Best beginner anvil? VEVOR 66 pound anvil review

foreign hey folks John here with Hickory Forge welcome back it was first time here welcome so what's going on today I'm out here in the workshop and I got a pretty high speed little ambulator review so if you want to check it out stick around first things first I'll put a time stamp on screen to where the review actually starts in case you don't want to sit here and listen to me talk because I do have a few things I need to say before we actually get into the the meat and potatoes of this review I know what some of you might be thinking if you've been around the channel for a while John you already reviewed that Anvil and the answer is yes I have so initially whenever the vivore people reached out to me offering to send me this on the condition that I review it at first I told them no because I already had the video and also because I'm really just not interested in becoming a product review channel it's not that's not what I do it's not what I want to do but the more and more I thought about it the more and more I thought it might be a good idea to uh to make another one reasons being one I'm actually really unhappy with the production quality of the previous video the audio sucks pretty bad two um anvils are still something I'm asked about quite frequently more and more people are constantly picking up the craft of blacksmithing which is awesome and whenever you get your foot in the door lots of info comes at you at once really really fast and a lot of it's not good info so I'm gonna do what I can to help you separate the sense from the nonsense and also so there are some talking points in the previous video that I didn't cover that I would like to talk about a little bit more now to help you get your bearings uh but anyway let's get started when you get into blacksmithing your first big obstacle you run across is that you need an anvil and again like I said whenever you if you go online and ask about anvils you ask 10 people you're going to get 12 different answers lots of info comes at you all at once and a lot of it's not good info there's lots of misinformation misconceptions and myths out there uh biggest question on everyone's mind I'm sure is price and right now at the time of this recording actually this thing is on sale on the vivore website I believe for 98.99 so you know just 100 bucks basically and it can also be found on eBay more consistently for about 115 120 dollars shipping is usually free you can also find it on Amazon I've never looked there so I don't really know how much it is but they did actually provide me a coupon code also so I'll leave that I'll pin that in the comments to get five percent off whenever you do decide to buy one of these if you do but um again like I said once you really get your foot in the door lots of info comes at you at once and trying to figure out how much you should pay for an anvil can really just be you know throwing crap at the wall hoping something sticks if you want to buy new there's many many options out there ranging from really inexpensive like this guy to ten dollars a pound and more for the best of the best and if you want to go the antique route you want to try to find an antique Anvil prices on those are also all over the place you have people sometimes asking higher than new prices for anvils that are on really really poor condition so anyway let's check this guy out so this here is their 66 pound model they actually do make quite a few different weights if you ask me the 66 pounder is a great place for a starter blacksmith reason being you got plenty of workspace plenty of masks to work with but it's not too unwieldy you know say if you don't 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 is one that's not going to be too difficult to move around and I actually do know some professional Smiths who have purchased these specifically for traveling or live demo setups one of the cool things about this Anvil is these are actually made of cast tool steel what that means is liquid tool steel is poured into a mold to make the Anvil the only spec I've been able to find online is that they're made of what's called c45 tool steel which is essentially what the rest of the world outside the US calls 1045 and if that's true that's actually the same steel that lots of Smiths myself included make our forging hammers out of because it's a strong tough hard resilient material that's relatively easy to heat treat and I bring the cast bit up for a few reasons one there's actually there's a pretty huge myth that goes around the black spinning Community I'm sure you've seen it that cast equals bad no matter what well that's just simply not true um cast iron does not make good anvils if you look at a lot of the beginner level inexpensive anvils out there like you see at Harbor Freight Canadian Tire those are made of cast iron which is a soft brittle material that's not really suitable to be forged on cast steel is a radically different material but still there is a a vocal cohort of those out there who will swear to you that anything cast is crap and that it's too brittle and it's going to break and again that's simply not true and I can actually prove it Roy at Christ centered Iron Works has actually done several videos on the same Anvil if you don't follow him you should be but he recently did a destruction test on this very Anvil not this particular Anvil obviously but the same model from the same maker where they bolted this down and then they had two guys going at it with I think 12 pound Sledge hammers on the heel and the horn which are the most likely field your points and they were really really wailing on this Anvil and all it really did was Dent the face so the idea that cast steel is inherently brittle and Harry inherently inferior material is just straight up not true most of the highest end anvils on the market today are being made of Castle cast tool steel different makers use different Alloys Holland uses h13 nimba uses 8640 I believe so um you know don't let anybody tell you that nonsense another cool thing I really like about the sandville personally is the design I've always preferred the double horn style of anvil over a more traditional London Pattern that's completely a personal preference I'm not saying one is objectively better or worse but I do think having this tapered heel and the flat surface with a bunch of varying wits to work with that comes in really really handy and I really like that what's really cool about this anvil in particular you can see the base is not solid they have put it up on feet similar to a French Pig style Anvil which is a design that's been around for hundreds of years and nimba anvils which are again widely regarded as some of the best money can buy a lot of their models follow that same design and the reason for that is it conserves material that can be used for the top half of the Anvil so you end up with a much bigger work face you end up with a similar work surface to a much larger much heavier more expensive Anvil without a much larger much heavier more expensive Anvil so uh that's pretty neat so now that I've talked about what I like about the Anvil let's talk about some problems people have with them the first gripe off the bat that a lot of people Express is the packaging it comes in and yeah I can see what they mean mine just came in a cardboard box that was stuffed full of other cardboard boxes and it sloshed around in there a lot but I mean it got here um a bigger problem that is sometimes reported it's not super common but it does happen is these having significant casting flaws so one of the first things I'm going to do is actually take some paint stripper to this and get all this blue paint off because a lot of times if there are surface flaws in the casting they'll actually put like a filler material like Bondo on there and then just paint over it and some people have gotten them with really large voids directly under the face that really really killed the functionality of the Anvil like I said it's not super common but it does happen so the first thing we're going to do is put some paint stripper on this thing and get a better look at what we're actually dealing with before we get started there is actually another thing I'd like to touch on another very common myth that goes around the Anvil Community is that antique anvils are superior to new ones no matter what because they don't make them like they used to Sunny and you're right they don't and there's a reason they don't believe it or not manufacturing technology and metallurgical science have come a long way in the last 200 years and you know we have knowledge and Technology now that didn't exist back then and we can make better steel you know this here is an Armitage Nelson Hall Forge Anvil and mouse Hall Forge is one of the oldest or most respected names in the Anvil world I'm not saying they're bad anvils by any stretch but as you can see this one here is in pretty rough shape and the reason for that these were made using what's called a build up method now not all antique animals were made that way but Mouse holes were in which you had a central block of wrought iron and then you they would Forge weld on the feet the horn and the heel by hand and make all those out of wrought iron because steel was so expensive they couldn't make the whole Anvil out of it and they were forged weld on a plate of hardenable tool steel for the face and sometimes those forged welds were no good and as you can see right here a huge section of the work face is cracked and broken off and that's actually very very common to see with old anvils you'll also see heels and horns and feet broken off quite often there actually is somewhat of a folk Legend here in the United States that um during the Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman whenever he marched through the South had his men break all the anvils to make it harder for Rebel Cavalry to fit horseshoes to my knowledge there's actually no historical account of this ever happening so I'm pretty sure it's a myth and the more likely culprit is bad Forge welds on the heel on the horn and that's just something that you know people who are trying to scam you were people who were told that and believe it will say to try to get more money for a damaged anvil but there is something to be said about the fact that on a new cast steel Anvil there are no Forge this is all one piece of material there are no Forge welds anywhere on this that could potentially have gone bad another thing is the way the Heat Treating was done on these was all by eye you know IR thermometers and Heat Treating Kilns and stuff like that just didn't exist back then so whoever was the boss on the job would just be like okay that looks about right and they would go through their quenching and tempering process so sometimes the corners of old anvils are actually very very brittle and sometimes the faces are soft and sometimes the rebound or the the hardness is inconsistent throughout this new anvils like I said they have a guy sitting there at a computer who can bring it up to exactly the temperature he wants and quench it exactly the speed he wants so there is there is something to be said about that and um I don't subscribe at all I'm like I'm not saying that old anvils are worse by any stretch there are many great ones out there that are as good or better than a lot of stuff being made today but the rhetoric that old is better than new in every situation every single time is just straight up not true and if you're wondering why it is I even have this mouse hole because in the condition it's in it's pretty much useless I actually bought it I paid basically nothing for it and I want to restore it using the Rob Gunter method Anvil repair is a skill that I would like to learn and cultivate so I bought this to use as a project Anvil whenever I've got the time that's something I'm going to undertake and this particular model is actually from before 1830 mouse hole in a lot of English Anvil makers didn't actually start putting the round hole the pritchel hole in until around 1830. so the zanville is nearly 200 years old and looks every bit of it but it will be cool to bring it back to life one day I'm using this here Jasco paint and epoxy remover I don't know how well it's going to work because I've never actually used it before I did the face too because whenever I got the Anvil it's been sitting in my shop for a few weeks and to keep it from rusting I did clear coat the face so I'm going to clean the whole Anvil up real good whenever it says 15 minutes I'm gonna give it that scrub it off with a wire brush and then I'm going to do the underside as well because I want to get a good look at the quality of the casting all around the Anvil and see what we're dealing with foreign so we got the paint off I ended up doing two rounds of that stripper letting it sit for 20 minutes each time the can said 15 but I figured an extra five wouldn't hurt nothing and now we can kind of get a better idea of what we're actually looking at in terms of the structural Integrity of the Anvil also as you can see I was wearing gloves and eye protection when working with the paint stripper it's a very caustic chemical you don't want it getting on your skin or in your eyes or anything like that and now you can kind of see what I was talking about right here right here right here and right here there's more of it on this side I'll show you here in a minute but what this is if you've ever cast anything like copper or aluminum or lid or anything like that you know the outside of your ability is going to cool much faster than the inside and the potential for a trapping air and moisture from the atmosphere and causing significant porosity in the casting first and foremost any casting is going to be poor since it's it's going to happen but what they'll do if they have aesthetic imperfections in the body of the Anvil they will fill it in with this filler material and then paint over them you can kind of see you know I can cut that with my knife quite easily which I shouldn't be able to do if it was you know part of the steel of the Anvil and again like I said it's to be expected you know at the price point they're delivering these I don't expect them to recast it 10 times trying to make it exactly perfect for you but this side you know it doesn't look terrible there's no way of telling how deep those voids actually go and that kind of segues into what I talked about earlier with some people getting these with really really deep voids in them that damage the face of the Anvil I don't know how strict their quality control standards are but like I said I don't think these are going to cause us any problems on this side you can see we have some more of that filler material you know again there's really no way of knowing how deep it goes but they very clearly had to grind some imperfections out of this side and then on the bottom if I'm not mistaken this is uh not the first one of these I've owned and it's not as apparent on this one but on my last Anvil it was very obvious that this is where the sprue was which is actually kind of the channel they pour the metal into to fill the mold and everything it's not again like I said it's not super obvious here but there's some filler material in there and that's where you're the most likely to have incomplete casting because it's you know where the molten metal is traveling through the air trapping air and moisture from the atmosphere it's hard to see but there is actually some also some significant pot marks on the underside of the horn which doesn't surprise me so the quality of the casting overall is not excellent but I do think it's solid so what I'm going to do next is actually take a cut brush on a grinder to this and grind some of that filler material out and see how deep those voids actually go while I'm talking about casting imperfections I don't know how well you can see it on camera but you see how we've got a hard corner all the way up to here and then we got you know it looks almost as if it had been melted or something like that that's a casting imperfection and also whenever I got the sandville you can see how this uh this Edge right here has been ground down so I'm assuming there was another surface imperfection in the casting that had to be ground out and you know now the more that I think about it actually I think the sprue might actually be on this side now uh maybe on the first one I got they were pouring it from the bottom and now they might be working from the side and that's why they had to grind so hard to get this off I could be wrong uh without actually going to the factory and looking at how they make these I have no way of knowing but based on how this looks versus how the bottom looks I think this Brew actually was over here so I apologize for that mistake thank you so after taking a wire brush to this guy I'm actually pretty impressed with the quality of the casting I don't know if you can see or not but we're down to True metal all the way around the Anvil all that filler material has been completely removed and none of those voids were any more than a sixteenth of an inch deep or anything like that so uh there's no doubt in my mind this casting is solid but let's get ready to do some work with this guy next thing we got to do is dress the Anvil so if you skipped ahead to the time stamp I put at the start of the video Welcome Back the review is about to actually start we went ahead and stripped all the paint off of the Anvil to get a closer look at the quality of the casting it's looking pretty good so now what we got to do is call dressing the Anvil so before the Anvil is ready to be used it needs to be dressed and what that means is basically just knocking off all the hard Corners how far you want to go with this is kind of up to you what I like to do personally is the front three or four inches I like to round that over to a nice 3 8 inch radius so it's a nice soft curve so I can kind of glance the edge of my hammer off if I'm working on the point of a knife or a leaf or something without worrying about shipping the edge of the Anvil or putting a huge gouge in the face of my hammer also you see the corners of our Hardy hole are way too sharp so we got to Bevel those you really don't want sharp Corners anywhere on the Anvil because you're just asking for chips so um we'll round over all the edges ever so slightly round them over a little more aggressively up here quick note on the pretzel hole the pretzel hole is kind of set below the face of the Anvil so it's not super super useful because if you're trying to punch a hole you want it supported all the way around and maybe if you laid something just across here you could get away with it but being where it is it's really not a great place for it a common upgrade that I see a lot of people make on these anvils which wouldn't be super hard to do is actually to build this up with weld around here and then grind it flat and make it part of the face so if you want to do that do it I'm not going to but if you want to that would be that would significantly significantly improve the user friendliness of the Anvil also before we go to use the Anvil we're also going to kind of grind off this rough cast texture on the horn and make it nice and smooth to break the corners on the inside of the Hardy and the pretzel hole I'm using a tool called a die grinder it's basically a Dremel tool on steroids if you don't have one you could use a Dremel tool or a band file sander or even a hand file if you got time you just want to make sure you don't have a hard 90 degree corner you know anywhere on the Anvil so we're going to fix that up right quick foreign just to put a nice finish on the face and hoard in the Anvil I'm going to use this coarse Scotch Brite disc on my grinder another to it really all righty now she's looking like an anvil boys so we'll get that big guy pulled off of there get all the chain out of the way get this guy screwed to the stump and get some work done see how it holds up if you're wondering what the chain is for it actually dampens the Ring of the Anvil so it's not so hard on your ears that also just looks really cool I did legs twice this week at the gym so this is really going to suck oh that's a big boy another thing I really like about the sandville is the fact that there's already mounting holes in the feet you don't got to figure out no kind of contraption to hold it down nothing like that so what I've got going I got some 5 16 inch lag screws the 5 16 inch washers are just shy of wide enough for the hole so I stacked them up on top of a half inch washer I've already done this side to show you what I got going and then I'll hold that sucker down real good so now that we got the Anvil mono we're going to do what's called the ball bearing rebound test basically I've got a one inch hardened steel ball bearing you can use any size really doesn't matter but then you just drop it and catch it and all this is doing is kind of giving me a general idea of how hard the face of the Anvil is you'll hear people talk about rebounded percentages you know sixty percent seventy percent eighty percent rebound so say if you drop your ball bearing from 10 inches and it bounces back up approximately eight inches and there actually are gauges you can buy that will measure this and give you an approximation of the rock wall hardness of the face I don't have one I'm just kind of eyeballing it but like I said all this is is giving me kind of a rough idea of how hard the face of the Anvil is and how consistent the heat treat is like say if I dropped it here and it comes all the way back up to my hand it didn't but say it did and then I bounce it back here and it comes halfway back up to my hand that means this part of the Anvil is softer than that part of the Anvil so the long and short of it it gives you kind of a rough idea of how hard the face of the Anvil is and an anvil with better rebound will reflect the energy of your Hammer below back into your work and move your metal ever so slightly faster I'd uh it's not a night and day difference but if you worked on a dead Anvil versus a very Lively Anvil right next to each other you would very very easily be able to tell so that's all there is to it and that's looking pretty good you know across most of the workface it's bouncing about 70 percent of the way back up to my hand obviously back here on the heel well that that actually wasn't bad but back here on the heel well there's less mass under it obviously it's going to bounce up less but The Sweet Spot of the Anvil is right in here and that's we're going to be doing most of our work so uh it's looking pretty good so before we get started we are going to do a little bit of checking on the rock wall hardness of the face I got my rock wall testing files here which aren't the most pinpoint accurate method in the world but they will give us kind of an idea to start with on the vivore website they say this is 50 Rockwell on some some eBay sellers say 52 to 54. so who knows what we're dealing with so we'll start with a 55 HRC and the idea is that if this is softer than 55 HRC the file will be able to cut it and if it's harder the file will not be able to cut it so let's just and that's actually skating pretty good over most of the face so that's that's pretty hard actually let's try the 60 file okay so our 60 file bytes something interesting is this 55 HRC file skates very easily over the entirety of the workface including back here on the heel so the face of this is quite hard but over here on the horn we take our 40 Rockwell file and it cuts it like soft cheese almost so that kind of makes me wonder uh I would actually really like the chance to see how it is they actually Harden these things because it seems like the hardening may not go below the level of the horn maybe they don't even bother hardening the horn or something like that which does kind of make sense because the horn isn't really meant for heavy forging it's kind of meant for bending and forming although it is very very useful for drawing out and we are going to use it for that but again you know the face being that hard is actually pleasantly surprising so so obviously this Anvil is way too low for me proper Anvil height as if you stand and let your fist hang relax by your side that knuckle height is where you want your Anvil that way whenever you finish your Hammer blow your elbow is just short of locked out it's also so that you can hold your tongs between your legs and have both hands to work if you're using a punch or chisel or something like that so there's a method to the madness obviously like I said this is way way too low and if your handles are slow it's going to hurt your back if you do this every day but because we're only doing a few little things it's going to be fine because this is very much an entry level Anvil we're just going to knock on a few basic beginner projects we're going to make a punch and chisel set a cut-off party for the Anvil and a pair of tongs let's get moving so you're starting out blacksmithing first thing you need is more tools obviously and a good place to start is a good punch and chisel set now what I've got here this was some scrap one inch round 4140 that I broke down or to the power hammer I do approximately three quarter inch round because that's kind of a good place to start that's a little bit big of stock to be forging by hand but it's nothing a motivated individual can accomplish and that's a good place to start you know whenever you're shopping for steel three-quarter inch round will make good hand tools so we'll start with the Chisel so we're just going to hold our piece at an angle we got our chisel rough forged it's looking pretty good once we cut an edge out of this now you have the ability to cut hot metal so it's a great place to start it's a little bit more complicated than forging operation you're trying to do what's called the four-sided taper so you're going to strike 90 degrees so we've got the end of our table just about where you want it so what I'm going to do now is called carrying the taper back I'm going to hold it a little less of an angle and slowly work my way up the material keeping that same rhythm of strength turn strike turn strike turn you get the idea you have to do it really so we got our Square taper forged out and now it's time to turn it into a round taper so what we're going to do is tilt it up onto its corners it's called breaking the corners we're gonna do that on all four sides [Music] foreign ers [Music] a good last step when forging out your round tables to take your Butcher's Block brush another essential blacksmith and just give it a good scrub the bristles of the brush are hard enough before they actually scrape the surface of the material a tiny tiny bit it helps smooth it up so here's what we got after going over with the block brush a few times you know not perfect by any stretch but from being done with hand hammer and brush it's not bad by any means I'm trying to limit my use of power tools on these projects because if this Anvil is marketed towards a beginner and if you're somebody who's just starting out on blacksmithing I'm assuming you don't have a big two by 72 like I do so the only power tool I'm going to try to use is an ankle grinder next tool I want to make for this Anvil is something called the cutoff Hardy it's basically a cutting tool with a square shake that will drop into the Hardy hole what I've got to make it with is a piece of axle I had laying around the workshop this is inch and a quarter in diameter and probably something along the lines of a 4140 dual steel you know it's a bit big stock to be forged by hand but we'll make it happen it's pretty much the same as it was making the punch we're going to make a four-sided taper to forge off the taper for the shake and the tool a little faster I'm using the Horn of the angel it's working all four sides [Music] and all this does is draw the material out a little bit faster because of the smaller surface area content metal pass on the bottom so you see after a little bit more cleanup work on the horn we're starting to get the beginnings of the shank of the tool so the next thing we're going to set it down the Hardy hole and strike from the top to upset the shoulder of the tool like I said just shut that guy down in there you go on it with a bigger hammer if you want to make the upsetting process go a little faster you can use a sledgehammer I'm going to use this 30 pounder right here uh hopefully we don't break the bolts alrighty here we go foreign to get going we're trying to make a nice wide shoulder so the tool has a lot of support when we're using it doing the upsetting sometimes it gets all out of whack like that so every view Heats you got to go back to the Anvil and kind of straighten everything up and dress it out and then continue the upsetting operation you know another to it really so like I said straighten everything back up [Applause] it's also a good idea to move around as you straight to help your upset go down Center I wasn't doing that the first time and that's why it got so out of that but you get the idea all right so we got a pretty good size uh shoulder on the tool now uh it's not perfectly centered but that's not a problem it's not going to cause any issues with use next thing we got to do is draw this Big Blob out and do a nice wedge shape [Music] I had to draw it out into the wedge shape we're looking for a little quicker I'm going to use the horn just like I did earlier foreign so we're moving right along starting to get that wedge shape you're looking for what you see going on up here at the end is a phenomenon called fish mouthing and that's completely normal especially when working big stock like this by hand because the outside of the metal is moving faster than the inside you're just not putting enough Force to do it with a hand Hammer to move the whole thing at once so the best thing to do is just kind of remove it as you go and once you've got all that fish mouthing ground out just go back to forging out your safer [Music] so we're just about done with this thing so now I'm going to be working more over here on the front of the Anvil [Applause] as well as just kind of straightening up the sides and generally tidying it up and make it look nice foreign y so we're starting to build up a nice little arsenal of tools I'm going to go ahead and let that cut off Hardy cool and then I'm going to do all the grinding and finish work on these get them ready for use so we can get them ready for our last project on the Anvil which is going to be a pair of tongs if you ask me it's actually cheaper to buy tongs than it is to make them at least in a professional setting you know if your shop rates forty dollars an hour it takes you two hours to make a pair of tongs you just spent eighty dollars on that pair of tongs when you can buy them you know for 45 50 delivered to your door I usually buy most of mine from blacksmiths Depot you know good quality great company to deal with that being said there are times where you might need a certain pair immediately and might not have time to wait around for them to be sent to you you got to finish this project now and you need a certain pair of tongues that you don't have so it is something you should know how to do even if you don't make tongues you should learn how to make tongs alrighty so we got our tools dressed up ready to use uh so now we can cut and we can punch to make our pair of tongs I got two pieces of three quarter inch round mild steel cut off at eight inches you want to use mild steel for tongs because they get heated up and cooled off and heated up and cooled off constantly and uh mild steel will hold up to that better than a lot of tools Steels will also for your hot work tooling like this there's no heat treating required you can heat treat it if you want to but it's probably going to lose its temper pretty fast whenever you're actually using it for hot work so uh there's that uh let's get started so first step is to isolate the using the near edge of the Anvil so you see what we got going those little flat bits are going to become the jaws of the tongs all right next step is to isolate what's going to the boss or the hinge would talk so we're going to return our piece storage where our set down isn't same deal half-faced Hammer blow so next step is to isolate the material that's going to become the range so we're going to turn 90 degrees to the right again just like we did before using the barge the Anvil half face Tamara blue foreign so that's just kind of the basics on how to make tongs you know isolate the jaw isolate the boss isolate the reins next step is to draw out the rains which I will show you how to do by hand or how I would do it but I am going to cheat and use the power hammer because I need to get this video finished most important thing to remember is to make them both the same way so that when you turn them over that's how they'll fit together kind of see how it's going to work so if I had to draw these up by hand I would use the horn I would just straight and turn and work from all four sides and there actually is a faster way if you're more skilled than I am you can actually use the edge of the Anvil and a similar technique to using the horn but the smaller radius will move the metal much much faster I'll drop a link to a video by Joey vandersteen down below who is someone you should watch if you want to get the gist of that technique as well as learn a lot more about Tong Mickey he's got lots of great videos but uh take him up but like I said I'm going to cheat and use the power hammer because I got to get this video done let's get moving [Music] so there we go we got the reins drawn out to basically just get the length you want and then take a few Heats and smooth it up and round them up and break the corners and make them look nice this same result could be accomplished by hand it will just take a good bit longer and this video is already taking way longer than I thought I would to film so I use the power hammer I know I said I was going to try to limit myself to one power tool and that I didn't so let me have it in the comments but anyway next thing we're going to do I want to make these into a pair of Bolt tongs or v-bit tongs for holding square and round stock and if you have a v-groove swage now is the time to use it but uh well I actually do but I'm assuming you don't so a good way to do it is you're just going to eyeball the center line and then kind of Forge it around the corner of the Anvil so we'll do that next so like I said just roughly we're not really trying to force this to finish we're just trying to get that Groove started so that whenever we actually assemble the talks we can put a piece of square stuck in there and it'll hold it nice and steady I know we'll kind of bend the Jaws around it so it holds real nice thank you before we actually assemble the tongs we're going to want to go in here where the boss of the Jaws meet and knock that corner off because whenever you're forging this down sometimes you end up with sharp Corners in here not always but sometimes it happens and uh that'll kind of get in the way whenever the tongs are trying to Pivot as well as just go ahead and give the whole Tonga general clean up right now it's going to be a lot easier to do now than before or after they're together so we'll just break that corner smooth it up a little bit and uh put a rib in this baby foreign whenever you're almost done punching through you'll kind of be able to see the outline of your punch on the other side of the metal so you just punch most of the way through from one side turn it over line it up and drive the punch on through normally you would drive it through the pretzel hole of the Anvil but with that one being kind of set below the face it's not super easy to do so we're just going to use the Hardy hole should be fine foreign [Music] Ed everything up right you should get a nice clean hole obviously that's going to throw your tongue all out of whack so just heat it up and give it a quick straighten at the Anvil and once you've got your rivet in there you just work them a little bit while they're hot that'll kind of get the hinge plate moving together as it should start bending the rains so like I said before I want to size the jaws of these to take half inch square and half inch around that sort of stuff so we're just going to gently put a piece of half inch square in there close to draw some more Vise around it and then once you got your groove started you can kind of just gently it'll kind of fold where that Groove is to get you a better grip on your material so I've got the Jaws formed pretty good they're holding the stock I want them to hold so last thing let's just defend the Rings to a comfortable width make sure everything's nice straight foreign so not a beautiful pair of tongs by any measure but that is kind of the just in the technique of how to make them yourself and they do hold our half inch round and our half inch square real good so they do what they were made to do I'll be the first to admit I do suck at making tongs and I also really don't enjoy it uh that might be why I buy them instead of make them but there you go so those are just some basic beginner blacksmithing projects uh we're starting to get a nice little tool kit going but let's talk about the Anvil so how did the Anvil hold up after all that work well the face is still in excellent shape you know none of this is any kind of hammer marks or dense it's still perfectly flat perfectly smooth what that is is just from being forged on and everything the um the machined finish is no longer crisp so that's all that is now the horn actually does have a lot of divots on it so this horn actually took the 40 Rockwell file to it and it cuts it very very easily so the horn is not heat treated so that's something to be careful about um if you're forging on it it's not or bending things around it it's not going to cause you any problems but just be careful not to strike it with your Hammer I first noticed it you know as I was working on that punch and I was tapping in between Heats over here I noticed my hammer was starting to leave divots into the horn so you know it'd be nice if this was hardened I understand why they don't do it and it's not super uncommon on antique anvils actually the horn is usually made of soft wrought iron there's very few cases in which the hardened plate runs across the horn as well so I get why they only Harden the face because that's the only part of the Anvil that really really needs to be hardened but it would be nice if they did the top of the horn as well so after putting this Anvil through its Paces including wailing on it with a 30 pound Sledge which is something no sane individual would ever do to an anvil especially one that small I've gone through and gathered my thoughts in my high speed little notebook I got a prose section and a cotton section we'll do the cons first you know you always want the bad news first starting out the virtual hole is in kind of a bad spot you know you saw where it is kind of on the front horn set below the face of the Anvil it's also kind of too big for that size of anvil it's three quarters of an inch which is the same size it is on my uh my 260 pound double horn the reason that's kind of an issue is whenever you're punching through something you want it to be as tightly supported as possible you saw whenever we drove our punch through on the Hardy hole it bent everything all out of whack and everything like that so uh if this was the only Anvil I had to work on I would make a bolster plate which is basically just a plate you could sit on top of the Anvil with a bunch of different sized holes in it so that would be another handy project to take on just get you a piece of Steel and drill a bunch of holes in it let's see con number two spotty quality control and what I mean by that I got I was very impressed with this one I got a very excellent piece no no real casting flaws some some minor aesthetic problems but nothing that affected the structural Integrity of the Anvil and I was actually pretty impressed with how hard the face was but the last Anvil that I did um that I did a review on that was from this same company the the face registered around 5253 Rockwell or maybe it was 54. it was something significantly lower it was less hard than what this one was and I have heard plenty of people talk about buying these and them arriving with major casting flaws or the faces being soft or something like that so uh you are now mind you for every one person I've say I've heard say they got a bad one I've heard dozens and dozens more say it's an awesome animal and they love it so if you have one of these or if you have another Anvil from this maker uh sound off in the comments and let me know what your experience has been like but like I said I've had two of them now and I've been pretty impressed with both of them so you may kind of be rolling the dice on the quality control so um it would probably be prudent to buy from a seller with good return policies in the event that you get one that has a bunch of crap wrong with it you can send it back and have it replaced so there's that so now let's get into the pro section and talk about what I do like about the Anvil first and foremost it's affordable I just checked and it's still on sale on the Vivo website for 98.99 with free shipping that being said I don't know if the coupon code for five percent off they gave me is gonna work because it's already on sale you know somebody try it and tell me in the comments but even if you don't buy it on sale it can still regularly be found on eBay for you know 120 or less with free shipping so I really you're not gonna get unless you get extremely lucky on an antique or something like that you hear these fairy tales of people finding anvils and scrap yards in perfect condition for 20 or 30 dollars but that's that's a unicorn if you if you find that more power to you that's something people could spend their whole lifetime chasing when this is something you can buy online and have set to your door right now and that brings me to my next point that this Anvil is readily available you know if you've ever been Anvil shopping you know it can really be kind of a crap shoot you can scour Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist constantly a lot of the times like I said at the start of the video you have people asking higher than new prices for damaged anvils that are just really not a whole lot of good anymore in my opinion this is something you can buy online without having to put in any legwork and have it sent to your door so it's a you know your time is your most Irreplaceable resource so the more and more time you spend chasing that unicorn of an anvil the less time you're in the shop getting things done now there is something to be said about the romance of antique anvils I do love antique anvils I do own quite a few I'm not sitting here saying they suck or anything like that or that they're not worth your time if you find a good deal go for it but um you know you just need an anvil you want it now there's one right there Pro number three it's user friendly and uh what I mean by that first and foremost I really like the design I've always preferred the double horn style of anvil I find the variety of work surfaces to be very very useful and I also really like how they followed the European Pig style design with this Anvil you know how it's up on feet and more material is preserved to make the face of the Anvil so you have a larger work surface that you would have on a much larger more expensive anvil on something like that that's so easily portable you know if you're strictly a hobbyist blacksmith you just want to make little things here and there you know hooks to hang on the wall barbecue forks and stuff like that you don't 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 is something that's not going to be too cumbersome to move around while still giving you you know plenty of work space and you know plenty of Versatility so last thing I got here on my list is that it's good quality for the price you know 120 if you buy it normally 98 if you get it on sale that's at or under two dollars a pound and you really just you don't see anvils for that unless you get really lucky so for that amount of money especially considering the fact that you don't have to put any legwork to get it you just buy it online and it's sent to your house I really don't think you're going to get a better value for your money you know for that you're getting you know cast tool steel it's all one piece there's no forged welds that could potentially fail it's heat treated and the face is flat the face is smooth the corners are good it's a brand new crisp Anvil so um you know that being said some people have gotten these and they've had major casting flaws or the faces have been soft so you should if you do buy one you should buy it from somewhere with a good return policy in the event that you do have to send it back but like I would I would say at least 95 of the people I know who have purchased these anvils love them and say they're amazing so um there's something to be said for that in summary is it something I would recommend definitely yes you know like I said I've owned two of these now and I've been pretty impressed with both of them and when you take into account the availability the affordability and the versatility of the Anvil I really don't think there is a better option out there for the money you know the only other real starter options we got are you know the cast iron anvils from Harbor Freight and a lot of people say to start with railroad trucks I I disagree railroad track is not a good anvil in my opinion I've I had one once and it actually broke in half at the waist you know I highly doubt one of these is going to do that and I've seen people with 12-inch foot long sections of railroad tracks sometimes asking 250 for them citing that it was an anvil which is just in my opinion it completely completely ridiculous so uh is it something I would recommend absolutely so that's all I got for you if you're someone who's considering purchasing this Anvil uh first and foremost congrats for getting in on the craft of blacksmithing you know it's it's really great that so many people are picking up the craft it's great exercise you can make a lot of cool stuff so that's uh that really makes me happy when I see you new Smith's picking up the hammer there will be a link down in the comments I'm going to pin it with the link to the viewer website where this animal can be purchased as well as the coupon codes they supplied me with also I'm going to link the two channels I talked about throughout the video christ-centered Ironworks and Joey vandersteeg they're two other great really great Smiths you should follow lots of great info and knowledge there and if you're interested in learning more about anvils in general go ahead and pick you up a copy of anvils in America by Richard Postman it's a bit expensive for a book but it's worth every penny this is kind of the Anvil and nerds Bible and uh the amount of legwork that Richard put in to write this book is just staggering it's insane there is so much info here so this is this is something every Anvil nerd should own but anyway that's all I got for you if you like what you saw like share subscribe All That Jazz always more cool stuff coming links down in the description below to the patreon if you want to support the channel and get in on the giveaways the Etsy if you want to purchase any of my work the Instagram if you want to follow me that's where I'm the most active uh let's see what else what else what else I believe that's it enough y'all take care

Channel: Old Hickory Forge

Views: 8,965

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Id: awBoLhUbuXQ

Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2022