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The Forge LedgerWorking iron, and the iron already standing

Section 02 · Tools

Tools: the anvil, the fire and what holds the work

What the parts of an anvil are for, how a solid fuel fire is built and kept, and why tongs that fit the stock matter more than they look.

Illustrative image: a London pattern anvil on a wooden stump with tongs and a cross pein hammer resting across its face.
Illustrative image. No photograph on this site documents a real place, building, object or person.

A forge is a small number of expensive objects and a large number of cheap ones. The expensive ones are the anvil, the fire and the vise, and they are the ones people get wrong first, usually by buying for looks. This section describes what each part of an anvil is actually for, how a coal or coke fire behaves compared with gas, and why a smith owns twenty pairs of tongs rather than one adjustable pair.

In this section

  1. Illustrative image: a London pattern anvil in profile on a stump, horn to the left, hardy hole visible on the heel.

    Choosing an anvil, and what its parts do

    It is the most expensive thing in a small shop and the one most often bought for the wrong reason.

  2. Illustrative image: a side blast coal fire banked into a mound, one bar buried in the heart of it, tuyere glowing beneath.

    The forge fire: coal, coke and gas

    The fire is a tool, not a heat source, and it has to be shaped as deliberately as the work sitting in it.

  3. Illustrative image: six pairs of blacksmith tongs hanging by their reins from a steel rail, jaws of different patterns.

    Tongs that fit the work

    A pair of tongs that nearly fits the stock is not a small annoyance. It is the reason the piece landed on the floor.

  4. Illustrative image: a rack of shop made hardy tools and punches standing in a wooden block beside a scarred anvil.

    Shop tips and tools: the reference page

    Every page on this site leans on this one, because most forging problems turn out to be holding problems.

Every page in this section is written against the reference page on shop tips and tools, and two neighbouring sections extend it: Craft and Heritage.