Harbor Freight 55lb Anvil: How Much Does it Suck?

hello everybody welcome back to the workshop so we're gonna find out how terrible this 55 pound anvil is from Harbor Freight now starting off this anvil is a cast iron animal so we already know that it's going to be a ductile iron anvil or a soft iron anvil it is not going to be a hardened steel anvil right out the gate so there you go quick disclaimer I'm not going to tell you anything new there but what I am going to tell you is that these animals get a really terrible wrap around the blacksmithing community some people say I've hit on it five times and the whole thing just crumbled I find that hard to believe but again it's been a really long time since I Smith on a Harbor Freight amble and that'll bring me to my first story of the day if you'll indulge me for a second I started my smithing journey on a Harbor Freight anvil some could say I'm a little bit biased towards these anvil shaped objects if you will or I've got a bit of a sweet spot for them because the first four years of my smithing journey was spent very closely a very close walk step lockstep with a Harbor Freight anvil now for you guys out there that are just beginning this may seem like a really attractive option because you can just go pick it up at your local at your local Harbor Freight if you're here in you know the United States hashtag not a sponsor for it and I will I will put in a link down in the description to another anvil like this uh be aware that's an affiliate link but it's very similar to this anvil online it is my recommendation though that you buy if you are going to buy an anvil like this as your entry level anvil that you just go to the box store and buy it there basically the stuff online is just it's really it's garbage it's people just reselling uh-huh basically what they bought they bought this for a twenty percent off super coupon then they went around and flipped it up on Amazon and or eBay for about twice the cost so don't get ripped off online is a real ripoff for these type animals so just be advised there if you will brings me to the last point before we go and actually dig into this if you are just getting started into blacksmithing really anything that you can grab and start smithing on can be a real advantage to you now it is my belief that to have something that is shaped like an anvil is better than buying something like just a plain block of steel or a bar or a sledgehammer or something like that because you will be able to follow along and instructors advice as they go along you know with a project they're working on they say use the hardy hole you'll have a hardy hole to use they say go over the virtual hole you have a Perl hole to use if they say go over the horn you've got a horn to use if they say the far edge or the near edge it really does help you kind of just put all two and two together right it allows you to start getting a better picture of what the instructor is talking about so with all that out of the way hopefully y'all are still here if you are great if you're not oh well let's go ahead and open this up right off the right off the gate there I know I said that a couple times this this was the best box out of three and Harbor Freight this was just already place slashed open I don't know if they and it's pretty terrible mark it's literally like somebody slashed it open to see if there was an anvil in there um but other than that the items made it through just fine trying to look at the best way to open this box up here so I did not happen to go like crazy other than that the box is in good shape of course they ship them to the store and probably a big crate like a pallet so not too much to go wrong there unlike maybe some of the animals that you get on Amazon where the the Box had to go through individualized shipping so just open that up there and yeah not too bad of a little amble I'm just gonna go ahead and scooch it and flip it over just cuz I was asked about this in a previous video now why didn't you just shake it but that's why really loud that's why I didn't shake it and just throw it out the bottom of the box so get rid of that box we don't need that no more don't need that and now we'll flip it over well it didn't break I guess that could count as the first blow [Laughter] I'll get this plastic off here and that's what you're working with so we'll start off with what my first impressions of this anvil is right out the gate okay so I dropped it again oh hell no enough to edit that out in the actual video if you tell I'm just kind of fooling around a little bit having fun with this because most of you guys are not taking this serious anyhow on buying this anvil right out the gate has a machined finish it's got an oil to it like the classic Harbor Freight oil to it they run something new they got the central Forge on there the anvil I had way back when actually had just a giant China and boom on the front so they've changed that to just having a little kind of like a little tiny tag and there you are I mean there's not much to say about it it's blue I detest the color blue you guys haven't seen my anvil video the 66 pound the cheap anvil that's a cast steel anvil that I super recommend you can you can check out that one links in the description and I'll also put a figure there I did an unboxing I'm doing a whole series on anvils this year and yeah I hated the blue in that video I hate the blue in this video machined flat looks really good I don't see any immediate defects on any of the edges as I turn it around here I don't see any immediate defects in it that doesn't mean that they couldn't be there and with the surface finish being the way that it is and I can see the casting line on here makes me think that there's not too much mom though in this anvil or at least this particular model that I receive because I can I can see the casting lines where they part at the mold so you can see that on the UNAM flip it over here bottom the anvil is pretty flat so comparatively to the anvil I started with they've actually done actually believe it or not they've done some improvement to this anvil and upgrade it now some of the things I don't like about this little anvil here is the mounting options these feet if you mount through these holes you will snap the cast iron because if you mount it on an uneven surface and crank it down like most people do which is a common failure point on these anvils you'll always see somebody snap off their feet first and foremost so do not use these anchor holes for mounting instead get you a piece of flat bar stock to go across the flats see if I could show off these flats any better here get you a piece of bar stock to go across these flats and then anchor through that bar stock so this way you're getting more even distributed load across the entire flat of the anvil and not just in one place on on a foot just really bad ideal idea for those excuse me all right so there it is now where would we be without the obligatory rebound test I won't keep you guys very long today give me a second got step off-screen all right we've got the one-inch ball bearing this is just a 10 18 mild steel ball bearing and we'll give it the drop test so as you can see it has some rebound not too bad for a rebound on a cast iron anvil now it is instantly denting the surface again this is a soft Ann ville de siz gonna be really soft and that's something that you're going to have to keep in mind soft animals do not do not like to keep their shape without denting so what can you use this handful for you can use this handful for copper work you could use it for silver you could use it for all sorts of soft non-ferrous metals for really hot steel that was the secret with my anvil if I had a Harbor Freight anvil I kept everything really super hot that I was forging on it and so this anvil can be good for a beginner isn't the best no now one of the other things that will play into this little rebound test if you're testing these out is what it's sitting on or mounted to this is both not securely mounted so it's not collectively using that kinetic energy coming up through the piece properly but not only that but it's sitting only on a quarter inch plate top welding table so if this was sitting on a wooden block you will have a marginal increase in the rebound of your anvil dead quiet like you would think for cast iron so no ring so if you got if you live in a neighborhood and you're afraid of you know working off the neighbors this might be your option for you so I will go ahead and it's probably not even worth hardness testing but I'm gonna go grab I will grab my files here real quick and we will actually test the hardness of this anvil so the files that I have here have said in many other videos you're gonna see this a lot in these videos coming forward are the su Busan hardness testers from 40 Rockwell C all the way up to 65 Rockwell C and we're gonna go ahead and test this out now to kind of see where it's at I will go just go ahead and start at 65 and we'll scratch the test surface of course it scratches almost instantly I mean it's it's just as grippy a soft metal would be we'll go down to 60 Rockwell bites the surface again no sense going there but keep going down we'll go down to 55 Rockwell we but we all know we all know where this is going right like we all know where this is going or at least I know where this is going hit that like button if you like in those videos so far yeah still gripped even at the 50 Rockwell like you would expect I'm putting plenty of good scratches on this piece we're gonna go down to 45 Rockwell again files just like as if that that face isn't even there like you're filing on play-doh and all the way down to 40 Rockwell and that's where this kit bottoms out and of course it still even scratches at 40 Rockwell so it's definitely below 40 Rockwell on the C scale something to keep in mind these kits are nice you can test your animal and just word word of wise on these just because you have a hardness in one area you should test all areas of your anvil a little bit with the scratch hardness to see if you've got hardness all the way across the plain of your hand will because sometimes the tails can harden faster than say the core of the anvil and vice versa the horn or feet or other things so before you make a fool judgment on your heart oh so we'll set those aside so there you have it there's a first impressions a review let me get into the why if you made it this far in the video why Roy did you waste our time reviewing a Harbor Freight anvil and for those of you that stuck around I'll know because you'll you won't be asking stupid questions in the comment section like why'd you waste our time he won't you won't be asking those questions in the comment section but the point the reason why I've done this is I need a good control and Vil of what it what is the epitome of all blacksmithing the Harbor Freight animal right it is the bane of every blacksmith's existence to hear about the Harbor Freight anvil there are so many online forums that are basically you know lynching guys that you know say hey this is my you know there's my animal you know I mean it's like string him up he's got a he's got a Harbor Freight anvil he's a horrible Smith and things like that so again is it really that terrible it's not it really isn't the anvils are super the edges are super sharp they'll mean just a little bit of touch-up to get going or let them round over and use and then dress it this is a great anvil to get started on I can't say that enough because I got started on it is it the best no would I prefer that 66 pounder on Amazon heck yeah man I wish I would have had the opportunity to have that anvil way back several a.m. well it's not several but it's been over a decade now that I started forging so you know a decade ago what I have man what I've wanted heck yeah I would have wanted that one over this one but this is what was available to me at that time this is what my pocket but it could afford and this is what gave me the initial introduction to the craft of blacksmithing and allowed me to take and go from there and if you can if you can survive beaten on this thing you can survive beaten on any anvil anywhere so without further ado I'm gonna end this video I've took it enough of your time today I really hope you all enjoyed it nonetheless and be sure to watch the rest of the videos in this series around anvils as I test them as I review them I'm going be testing some really high-end anvils that are above probably the pocketbook of many all the way down as the cheapest crumb d'leh crumb even the overpriced garbage that you might even see on the net just so this way I can give you a better idea idea of what you all are dealing with out there before you make that purchase on an online anvil so that's it for today thank you guys so much for watching as always god bless you and we'll catch you on the next one

Channel: Christ Centered Ironworks

Views: 706,041

Rating: 4.5230622 out of 5

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Id: RS_gbDJQrdg

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020