At that same time, I was doing regular work in the forge making this or that. Occasionally I would get frustrated because I'd have to put a step or shoulder in a piece of steel I was working which requires the use of my anvil’s edge. The problem is that my anvil is quite old and had a pretty hard life before I came along and most of my edges are chipped and damaged. There are ways to refinish the faces of anvils but it don't really want to do that so I made due with what I have.
One day while trying to organize my work area I had to move the block in order to brush off the forge tabletop. I set it on the face of my anvil and resumed cleaning. When I went to move it back I looked at it and an obvious solution came to mind. I could dress the edges of this block of steel to whichever radius I want. I could even put a few different ones on there which is what a lot of Smith's did in the past. This way I could get the edge work surface I wanted and not have to drastically alter my anvil. I grabbed my angle grinder with a flapdisk on it and went to work. I made one edge nice and round another one was a sharper round and I left a couple edges at 90°.
Once finished with that I stood there and looked at the block and thought maybe I should weld on some feet so I could keep it from moving all over the place while I'm working on it. I don't have a welder in the forge that could handle that kind of job so I took it to work where there are plenty of welders available. At lunch I set everything up and just as I was going to strike an arc i saw a bracket used to attach truck bodies to frames hanging on the side of the bench I was at. It's angled stock with decent sized hole in a nice solid plate of steel and I thought, “That looks like something i could turn into a serviceable hardy hole.” Most hardy holes are somewhere from ¾” to 1” square so as to accept a hardy tool. Hardy tools are usually different types of tools with a square peg base that fit into the hardy hole on the anvil and aid the blacksmith in certain ways like bending, cutting and shaping.
I cut the bracket off the table and cleaned it up. I then looked around for some steel tubing with a 1” inner diameter. I found some that had a decent wall thickness and cut off a section long enough to hold any of the tools I owned. I then used a die grinder to square out the round hole in the bracket to get my tube, positioned the tube and welded it in place and used a sander to flatten out the face of the hardy hole. Then it was just a matter of welding it to one end of the block. Even though I have a state structural welding certification, I don't weld full time so my welds are fairly ugly but very functional. I welded it up and sanded it to my satisfaction.
As a stood there looking at it I remembered a chunk of kelly bar I had at the forge which has a hole drilled in it. I thought that would work as a pritchel hole even thought it's quite a bit larger than most standard ones. Pritchel holes are commonly used to aid in punching holes in metal and are usually around 1/2" in diameter. I figure if i need to, I can make a reducer to fit in the hole. I brought the piece I to work, cut it down to size and welded it on the opposite end. It was around this point I figured I might as well face the fact that I was building an anvil or at least an (ASO) anvil shaped object.
Once I settled on that it was time to decide what to do about a horn. The horn is commonly shaped as a tapered offset cone. Given the resources I has this wasn't really feasible so I opted to weld on a couple chunks of used machine pins I salvaged out of the shop scrap bin. I cut those to length, welded them on and sanded them to shape. I saw that I never got around to welding on the feet so I did that and as I was positioning it I got to look g at the hardy hole bracket and realized that I wanted to make that bracket a little more sturdy so I weld scrap diving again and found some decent plate stock, trimmed it to fit and welded it across the bottom and rear of the bracket effectively closing most of the bracket up.
So, that's that. I meant to do a little grinding to make a use out of something that was in the shop and the next thing I know I have a 65 lb ASO. I classify this as an ASO because it doesn't have a hardened face that I'm aware of. It will be serviceable as an auxiliary work surface and for small work but the majority of my work will be done on the shop anvil. I haven't ruled out welding a hardened top plate on this thing but it's just not necessary to do that right now. I imagine it will get more use as the shouler block I had intended it to be but it might work as a secondary anvil if I have a visitor to the shop who wants to doodle around. Regardless, I'm pretty proud of my little accidental anvil.
