The Bloomfield times. [volume] (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1867-187?, 1871-10-03
Something About AnviIs.


anvil that has done duty for more than
three hundred years It's as sound to-
day as it was in 1888, when Ellwood
Pomeroy, after welding for the Stuarts
the ponderous horse-shoes of the same
style and pattern that his ancestors had
made during many generations for the
Tudors and Plantagenets, grew weary of
taxes without law and work without wages,
and, anvil in hand, sailed for the new
world. A deft workman, he throve in
the settlements, and left his anvil as an
heirloom to his descendants.
They show you in the Tower of Lon
don the anvil on which the sword was
forged that Richard Cour de Lion used
in his famous contest with Saladin.; and
at the collection of Pompeian excavations
in Naples there is an anvil, certainly old.
er than the Christian centuries, which, of
precisely the shape we use, had evidently
done service for stalwart wOrkmen Of
many generations before the city was
buried. ...., ...
But better STILL in the Egyptian room
Of the British Museum, there is verita-
bic anvil of the Pharoahs. 1t is older
than Rome, older than Greece, older than
Jerusalem as old as the days of Abra-
ham, and probably in existence when the
patriarch "was come into Egypt, and the
Egyptians beheld Sarai that she was very
fair" 1t is just like modern anvil,
made apparently in the same way, weigh
ing about seventy-fve pounds, and sound
as it was when first struck by hammer
thirty centuries ago.
The old way of making anvils, and
still the process by which the larger num-
Der is manufactured, is as follows The
business commences by welding quanti-
ty of the choicest iron-usually scraps
that come from broken tools, shafting out
of use, steam-boilers worn out, and the
like-into mass which becomes the nu-
cles of the anvil. These scraps, brought
to white heat in the furnace, are sub
jected to the heavy blows and crushing
weight of the trip-hammer, under which,
twisted and turned, fattened and round
ed, the concrete gains rough approx
nation to the desired form 1t is then,
in company with another piece of iron,
called "sccond weld" recommitted to
the furnace. Reaching the necessary
heat, both nuces" and second weld"
are drawn, and placed instantly-not this
time under the trip-hammer-under the
blows of forge-hammers in the hands of
workmen, one beginning the work, then
a second joining in, and so on, until
four are pounding upon the two pieces,
fast uniting into one, in rapid and regu-
lar succession. The strikers are guided
in their work by the action Of their lead
er, each man directing his hammer to
that part indicated by the leaders blow.
An on-lookor has no idea of this, and he
is naturally surprised to note that under
all their apparently reckless blows, the
glowing mass gradually assumes form and
shapeliness. If the anvil were a small
article of trifing weight, it might be pos
sible to forge it whole from a single
piece of iron, as farrier does a horse
shoe. But anvils weigh from three hun
dred pounds to thousand They are
made more than any other article, in
good faith. A single "put up" anvil
might ruin the reputation of the manu-
facturers. In fact, large anvil is built
up of twenty pieces of metal. Each
piece, in company with the ever-growing
g nucles," has to be subjected to the heat,
the drawing, the blows of the sledge-
hammer, and the shaping already de-
scribed The corners which project at
the base to steady it, the protrusion to-
ward the beak, the parts of the posterior
projection, and the rounded sides, are all
separately shaped and welded on by the
rapid blows Of the workmen Finally,
there is the upper surface, made of the
toughest steel, which. must at the cost of
utmost strength of blow and skill Of craft,
be homologated with the solid iron
that the whole may be in perfect
union, ,.f-..... .r.a...y.r .r m
The high temperature to which the
workmen are exposed during the twenty
"welds" is very exacting. TO protect
them from the furnace fire a curtain of
iron is hung up as a screen. During the
process of welding this screen is almost
always red-hot, and yet it furnishes pro-
lection of which the men are glad enough
to avail themselves. The larger the
mass to be forged, of course the fercer
must be the fire Of the furnace to brin &
the iron to Welding condition; and
when the iron has to be shaped by blows
delivered at hand, the strikers must come
into close condition with their work, and