for beat-up chunks of crap so that's why when this guy first came on the scene at the price it was and claiming to be cast steel which is something you wouldn't seen in such an inexpensive anvil most low-end anvils are made of soft cast iron and you know aren't really marketed to be users but when this guy first came on the scene a lot of people just turn their nose up at it didn't give it a second thought but a few people here and there started to take the chance on it and review started to come in and I've been one to get my hands on one ever since now I did not purchase this anvil new this came from a buddy of mine who had bought it decided the hobby wasn't for him was looking to get rid of it so we agreed on a price we thought was fair and now I got it here in the workshop so let's take a closer look at this little baby I can tell immediately that that's not cast iron cast iron makes a very dull foot and has very little bounce to it that's got a little bit of a ring to it and it's got maybe a good 65 70 percent rebound so this is definitely cast steel if you're unfamiliar with the ball bearing test it's pretty simple you just take you a hardened steel ball bearing doesn't really matter what size and you just drop it on the anvil and catch it whatever amount it bounces back up of the distance it was dropped is about your percentage of rebalances say you drop that guy from 10% or not 10% 10 inches and it bounces back up seven inches you got 70% rebound and all this is just a ballpark measurement of how hard the face of the anvil is and how well it's help move your material it doesn't have anything to do without lifting the hammer back up for you or anything like that but basically an anvil with better rebound is going to reflect the energy of your blow back into your work better and move the steel ever so slightly easier but there's that so what I've done here this anvil is marketed as being 52 rockwell hardness so I've taken my Rockwell files we got a 45 a 50 and a 55 HRC 45 don't really even work the 50 scratches up the surface a little bit doesn't really cut it the 55 is starting to cut it so I would place this thing right around 52 Rockwell so something's kind of interesting right here I got a 40 Rockwell file skates on the face doesn't leave a mark but over here on the horn so this horn is dead dead soft so that kind of makes me wonder how deep the hardening of the face actually goes on really high-end cast steel anvils the entire anvil will be hardened but it looks like they only hardened the face and as you can see there's some forging marks which isn't really uncommon in most anvils like I've dented Peter writes and hey buds before if you miss hit full swing with a poorly dressed hammer you can leave a mark in the face of most anvils so that doesn't surprise me but it don't like I said it just kind of makes me wonder how deep the hardening actually goes so that's why I'm not gonna take a flap disc or anything and try to clean this up any because I don't you know I don't want to expose soft steel but looking at the quality of the casting we can see it's pretty poor there's some casting flaws on the whole and the surface finish to the horns pretty rough they probably cast these in one big block and then they got some kid in a sweatshop with a grinder doing this but there's some flaws in the casting right there right around there which is which doesn't surprise me this is probably cast into a really rough mold and they're probably cutting corners everywhere they can to keep costs down so that doesn't surprise me at all wouldn't surprise me if you took a wire wheel this thing and you found some voids that were full of bondo and paint it over but all in all it appears pretty solid now before we do any work with it we do need to round over if whenever you get a new anvil you need to dress up about the font four inches of each edge and do about a three it's into radius so they can be used for fuller right now they're way way too sharp Hardy holes way way too sharp that's way way too sharp eat that virtual hole being where it is is pretty useless because the horn is kind of sitting below everything else so there's really nothing supporting whatever you're punching through around here it's not flat so if this was the only anvil I had to work on I would make a bolster plate but before we go any further we're gonna round up those corners right there we're gonna round up these corners right here because sometimes it is useful to be able to use that part of the anvil we're gonna go ahead and sham for that real good so here's kind of what I was talking about you picked this with a scratch awl and you see how there's that filler material in there you know listen to that versus that you know you know that's pretty common with a you know anvils made in China like your Harbor Freight anvils with the cast iron you see stuff like that pretty often which doesn't surprise me they have quality control standards that are pretty relaxed so as long as like if the void isn't damaging the structural integrity of the anvil they'll fill it in and then paint over it rather than just toss in the whole anvil it's like I said they're trying to cut corners everywhere they can to keep price down so that doesn't surprise me at all you know there's nothing structural it's purely a cosmetic issue but anyway if you go decide to spring for one of these you're probably gonna get what you get and don't throw a fit type deal so I'm just going over this side effect for voice like I've done the other side didn't find any over here so overall the quality of the casting while not excellent it is solid so I wouldn't be worried about breaking this thing in half or anything crazy like that so uh let's get it mounted up and do some work with it there we go got a nice fuller edges at the front of the anvil went ahead and rounded this off you don't really want super sharp corners that can ship anywhere on the anvil so we dressed up the bridge all dressed up already with the die grinder and a carbide burr if you don't have one of those or an angle grinder for that matter a round file will accomplish all these same tasks you know relatively quickly if you don't know round files are actually uh they're a good bit harder than regular files because they're made to sharpen chainsaw teeth so you know if you don't have a garage err you just starting out all round file take care of it [Music] real nice ring to it too so we're up some trainer on the waist and put a mag get up under the heel tell quite the ring something sounds a little more manageable now but oh I'm not going too far they're actually mounting it to the stone cuz I'm probably just gonna make a few cool things and kind of get the feel of it so uh let's see what you got so quick note obviously the Sam goes way way too low for me proper anvil light is if you stand like your fist take relax by your side knuckle is where you want it so this is way too low that's okay I'm only doing a little bit of work with it also I'm using a three pound hammer when some people will say is too heavy for the size of anvil some say the proper ratio is 4001 anvil the hammer others say it's 20 to one blob of her 25 or 35 pound town I've heard it's all over the place so just use whatever anvil you've got with whatever ever you want and chances are it's gonna be okay if ya ask ten people here to get twelve different answers but see this little guy had to say for himself we got here just a scrap Chuck at half a square this will leave fall over so simple I enjoy Slade the material for relief it was due a couple of sit-downs farside on the near side and they'll flatten out to make the UH the fit with the holes that you screw into the wall so it's work those sat down everyone [Music] one thing I do really like about this little guys it's got the tapered heel I've always preferred the double horn style I just think it's more useful we gotta get in here and flatten this out facing the anvils to widen if you try to do from this side you risk accidentally hitting on the top or bottom and lowering under the surface finish so taper he'll come out on the backside that's really useful for getting into tight spaces like that this is actually the fastest way to throw out it just takes practice to get used to but that's why the front four inches or so should have that nice you know 3/8 or so radius another reason we Samford this corner up here like a novel or maybe like the side believe it's been efficient to be able to come out it hey you know if you didn't have a good corner do that off up you'd have to make it into a block to get it up off of the face but you know there's that will come into the flatbed with a little ball peen make a couple of countersinks this is the screws will sit flush when it's done and everything working honey this thing handled that pretty well so now we're gonna do something a little more abusive and making cutoff already for it so weird I got here is a piece of one inch around 10:45 just start my 4 engine out of square Shaffer tell them fit in the hardy hole we got our taper you drop this baby in the hardy hole straight from the top that will upset and give us a nice shoulder down here once you've got a nice shoulder establish you're basically just gonna flatten it out on the front so this little guy inside cleaned it up thinned out a little through quick edge on it see it works not bad so here's a look at the anvil after doing all that work edges held up fine there's no damage the face is still nice and smooth you know there's no marks there that weren't there before already hold still looking good so all in all I'd say she did good though there's just a quick look at that little hook we made looks pretty good I haven't drilled the holes yet or finished it or anything but uh I'd mostly just wanted to show the forging process so my thoughts on this little guy after give it a little bit of use and looking it over it real good I'm impressed it uh it's got a lot going for it one thing I do kind of like about it is the small size you know say if you don't really have a dedicated shop you got to pull everything out every time you want to forge and then put it all back when you're done this little guy's gonna be great for that you know it's it's fully serviceable it's it's an anvil and you know if you were just looking or do small stuff for the house here and there this could realistically be the only anvil you ever need you know of course once you get one anvil you're gonna want another one but that's neither here nor there and even if you were looking to get into blacksmithing it's kind of like a side business this is a good starter option that'll get your foot in the door this is far superior to a Harbor Freight anvil or a piece of railroad track I've used both of those so I can say that with complete and total confidence so that uh like I said honestly I'm impressed with a little guy so I'm gonna keep it around let it kick around the shop I'm sure he'll find this place but you know starting out I I don't think there's a better option on the market for the money I really don't so it's worth mentioning that deals on antique anvils are out there I have bought several really nice anvils for under a dollar a pound before but it's deals like that are few and far between and if you want to find something like that you need to be checking Craigslist and Facebook marketplace about every 10 minutes or so because once they come up they're gone like right away so you know there's that if you're dead set on finding your dream antique anvil you know more power to you you go for nothing in the world wrong with that but if you just want one you want one that's gonna work and you want it now you really can't beat this little guy so like I said I'm pretty impressed now if you've been around the block some in the community you know there's no shortage of the old curmudgeons who were gonna you know tell you you're stupid and anything after made after 1900 it was true because men were men and things were made better and this that the other but yeah I I respectfully disagree that's just my opinion but that's all I got for you if you like you just saw like share subscribe all that jazz always more cool stuff coming there's a link to the Etsy if you want to purchase into my work patreon if you want to support the channel and uh links to the social media if you want to follow me also big thanks to my buddy Dan Bailey for the new intro but that's all I got for you and uh y'all take care [Music] [Music]

Channel: Old Hickory Forge

Views: 118,106

Rating: 4.9401441 out of 5

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Id: EXeY4dhvTZw

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2019