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Dropped the shiny anvil face and quit polishing, and my hammer marks finally look even
I kept getting these ugly shiny spots and light dings on everything I forged for months, mostly because I was spending 10 minutes after every heat polishing the anvil face with a scotch brite pad. Two weeks back a guy named Ray at a hammer-in over in Goshen showed me his anvil and it looked almost dull compared to mine. He said the shine was the problem, a mirror face just shows every stray hit and makes you chase marks you shouldn't. So I stopped polishing and knocked the anvil face down to a dull gray with 120 grit on a random orbit sander, just enough to kill the glare. Three pieces in and my hammer control got way easier to read because I wasn't fighting reflections. Now I leave the face scuffed and just wipe off scale with a rag. Has anyone else gone back to a dull anvil face after chasing a polish, or am I the odd one here?
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michael51910d ago
Dull face all day, no contest. A mirror anvil is just a fancy mirror for your mistakes, lol. Ray gave you good advice and it sounds like it clicked right away for you. I chased a polish on my first anvil for way too long and all it did was make me second guess every hit. Once I scuffed it down to gray, my eyes stopped working so hard and my arm did more of the thinking. Keep it scuffed and spend that polishing time at the forge instead.
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