This 500 Year Old Fortress is Full of Giant Anvils

everyone in today's episode we've got something a little bit different planned we're getting a tour of what I think is going to be just about the coolest place in the whole planet it is a Renaissance era Italian Fortress owned by a guy who collects anvils let's get right on into it this is set up by my buddy Oliver Goldschmidt who's an amazing knife maker near Florence in Italy he knew these guys and was able to set up the tour and I'm very very very excited beautiful road to get up to the castle here not an easy track definitely need four-wheel drive this is the main main entrance this Fortress Is Over 400 years old it obviously has had some wear and tear in that time but they're in the process of renovating it to restore it to its former glory uh what what year was it built [Music] yeah he was saying it's a military Fortress but it was never used in war interesting but [Music] foreign area now before we get to see the whole collection we got to walk around some of the old buildings see the old Barracks for the soldiers that were stationed here see where the quarters were the the kitchens stuff like that really really neat I've been in buildings this old before but normally they were in a museum or a little bit more of a delicate setting this is a little bit more raw and very very cool so he's saying this is not a normal uh well it's basically the same probably the same volume of this building here with um a lot of room a lot of a lot of water oh yeah just to make sure they can stay in here for you a long time if they were sieged he says the eight the the eight it would be about 20 acres oh wow in the future so we we entered and we had 20 acres of it's the largest it's considered the largest Fortress in Italy really yes wow it's like a dining room tables you can forge on this table oh totally oh [Music] first anvil Italian but it's a firmity a French maker before Italian shape yeah yeah around this is another fireplace the guards oh my gosh that is so cool is no Germany you can work now but 20 years ago the earth the earth reach uh reached the last Windows wow and you guys they they dug all this Earth out wow how how what filled it up just time for people in over the years just you know throwing dirt peasant in the presence well I have to interrupt really quick to say something and that is that I feel so unbelievably fortunate to get people to go on trips like this to be able to visit places like this and that sort of thing would not be possible without you guys watching and without sponsors like Squarespace I know you guys appreciate the funny Squarespace intros but on I I'm really tired so instead I have a sincere thank to Squarespace responsibilities episode and I feel so fortunate to have them as a sponsor because I really truly enjoy their product an awful lot I've been using Squarespace for five years now and it is just an incredibly powerful tool for a small business or someone who wants to be able to show off their hobby they have pre-laid out website designs so you don't have to be an amazing graphic designer to have a beautiful website you can just kind of plug and play choose what you like it's easy to drag and move things around to get it how you like it or if you don't want to have to make that type of decision they already have everything laid out it's very easy to upload products to sell on there so you can sell online you can accept all kinds of different payment both online or in person for point of sale systems you can keep track of your inventory if you want to have a little bit more intimate of a following you can have members only areas galleries links to social media adding new pages blogs all of that stuff is very very very simple and easy to do so if you guys are interested in checking out Squarespace and giving it a shot go to squarespace.com forward slash will stelter for 10 off your first purchase of a website or a domain because you can do domains through Squarespace as well which is super neat thank you Squarespace responding today's episode with that let's hop back on over the pond to Italy to keep on talking about super neat stuff like anvils and vices and switchblocks and castles and stuff what year was it abandoned into the war yeah so as we walk him into the second level the more fortified part of the Fortress the first thing that we see is this amazing thousand-year-old church just absolutely blows me away that something that old is just hanging out sitting here at the top of the Fortress at the top of the hill over the town and it's still in pretty excellent shape obviously there's been some restoration work and things have been up kept on it but it is absolutely amazing to see such a cool old church after that we get a view of the main portion of the large anvils in the collection and it is just absolutely breathtaking I want to count all of the anvils that I see for the video they might you guys might have to help me um foreign oh my God now I think that anvils are super super cool but there's definitely a soft spot in my heart for big vices and these are the largest vices I have ever seen by far these giant Italian post vices are very unique they are not common at all and it sounds like they were really only made in Italy and I haven't really seen them anywhere else these were definitely one of the most impressive things that I saw in the whole collection so this Vice is 400 kilos scale on top of that giant cast Vice device thing on top of it is an eight inch post device which is about as big as anything that you're gonna be able to find in America and it looks like a tiny Vice compared to the giant giant I don't know probably 14 or 16 inch wide jaw Vice underneath it this is the biggest anvil Russian right 770 so that's 1500 pounds now it's actually right at 1700 pounds it had to be about five feet long and about a foot wide it's absolutely unbelievably massive and the scale that you get from the camera just doesn't quite show off just how massive this Anvil really was and it came from France wow the German right no no no from uh Switzerland Switzerland uh you can recognize because this space is not straight but a loop yeah degree yeah no stronger yeah but that's interesting with the with the foot [Music] wow now it was absolutely wild to walk past so many massive anvils pieces that in America would be the centerpiece of anyone's blacksmith shop five six seven hundred pound anvils that looks so small compared to some of the other anvils in the collection that I just walked past hardly looking at him twice it was a weird feeling to be surrounded by so many absolutely massive cool old anvils it's so cool holy cow s is this uh is this Swiss as well no no even with that foot shape it looks the the the face looked very Yorkshire to me but the but the foot did not all right [Music] Sheffield 400 400 35 kilo oh my gosh 435 kilos is just a hair shy of a thousand pounds that means that this entire thousand pound chunk of Wrought Iron and Steel was at a glowing white temperature at one point being beat on by hand hammers an unbelievable thing to even think about completely overshadows the one next to it that was probably still about 800 pounds that Anvil weighs about a hundred pounds more than my little giant power hammer which is crazy to think about cool to get to go inside the thousand-year-old church to see the stone work uh the beautiful masonry as well as some of the carvings and whatnot it's a very holy feeling place and uh just a little bit of a personal load I thought it was extra cool that it is surrounded by anvils gosh so they're both both over a thousand pounds amazing it was super interesting to me walking past pallets of these massive post vices they were all six to eight inch jaws and they're just Stacks and stacks of them all over the place very very very cool how tall this wage blocks of some of these tools are yeah oh yes lovely my uh my main Anvil is a 400 pound coleslaw yeah so newer newer I walk wow this this is Belgian in his two Gun Barrel makers so cool this is the bigger and inside the I like the uh the treadle Hammer too on the crazy animal yeah did you see the the oh is a shape oh yeah that's beautiful so there's 260 anvils outside in the yard there that is bigger than any Anvil collection than I had seen and we weren't even all the way through hadn't even made it into the building full of anvils this area was super interesting it had a lot of the really really old anvils things anywhere from you know two to five hundred years old or more it's cool to see how rough those forgings were while still being totally functional and they had been used a lot you can really tell by the mushrooming on the faces it kind of gives it a more organic look to the top of it and you can kind of tell by the lack of uniformity in the anvils as well things were a little bit rougher back then Iron and Steel were far harder to produce and without giant power hammers and we'll move things around anvils were definitely a lot more of a challenge to be able to forge oh my gosh very very old [Music] yeah wow I feel like the like the 500 year old paintings that I see the anvils look like that yes yeah hey why when you ask me which one I like this yeah this one oh my that's it yeah yeah that's a that's a very clean uh Gun Barrel in there wow yeah oh my so what uh what was the purpose for such a long um questioning yeah in America we have uh steak anvils the like this that have a very long heel like that oh tongue okay that uh that's a very interesting one too so so thin yeah uh ah not that yeah he's on a diet one eight four two 1842. oh my goodness Italian [Music] um very very old you think and uh oh interesting yeah of course yeah yeah very cool we need to have a look at this little thing I need to 394.95 that's 98. 398. that's a very interesting postvice to have such thin Jaws for how heavy it is down below I wonder if it was set in the ground or something wow this is a huge Forge Nissan [Music] they would tied into the to the boat yeah that's awesome wow oh my God all right oh that X is so cool and those are cool tongs too fantastic [Music] same size yeah oh my goodness yeah very very cool oh that's a sweet 106 anvils so far no way oh my gosh how cool is that that is so cool it's like the the predecessor to an American Tomahawk right yeah that's really cool there's something written on it [Music] oh my gosh 407 408 409 410 just finding more on those yep we're at 410 so far I didn't even know I could count that high oh my goodness oh 411. um longest longest screwdriver he said he can't put any more anvils in here otherwise the floor will just go down little Arm and Hammer Arm and Hammer yeah it was cool to see so many different shapes of anvils different countries produce anvils that look so differently and then different time periods produce very different looking anvils as well they have an awesome collection of weird old anvils with very uncommon shapes made for specific purposes it was an absolute treat to get to see so many different shapes in such a wide variety Church yeah smaller Church yeah these oh yeah straight yeah wow [Music] my mind the wall is it's not safe yeah amazing thank you so much this place is amazing wow it's a it's funny it's dangerous to associate oh my God yeah yep oh my goodness yeah it's funny for me uh how subtle a lot of the differences between the different uh manufacturers are or the different uh regions the Bavarian is so slightly different from the Swiss which is very slightly different from the Austrian yeah in the world the Gloria Dio glory to God yeah in German yeah we like this yeah you're counting oh the Cutler's anvils yeah yeah foreign this is the most remarkable place I've ever been in my whole life 419 anvils that I saw on and might have under counted a little bit this marble plaque is a thank you note essentially from the local villagers who took refuge in the Fortress during the second world war they hold up here and were able to avoid the fascists coming through definitely a very interesting history that it was put to good use even so long after it was originally built that it was really able to keep the local people safe during a time of need I think it's a very neat part of the history of the Fortress and a very nice plaque in order to commemorate it foreign before we left we had to go ahead and find the couple of donkeys and sheep that actually live at The Fortress full time they wander around and graze but we hadn't seen them the whole time that we're walking around and so there's a little bit of concern that maybe something can happen to them so we got to explore it through the cave and tunnel system underneath The Fortress in the lower level where there's areas for cannons to be placed and basically the lower defenses of the Fortress and we walked around until we finally did find them on the far side of the Fortress hanging out eating grass in this beautiful kind of open area overlooking the hills of Tuscany it was super super pretty and if I was to be stuck in a fortress for a long period of time this seems like a very nice place to do it so this here is the valley that leads to Florence so when you're coming into the north you have to pass by this Fortress along with Castle right there another Fortress and then there's another large Castle down below that you all have to pass by we're marching an Army in from the north to try and get to Florence [Music] second reinforcement well the Fortress of San Martino is definitely one of the most magical places in the whole world I'm glad I got the chance to be able to film it to share it with you guys I hope you enjoyed that place is just unbelievable total sensory overload ton of fun I'm over the moon that I got to visit it was just just beautiful the rest of the trip to Italy was a ton of fun as well I got to work with Oliver Goldschmidt in the shop we started a collaboration project we went hot air ballooning had some delicious food and had just a great time overall so huge thank you to Oliver Goldschmidt if you guys haven't seen his work you absolutely have to he is one of the best bladesmiths in the world in my opinion uh his design work the way that he thinks about knives is just totally different from other people and it's worth having a follow along with so check out his Instagram Goldschmidt knives thank you ollie and a huge thank you to our gracious host for giving us a wonderful tour of the Anvil castle that place is unbelievably cool another quick thing that I got to do on my way back from this trip which it's very much related to this is visit my friend Christian in Frankfurt he also has a beautiful Anvil collection some of the anvils in the collection in Italy he originally found in Germany and got to them which is super cool it was only by coincidence that I got to go see his collection but we got to hang out talk about anvils for a little bit do some forging he's got a beautiful shop and a wonderful collection you all should check him out as well Anvil Hunter on Instagram that will all be linked down below another thing to note is that the collection of anvils sometimes they put up anvils for sale we'll have a link to their website down below for those of you who are in Europe it's probably a little bit more economical but I think it's also possible to get them over here into the states and they have some absolutely wild pieces and as you guys can tell I'm back in Montana now made it home safe and much like the medicis of old patronizing the great artist thank you to our patrons for patronizing us even though we're maybe not quite so good as Michelangelo or someone like that and if you guys like old tools go ahead and drop a comment down below with the coolest tool that you've ever seen out in the wild in person with that I will catch you guys on the next one bye bye

Channel: Will Stelter

Views: 1,423,281

Keywords: Knifemaking, Culinary, Chef, Chefsknives, Cooking, Cooking knives, Blacksmith, Bladesmith, Handmade, Forged, Will Stelter, Anvil, Power hammer, italy

Id: NmuvxeYWsnI

Length: 25min 20sec (1520 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2023