Best price HF 55lbs Anvil

Unfortunately, they CAN! If the metal is of poor quality, then it will chip and crack. Not reporting that I have seen that, but it is possible. I haven't bought anything from them in 20 years.

Jon

Not sure on the price, haven't been paying attention. I think those anvils are coming from Russia BTW, the smaller are from China.

Pete C.

When I was in the FD, a favorite saying of one of the Captains was, "(Name) can FU an anvil in the middle of the desert using a rubber hammer".

Max

LOL - that is good!!! Know the feeling.

Those Russian anvils are reportedly a good piece, and a bargain. If they are on sale at $30, I need to go by there. Might have to get one of the shop girls to carry it out for me though.

Hmmm.... As far as I can remember, all the HF 55lbs anvils are cast iron, and barely suitable for use as door stops.

Some of their 110lbs anvils are Russian made cast steel, and are a pretty good buy. Some are a little sloppy... I suggest opening the box and looking it over in the store before you buy.

They have a bunch of other cast iron anvils of most any weight you can think of.

I bought a 110lbs russian a few years ago, and other than the horn finish being on the rough side, am very happy with it.

Good Luck!

Erik

To find the best price for any cast iron anvil, price out doorstops, and pay that price. Maybe some of the other posters are thinking of the 110 pound (50 Kg) anvil that HF sells. That one is cast steel. The face isn't very hard, but at about $80 on sale, I think it's worth a try. You can grind away the dings for a long time before you'd have to retire it. And, since it's soft, it should be easy to build back up with welder and grinder.

As far as "what can they do wrong?": A friend bought one of those once to show how cheaply an anvil could be had for. (I don't know where he got it) Anyway, the first time he laid a piece of hot iron on the horn and hit it, the horn jsut melted away. Seems that they had fille in the poorly cast horn with Bondo.

Pete Stanaitis

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snipped-for-privacy@n> What is the best price for HF 55lbs Anvil Lot no. 806.

I have one of their 55 lb Made in China anvils and have had no problems with it. On the other hand, my expectations aren't all that high. I'm sure it would drive a good blacksmith nuts. But this brings up the crux of the matter. If your usage is such that you need a good anvil, you probably would know enough about anvils that you wouldn't need to be asking. On the other hand, if your useage is like that of many of us, you just need it to back up something you are hammering apart (or together) or you use it to bend stuff you heated up with an O/A torch now and then or to simply pound something (reasonably) flat now and then, it will work just fine. Unless, of course, you have the rotten luck to get a defective one and you knock a major chunk out of it. In that case, HF will probably replace it for you (they're not perfect, but they stand behind their stuff a lot better than some other folks I could name...).

Jerry

Mike

I bought one of those about 6 or 7 years ago for $25 delivered. The first time I used it was to clean up the mushroomed end of a "brass" punch, to my complete surprise this dented the anvil.

I have done limited blacksmith work on it and it is not ideal but workable if: you are not too fussy about the finish since it will always be covered with dents and the dents will transfer to your work, and you don't need to do a lot of work on the horn which is pretty wide and thus cannot be used for small radius bends. It has been workable, but just barely, and I feel I got my money's worth out of it but I am watching ebay for a bigger one with a hardened face and conical horn.

If I had to do it all over again I think I would buy one of the 110 lb cast steel anvils. It depends on what you want to do. If you are at all serious about blacksmith work I'd say forget it. For occasional smithing and just beating on things with no smooth finished surface requirements it should do the job.

Carl

Thanks for all the great responses. The shape of the horn is critical. It is typically used to make things round or change a radius in some manner. Looking at the picture in the ad it looks like a wedge shape with a constant radius from end to end and a lack of a sharp point. A cone shape, or distorted cone, with constantly changing radius that comes to a relatively sharp point is what one should expect from a real anvil.

I have gotten by with a 4x4x16 inch solid square bar and a similar piece of rail on my garage concrete floor. I need to form heavy wire up to #3 rebar for innards of sculptures. Thought this anvil would make things more 'civilized' and softer for the knees.

The soft metal will clearly prevent any splintering. The Mythbusters on the Discovery TV channel 'proved' that hammers etc against each other was a myth! Most likely the end result of overly cautious manufactures.

Ebay does not work for me. If anybody has a real anvil between LA and San Bernardino,CA I'm in the market .

Mike

My previous leadhand has a piece of hardened dowel pin *in* his wrist because the surgery would be too complicated to try and extract it. He got it by whacking the dowel into a tight hole using a ball pean hammer. I've been present when a piece of a dowel embedded itself into a co-worker's palm, although he was able to remove it days later.

Hard on hard is dangerous to say the least. While it may be unlikely that a hammer will come apart when struck with another, the risks far outweigh the benefits (wtf are you doing whacking a hammer with another hammer anyway?)

Regards,

Robin

Has anyone tried to flame-harden one of these things? That's likely what the original manufacturer did to get it hard in the first place...

Regards,

Robin

NOT SO!!!

Maybe the Mythbusters people weren't able to bust one of theirs, but believe me, hammers certainly have the potential, and occasionally do... sometimes spectacularly.

Erik

If you are making rebar sculptures, it might be better to bend things by driving them DOWN into a swage anyway. The "swage" can be made from 2

6 or 12 inch long pieces of railroad rail bolted or welded side by side about 4 or 5 inches away from eachother. Lay the bar on top, hit it, move an inch or so, hit it again, etc. By observing and controlling the depth of the "dent", you can make rapid progress.

If this doesn't make sense, email me off list and I will clean up this description.

Pete Stanaitis

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snipped-for-privacy@n> What is the best price for HF 55lbs Anvil Lot no. 806.

By purchasing one made of cast iron, as this one is. Spend a little more and buy the one made in Russia, which is cast steel. It's rough as hell to look at, but it will take a beating.

Harold

A friend's son was blinded in one eye by a splinter off a chisel hit by a hammer.

I cringe when I see people hammering without eye protection.

A while back I decided to have a closer look at HF anvils. The method I used was the ball bearing drop test which consists of dropping a ball bearing (larger than 1/2") from a measured height onto the face of the anvil and measuring the % of rebound results. As a control I used my

100 year old Peter Wright anvil which rebounds approx. 90% of the drop distance.

The steel 110# anvil was the best with just over 50% rebound and the smaller anvils were down in the 30% range. This, to me, is an indication of either a poor choice of steel (for the 110#er) or inadequate or non-existent heat treating which will allow the surface of the face to be easily dented (which will transfer to the part being worked on).

It's possible the larger anvil has some type of heat treating/hardening (just TRY to ask an HF associate about this LOL) which, if you were to try to heat treat it again yourself, would most likely be lost. If you only need a chunk of metal to beat on HF is ok, but if you enjoy working with decent tools there are other, far better, choices.

dennis in nca

I have two of the 110 pound Russian anvils, and have been happy enough with them. The word is that the 55 pound anvils are not worth the price. The 110 pound anvils need a little grinding on the horn, but are find for light to moderate work. I hard-faced one of mine and really pound the crap out of it, and it's been fine. I have a nice 460 pound anvil, and I use the customized HF anvil far more.

The good thing about a cheap anvil is that you don't have to worry about marring the face -- just run some mig wire on it, grind, and you're good to go.

Jeff P.

Carl, your writeup was very interesting. Have you considered buying one of those 110 lbs steel anvils and hardfacing the top with hardfacing electrodes (can be found very cheaply). Grinding hard facing flat could be quite time consuming, though.

i