That Tuesday my anvil went quiet and I thought I lost my hearing

Last week I was flattening a 1 inch round bar for a gate hinge, and around 2pm the anvil just went quiet. No ring, no bounce, just a dull thud like I was hitting wet wood. I checked my ears, shook my head, even asked my neighbor if he heard anything weird, and he said I sounded like a kid banging on a pot. Turns out there was a hairline crack under the base plate that filled with scale over the winter, and it was eating all the rebound. I spent 3 hours grinding it clean and re-seating it on a fresh stump, and the ring came back louder than before. Has anyone else had an anvil go dead mid-job, and did you find it was something dumb like mine?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_wood21mo ago

Damn, that's wild. Mine did the same thing and it was just a stuck piece of scale too.

the_christopher1mo ago

Stuck piece of scale" huh? I hear you @casey_wood2, but I gotta say mine was NOT that simple. I pulled the whole thing apart twice, cleaned every nook and cranny, and it STILL came back. Turned out the gasket was warped just enough to let water sneak by. Took me a third teardown and a caliper to finally catch it. So yeah, sometimes it really is just scale, but don't sleep on the seal if yours keeps acting up.