My first year of graduate school, I bid on a rusty old anvil, and ended up with it! It is an almost 200 pound cast Vulcan. (I'm learning things about it her as I go.) It has been waiting for me in St. Louis, where my family lives, until I had a studio destination and the tools to fix it up. Check out the gouges... This is a shot after I got through all the rust and filth on the face. It looks good compared!
I started out using a 36 grit sanding disk, I must have gone through 7 or 8...
I moved on to a 50 grit sanding disk. Things were looking better, but not great. Turns out that the anvils horn must have broken off under the hardened steel top plate and fixed with weld. The color differentiation is pretty obvious in person, but not so much in the photo. The pits are definitely obvious!
After 6 or 7 50 grit disks, I moved on to hand filing the edges of the face, because they were completely rolled over. As I work on this beast, I imagine what the former life of this anvil was like... was it on a farm- used to correct equipment, or used in a smithy until the bitter end? Whatever the case, she was well used. This will be a good facelift, and new life. There is still loads of work to be done. I'd like to get the face as flat as possible, and sand up to a 400 grit. Stay tuned for updates, I'm not nearly finished!
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