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Tres Bigornia Catalan – Anvils


Three Catalan (Spanish) Anvils.
Photos provided by Stefaan Meeus – Belgium.
From the Barcelona “Forja Viva” blacksmiths gathering. Apart from being a great get-together of blacksmiths, they also seem to have a peculiar type of anvil, so I took a few pic’s.
– Stefaan

The Catalan anvils look somewhat like the French/Spanish/Italian style anvils (broad face compared to its height) without feet but with a “tail” (stake) instead to fix them into a wooden block. The smallest one looked like 30 kg range, but the biggest (anvil nbr. 4, from 1924, in Guillermina Morales’s workshop; Guille was the driving force behind this event) weighs 200 kg. The last one weighs 97 kg. At least one anvil looked cast, a few of the others seemed to have a welded face and looked forged (like the last one). The most peculiar feature is the offset square horn (seen on all local anvils except the 200 kg and a smaller one). Some anvils features a round an a square hole, others only a round hole. I only saw a dog hole on the square horn side.

Illustration from Southwestern Colonial Ironwork by Marc Simmons and Frank Turley.
Bigornia, Bigorneta, Bigornia de Banco, Yunque