Swages from hammers

[Philip Davies]

I bought a load of hammers cheaply, they cost less than 50p each and set about making a set of swages. Recently I sold the larger of my two anvils, including a lot of the tooling, since my smaller anvil has a 5/8” hardy hole. I thought I’d priced it high, since I was reluctant to let it go, but I was informed my price was a “steal”! Then I thought, I still need a range of tooling if I want to continue forging, so although I already had a couple, and since nobody else had any use for the hammers, that would be ideal material.
The last couple of weeks, my main exercise has been sawing and filing. Only one hacksaw blade was used! (An Eclipse). 1200 strokes + for the 7/8” V swage. More certain, if a lot more work than hitting a square bare into a red hot blank, and I don’t have hardenable stock that size.