That oldtimer who showed me a cracked anvil face at a hammer-in in Ohio

I was at a hammer-in outside Columbus last July and this grizzled guy named Walt pulled me aside to look at his anvil. The face had a hairline crack running right through the hardened plate from years of cold work and sharp edges. Anyone else ever catch a crack starting on their anvil before it turned into a full split?

3 comments

3 Comments

leodavis24d ago

Nah, I gotta push back on that. If a crack shows up on an anvil face, that's usually from something like a stuck tool or a bad strike, not just "years of cold work." I've seen guys run anvils for decades with no cracks because they don't hammer on the edge or they keep the face oiled. That crack you saw was probably from Walt dropping a hardened hammer on it or someone using a chisel wrong. Anvils are tough cookies, they don't just split from normal use unless you're beating on them like a madman.

lee_reed24d ago

You say "I've seen guys run anvils for decades with no cracks" but how do you know they weren't just hiding them with oil or a fresh coat of paint? I've pulled anvils out of shops that looked clean on top but had a hairline fracture running half the length of the face underneath. Walt's anvil had that same look where you could see a dark line if you wiped the oil off. So did he drop a hammer on it that one time, or was it just old age and a thousand strikes finally letting go?

adam_patel24d ago

Funny you mention that, my uncle had an old Fisher anvil in his barn that he swore was fine for years. One day we moved it to a new spot and the whole face just popped off clean like a lid. Turns out there was a forge weld line under there that had been hiding since the 1800s. So yeah, sometimes it ain't the strike that gets it, it's just the anvil finally deciding to retire.