Saw a guy at the county fair forge using a regular shop hammer on his anvil's horn

He was trying to shape a curve and hitting the thin tip of the horn directly. I've seen this three times this year alone. That horn is hardened steel, not a forming tool, and hitting it with a steel hammer can chip it or even crack the anvil body. I learned this the hard way when I put a small fracture in my old Peter Wright anvil about five years ago. What's the best way you've found to teach new folks about proper anvil use?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_dakota1mo ago

That "learned the hard way" part hits close to home.

hannaht291mo ago

But what if learning the hard way isn't the only path? I've found some of my best lessons came from watching others mess up first, so I could avoid that same pitfall. It saved me a ton of time and stress that I didn't need to go through myself.

the_uma13d ago

Read this article somewhere that said the brain actually processes pain from mistakes differently than secondhand lessons. Something about how the emotional sting makes the memory stickier. Not saying we should all go fall on our faces just to learn, but there's something to that concept of really feeling the consequence versus just knowing about it. For me, it was burning a batch of cookies so badly the smoke alarm went off that finally taught me to set a timer, not the ten recipe blogs telling me to. Maybe we need a mix of both kinds of learning.