wadew51•20h agoOG Member

Took me 30 years to realize I was hammering on a bad anvil face

I've been using my granddad's old anvil since I started smithing. Always wondered why my work took so many extra heats and why my hammer strikes felt dead. Last month I was at a shop in Springfield and the smith there let me try his anvil for a minute. The difference was night and day. My hammer bounced, my steel moved faster. Got home, took a file to my anvil face and sure enough it was soft as butter. All these years I was fighting bad rebound and didn't know it. Has anyone else had a similar moment where the equipment was holding you back and you had no clue?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamie94018h ago

Spent six months trying to fix a squeaky belt on my old lathe, replaced everything from the motor to the pulley, only to find out the floor wasn't level and the whole machine was twisted just enough to rub wrong... Felt pretty stupid standing there with a handful of new parts. Makes you wonder how many hours we waste not checking the basics first.

lilyp3716h ago

Man, isn't that always how it goes? I had a similar issue with a table saw once, spent two weekends chasing a weird vibration through the blade and arbor, and it turned out one leg was sitting on a little high spot in the concrete. A couple of shims under the foot and it purred like a kitten. Feels like half the time we overthink the fancy stuff, and the real fix is just getting the machine to sit flat on the ground.