How to Lightly Restore an Anvil

Follow along as I bring this 100-ish year old, 100 lb Trenton anvil back to life. I bought this anvil locally for $400, which is a decent price considering its shape. The rust needs to be removed and the rough places cleaned up, but nothing is broken or chipped off. The goal is nothing crazy, just get it back in good working shape to last for another 100 years.

Tools Used:

Angle Grinder

Grinding Disk

Flap Disk

Cold Chisel

Wire Cup Brush

Materials Used:

Evaporust Gel

Boiled Linseed Oil/ Beeswax Mix

WD-40 (to stop rust during project)

Scotch Brite Pads

Water

Engine Degreaser

If your anvil isn't covered in grease, you might be able to skip this step. For whatever reason, this one was covered in grease and grime, so my fist step was to spray it down with engine degreaser and give it a good scrub with a Scotch Brite pad.

Use water to rinse off degreaser. If for some reason you have to wait a while before moving on to the next step, spray the anvil with WD-40 to keep it from flash rusting.

A wire wheel is the cornerstone of any good restoration. Use a crimped wire cup brush mounted to an angle grinder to remove the vast majority of the surface rust from the anvil. Be mindful of your eyes and skin, as it will frequently send these little wires flying off.

Depending on how well you were able to remove the rust and grime with the wire wheel, you might be able to skip this step. I still had some rust in the deeper grooves, so I used Evaporust gel to cover the entire anvil (instead of dipping it like with traditional Evaporust). After two hours or so its done converting any remaining rust (the picture with the white film). Rinse with water to stop the reaction and clean off the oxidized film. Use a wire wheel again to remove any remaining film.

9the picture

Someone used this anvil as a welding table, which unfortunately isn't uncommon, so it was covered in "welding balls". A cold chisel worked well to remove those.

The horn of this anvil had some pretty serious cuts and gouges on it, so I opted to use an angle grinder to smooth those sections out. There were also a couple of deep pockmarks on the edge of the face that I softened up with it. Be sure to not leave the grinder in one place to long because it could overheat that section and cause it to loose temper.

I want to note that if you have a rare anvil or a collectors anvil, I advise against using an angle grinder or other abrasive on it because it could hurt the value. This anvil, however, is neither of those things. But I did want it in good working condition so that the surface wouldn't mar my work in the future.

Put an 80 grit flap disk on your angle grinder and use it to clean up the face, edges, and smooth out the grinder marks on the horn. A flap disk is less aggressive than a regular grinding disk, and wont heat it up as much either. The goal here isn't to remove every imperfection, on the face or the edges, but just try to smooth things out the best you can while keeping the face flat and the edges usable.

Once you've finished all the metal work, give the anvil a good coating in a finish of your choice to help keep it from rusting again. I used a boiled linseed oil/beeswax finish I like to use in woodworking to coat every surface.

Now that it's all cleaned up, the anvil has much better ring and rebound, the latter being very important in blacksmithing. Congratulations! Your anvil is ready for another century of work.