An anvil's sheer weight is what makes every hammer blow count
A good anvil is heavy for a reason. All that inertia means the energy of a hammer blow flows into the glowing metal instead of shoving the block around. A cheap cast-iron lump dents and lacks rebound, which is why blacksmiths mock such bargains as ASOs, short for anvil shaped objects.
Each part has a job. The face, hardened and tempered steel, must stay flat and smooth because any mark on it gets printed into the work, and sharp edges can cut or crack the piece. The horn, a cone of softer metal, handles bending and curves. Between them sits the step, a soft area traditionally used for cutting, though many smiths avoid it because it wears the anvil down. A square hardy hole holds specialised forming and cutting tools, while the small round pritchel hole is mostly used for punching.
Materials evolved from stone to bronze to wrought iron, and later a face of steel was added to resist deformation. Through the 19th century makers forge-welded billets of wrought iron into very fine steel-faced anvils, a method that lasted into the early 20th century, when solid cast steel took over. Most anvils found in the United States today follow the London pattern of the mid-1800s. Designs were also tailored to trades such as farriers, cutlers, chain makers and coopers, and bladesmiths often prefer a rectangular block with no horn at all.
Scale can be startling. The anvil under an industrial power hammer may rest on a block of more than 800 tons for a 12-ton hammer. Old English anvils were stamped in hundredweight using three numbers, so a hypothetical 3-1-5 would work out to about 369 pounds. The anvil sits within a step of the forge so the work loses little heat, traditionally bolted or chained to a hardwood log sunk several feet into the floor.
Although mass production has made smiths rarer, anvils live on in farriery, custom metalwork and pop culture. They are the classic cartoon object dropped on Wile E. Coyote, and Animaniacs invented a kingdom that exports nothing else. Composers have written them into scores too: the Beatles' roadie Mal Evans struck one on Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Howard Shore used anvils for Isengard in The Lord of the Rings films. In parts of the United States, people even fire anvils into the air with gunpowder.
Source: Anvil
