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What's New at anvilfire! XV
Almost every day we are adding new items. In order to help you find the newest additions we have added this page.
Here we will try to log changes and additions by date as we make them.
There will always be daily changes in the Virtual Hammer-In and the Guru page.
In April 1998 we launched anvilfire.com!
| In 1999 we launched the following new features:
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|---|
iForge
Web-Ring Nexus
Emile's Hot Links
AnvilCAM
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International Registry of
Blacksmith Touchmarks
ABANA 2000 JYH Event
ABANA-Chapter.com
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| In 2000 we added: |
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CSI Members & Forum
Armoury Page
Story Page
anvilfire Store
Rings @ anvilfire.com!
We setup our own Ringlink webring hosting system and moved our webrings to it.
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We now host:
The Blacksmiths Ring
Steelworkers Webring
Country Life and Heritage
Architectural Metals*
Archeaometalurgy*
More to come. . .
* New - no members
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| In 2001 we added: |
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Archives Page w/ Search
Anti-Spam System
Shop Safety Page
NEW Book Review Page
w/ Paw-paw's Corner
Revolutionary Blacksmith
Slack-Tub Pub Rogues Gallery
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On-Line Metals Store
Anvilfire Tool Auction
Drop Down Menus
41 iForge demos
James Nasmyth Biography
Victor Vera Biography
All NEW FAQ's Page
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| In 2002 we have added: |
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Book II of Paw-Paw's Revolutionary Blacksmith
Two stories by J.M. Gerlinsky
Ray Smiths Notebook of Metalworking Origins
Metalworking Glossary
International Glossary
FAQs dropdown menu
NEW Store with Shopping Cart!
|
Mass3j Mass and Volume Caculator
Contact Form
Edited many new FAQs
ABANA Conference NEWS
Declared war on SPAM
Added clickable iForge images
Updated the Slack-Tub Pub System
New ABANA-Chapter header
7 New Book/CD Reviews
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| In 2003 we moved to new server and added: |
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New home page slide show
Calendar of Events
Fahrenwald Calendar page
10 New Book/Video Reviews
RepousseTools.com
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NEW Ancient Trades Web Ring
12 New iForge Demos
4 Editions of the NEWS
8 FAQs/articles
FlyPresses.com
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| In 2004 we added |
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Full-Tilt Comics
CSI E-Meeting Board Forum
10 New book reviews
Joined BS Journal Top 50
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Punching Force Calculator
Riveting Force Chart
5 Editions of the NEWS (300 images!)
6 NEW FAQs/articles
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| In 2009 we added major features |
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eBooks!
Anvil Gallerys
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Cartoon of the Day and Week
Anvil Review
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| In 2010 we added |
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AnvilCAM-II Streaming Video
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Updated Health and Safety Section.
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| In 2011 we added |
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Tailgate Page
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| In 2015 we moved |
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Due to our long time server host going out of business we have a new server host (RDO)
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Server number 6!
Added the VISE gallery
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| In 2019 we moved |
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Due to unsupported high fixed
costs we moved again.
Removing (non-paying) adsense ads
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Server number 7!
Losing page counters
More below. . .
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JANUARY 12, 2020
The change in year broke something in our comics scheduling and I have yet to figure it out. It has something to do with my system of using the first Monday of the year. .
I've been updating lots of old articles and writing a few new ones.
Added an article on forge temperature and measurement.
"Getting Started" has two paths, hobbiest and professional.
I've just added an article on learning to draw.
Related to that I added an anvil painting by Jon Gnagy in the anvil gallery.
Most of the rest of the work I am doing is fixing broken links, cleaning up old HTML and so on.
Its a constant task.
NEW!
MARCH 2, 2020
SERVER VIII: After all the angst moving to our seventh hosting situation in October we were notified a few weeks ago that the service was going out of business.
We were finally on anvilfire server VIII as of about Midnight on the 2nd of March.
A bunch of things were broken on first launch a couple hours ago but I got most things fixed I think. . .
There will be lots of individual broken pages, mostly Not Found errors.
However, the SlackTub Pub II will need a database install which means reading the install instructions. . .
I'll get to it in a day or so.
SERVER VIII :
Well. . . The AnvilCAM page and Tailgate were both not working. . .
Both have technical problems that may or may not get fixed.
Windirt is going to stop supporting Flash video. . .
and our login page for the member services on the Tailgate is irreparably broken since the October move. . .
The only good thing about THIS move is that all the serious code issues were cleared up in the October move.
However, part of that move required closing down the world location and Flags pages due to account limitations. . .
- Monday, 03/02/20 09:40:40 EST
SERVER VIII Tailgate :
The Tailgate page is cleaned out (old ads) and working except for features requiring a login.
Our login system is still broken from the last move. (Deep technical issues requiring a rebuild).
- Tuesday, 03/03/20 11:29:53 EST
SERVER VIII AnvilCAM II :
The AnvilCAM page is now working.
I removed all the broken YouTube links.
YouTube offered embeded links to millions of web pages then when they became dominant in the industry they pulled them away.
Standard shady business practice used by Google, YouTube and others in the industry.
- Tuesday, 03/03/20 11:38:41 EST
SERVER VIII adsense ads :
We are also slowly removing Google adsense ads that took years to setup. At one time they paid well, then less and less, now nothing. Worse, many of the ads are not applicable to our subject matter. . (maybe why they do not pay). We are serving thousands of unpaid ads for google. Across the industry this amounts to millions of dollars of ad revenue that google doesn't have to pay for. . .
- Tuesday, 03/03/20 12:10:12 EST
OCTOBER 12, 2019 @ 27,850,000 visitors!
We have moved (downgraded) our server situation. This is number 7 and one of our most difficult moves.
The move with its change in OS (Operating System) versions (primarily Php) broke hundreds of our pages and our login system.
These have all been fixed (that we have found) EXCEPT the login system. And our page counters are unsupported. . . (after 21years).
anvilfire consists of some 48,000 files and 3,400 "pages".
As part of this move we are doing some major reorganization.
- We took our forum archives off-line.
Search has never worked satisfactorily on them and it would be too much load on the new hosting situation.
- We closed the V.Hammer-In (virtual Hammer-In).
It was getting too little traffic to continue to maintain.
It may come back in the future in another format.
IF you find it now there is a photo of Dolphins jumping an the words "Thanks for all the Fish".
This is the good-by from the end of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
- We have "closed" the NEWS but it is still on-line due to there being so many links to and from it.
- We have had to build an all new on-line store using PayPal checkout.
- We are getting rid of adsense ads as fast as we find them as they no longer pay.
The difficult pages will be the hundreds of gallery pages. . .
- NOVEMBER - The 21centbs (21st century page) and FAQs are being combined on a new "index of articles" under
21st Century Blacksmithing.
This is a huge task. The goals being to get all our articles out of frame sets OR just floating alone with no connection to anvilfire and into our new style page.
We are starting with the most popular and most estranged pages and those they link to.
This may sound like a disorganized method but there is no organized way to sort out 21 years of organic growth.
Did I mention there are over 3,400 pages on anvilfire?
As we do this we are setting up hundreds of 301 redirects (invisible to you) to the new often edited pages (like this).
This helps avoid the dreaded "404 page not found" error. Of which I am sure we have many due to this move. . .
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
We have been working day and night for a month now updating our pages and fixing links as we update them.
So far we have only fixed about 200 pages out of thousands. This on top of building a new on-line store.
Our new page format is "liquid" as was our earliest pages.
This means you can resize the pages considerably smaller than best viewed and much larger than necessary on large monitors.
It's smallest size is limited by the largest item on the page (tables, images) and we limit images to a maximum of 640 wide.
However, it is not "mobile friendly" (at least to satisfy google) and I do not think it every will be.
We spent 20 years lagging a bit behind the growth in monitor size and connection speed so that more people could enjoy our content.
But over the years we DID increase page and image sizes.
Even returning to a 640x480 page and microscopic images will not make google happy.
For most of our pages including all of our gallery pages the best viewed size is a minimum of 900 pixels wide.
Our new store without a side bar menu works at 640 pixels wide but is still not mobile friendly (google says the links are too close together).
We researched and added a floating alphabetical index to the 21st Century page and English Glossary.
Some of you may find this useful. I do.
NOVEMBER 21, 2019
We are still updating pages moving them to our new system.
Many are being edited and added to which slows things down. . . . The Guru bio is much updated and added to.
The latest addition was to add floating headers to the Inernational Glossary pages so that they are much easier to know the language of each column.
Due to the size of these charts they do not fit our general framework. We are looking for other solutions but there are no simple fixes.
Google Mobile: We are also trying to make google's mobile device crawler (indexing robot) happy.
This seems to be an impossible task on a site as mature as anvilfire.
Since google's mobile crawler has been applied to anvilfire it has destroyed our overall ranking and traffic.
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
We have been searching for loose articles, those written and perhaps only linked from a forum archive or not at all and putting them in our new system and on the alphatetical index (FAQs/21st Century Blacksmithing list).
Among these ar knives01 (one of out original articles), Vision Safety, Hydraulic Piping, Lafitte Welding plate, sweet iron, a page of hammer images and others.
NOVEMBER 1, 2002 * We have our 2,000,000th visitor!
That is over ONE MILLION per year (353 days).
Our curent traffic rate is 1.67 million/year and will exceed 2 million/year sometime next year!
This is following the same increase that has had us equaling the total accumulated traffic of the prior years!
January 1, 2003 @ 2,255,000 Year Start.
June 30, 2003 @ 3,000,000
We have broken the three million visitor mark this morning. Traffic is down a little.
That is 745,000 visits since January 1st for an average of 4082 visits a day.
July 28, 2003 : TRANSFERED TO NEW SERVER
It took 30 days to setup and move to the new server.
This included numerous other sites that we host. It then took another couple months to debug everything. .
(Five months later we still have issues to address)
February 23, 2004 @ 4,000,000
We broke the FOUR MILLION visitor mark late today.
That is one million visitors in less than 8 months!
October 7, 2004 @ 5,000,000
Sometime in the wee hours this morning we broke the 5 million visitor mark!
That is another million visits in less 8 months again!
April 14, 2005 @ 6,000,000
We broke the 6 million visitor mark!
That is another million visits in less than 7 months!
October 17, 2005 @ 7,000,000
We broke the 7 million visitor mark!
That is another million visits in less than 6 months!
We are now at the two million visitor per year traffic rate.
December 31, 2004 @ 12:PM and 5,405,192
Posted a year end edition of the NEWS covering the passing of Bill Gichner and closing of KeenJunk.com
January 1, 2005 @ 5,407,257
In December 2004 we had 133,641 visits.
In 2004 we had: 1,680,392 visits.
In April we will be 7 years old.
Anvilfire Inventory:
378 News pages as of Jan. 1 (89.1 Mb)
334 Archive pages (51.8 Mb)
165 iForge demos (88.6 Mb)
55 Book reviews (68.9 Mb)
42 FAQs
30 Stories (not including Paw-Paw's TRB)
28 Articles not on the FAQs list
19 Power Hammer pages
15 JYH pages
13 Armoury pages
13 Plan File
----------------------
1092 TOTAL HTML article pages
Not including the home page, indexes, the Pub, Classroom, the Touchmark Registry, Mass3j calculator, Paw-Paw's
TRB, Blacksmiths Ring "home", live forums and many others. Many of these HTML "pages" would equate to many print
pages. The 200 iForge and book review pages would be 500 to 800 full size print pages.
3,000 in the iForge d
1,575 in the NEWS
3,000 in the iForge demos
500 in articles.
----------------------
+5,000 TOTAL images
January 6, 2005 @ 5,438,780
Updated the Calendar of events. You may now post your events for the entire year of 2005.
Also archived the 2004 calendar for future reference.
January 10, 2005 @ 5,456,839
Updated the Swordmaking article with another letter and added another book to the Resource list.
Posted a new book review, "Machine Shop Trade Secrets" by James A. Harvey. More to come.
February 14, 2005
Launched edition 37 of the NEWS covering my Costa Rica trip. Blacksmiths and ironwork in Costa Rica.
February 16, 2005
Found that I had lost the archives of the last two weeks of January while using somone elses computer in Costa Rica.
I had saved them there but not uploaded them due to viruses on the computer.
When I left I errased the files on their computer. . .
March 1, 2005 @ 5,797,100
March 28, 2005 @ 5,899,813
Lots has been going on since I got back including being out sick for a week and taking over a week to recuperate. . VERY bad flu!
Have not been keeping up with this log
Posted TWO new reviews on the book review page. The Rolling Mill CD has been linked from the original review.
The Hasluck's metalworking is new, great book.
Posted a FAQ on Hydraulic piping from a discusion the past few days. Thanks to Tony and ptree.
April 1, 2005 @ 5,924,340
Anvilfire's Brake Drum forge articles were featured in Farm Show Magazine, Vol 29 #2, p39.
Trafic was UP considerably in March
158,280 Visits (5,100 /day)
2,103,559 Pages served
5,581,869 Files served
44,363,570 Kbytes
Found via 23644 search terms and accessed from 128 countries and linked to by 10,000 sites!
April 3, 2005 @ 5,934,339
April 11, 2005 @ 5,980,300 Rapidly approaching six million visits!
Just updated the archives with 3 weeks from the Guru's Den and two entries for March.
Updated the Anvil Making article.
April 14, 2005 @ 6,000,000 SIX MILLION VISITS!
April 16, 2005 @ 6,013,689 SIX MILLION VISITS!
Sometime on April 14th we passed the six million visit point.
We are are at the two million visitor per year point.
Daily visits are up to 6678 in the past week!
Friday May 13, 2005
Our good friend and Chairman of CSI Jim Paw-Paw Wilson died today. He will be sorely missed.
June 1, 2005 @ 6,280,991
Archived a record sized May Virtual Hammer-In at a whopping 529K. Much of this was tributes to Paw-Paw.
We have had a record 280K visitors in 47 days. Very close to 6,000 visitors a day.
That is still a 2.1 MILLION visitors/year rate!
June 2, 2005 @ 6,286,111 5:00am
Posted the posthumous iForge safety demo on metal fume fever by Jim paw-Paw Wilson.
Moved safety demos to top of the list.
June 2, 2005 @ 6,288,311 noon
Added "almost always misdiagnosed" to last paragraph of safety demo. . that's what I get for pulling all nighters.
June 23, 2005 @ 6,398,972
Posted the Jim Paw-Paw Wilson Memorial Hammer-In pages of the news.
June 24, 2005 @ 6,401,448
Posted the NC-ABANA March meeting pages of the news.
July, 2005
Moved anvilfire office. Maintenence tasks on site and seever only.
August 18, 2005 @ 6,659,292
Started posting the Uri Hofi, Power Hammer School edition of the news. More to come!
August 21, 2005 @ 6,674,430
Finished posting the Uri Hofi, Power Hammer School edition of the news.
If you looked earlier there is much more!
August 27, 2005 @ 6,706,081
Posted July and August Archives (8). These use a new system that will reduce archiving work in the future.
It will still be done by hand for the time being but several steps have been saved by some "smart" dynamic coding. Hope to make it smarter in the future.
September 19, 2005
Updated our store shipping system so that it would correctly calculate heavy packages and oversize for Kaowool.
Kaowool in full case now shipped by UPS only, all other shipments by US Mail only.
Updated cart to use Priority mail for all Richard Postman book orders.
September 21, 2005 @ 6,837,492
Added a Coal Fire Management FAQ and updated links to and from the forge hood and low loss stack plans.
Will archive forums before leaving for SOFA in the AM.
September 29, 2005 @ 6,889,874
Posted a review of the NEW Uri Hofi power hammer video "Free Form Forging with Uri Hofi".
Posted the same for sale in the store.
September 30, 2005 @ 6,892,096
AM - Corrected the price on the NEW Uri Hofi power hammer video to 49.95. Reduced shipping on several items.
October 1, 2005 @ 6,950,000
Updated the Math FAQ with a post on mathematical thought. Added two links.
October 5, 2005 @ 6,892,096
Updated the English glossary adding some anchors and updates.
October 17, 2005 @ 7,000,000!
We passed the seven million mark today. We passed the six million mark on April 14, 2005.
That is one million visitors in less than six months for a rate of TWO MILLION visitors a year!
Added a RR-spike material FAQ.
Corrected a design error in the Blacksmiths Ring nav-bar that only showed up in the newest browsers.
Line widths which could be defined as a percentage of the width of a table cell are now incorrectly displayed as the width of the full table thus extending into other cells or out of the table.
The correction used a specific width in pixels. Maintaining HTML pages is a constant battle against changing standards. . .
October 19, 2005 @ 7,012,500
Added the color illustration to the Frank Turley Marc Simmons book review of Southwestern Colonial Ironwork.
October 20, 2005 @ 7,023,205
Posted Roman smithing illustrations from Bruce Blackistone in response to a question.
Corrected links from Reference-Guides.com to Bible-History.com on the Blacksmiths in the Bible story page.
External links are always changing and are becomming more difficult to maintain as the site grows. .
October 21, 2005 @ 7,029,891
Developed and posted a growth projection spread sheet and graph on the advertising page.
Aproximately every three and a half years our hit rate increases by 1 million per year.
We are now at two million per year. We should be at three million per year at the end of 2009.
Updated the new RR-spike FAQ and linked it from the Junkyard Steels FAQ. Also archived the guru's page today.
October 25, 2005
Added two German Anvil photos to the page on the same.
November 1, 2005 @ 7,100,000
We have had 100,000 visitors in 14 days and 150,000 for the month of October.
Some of this spike in traffic may have been due to our mention in Fabricator Magazine where they used my photos for the Uri Hofi article.
The rest is returning to the current traffic average which is over 167,000 visitors per month.
January 1, 2006 @ 7,465,897
March 1, 2006 @ 7,870,085
March 20, 2006 @ 8,000,000!
We have had one million visitors since October 17, 2005 (155 days).
This is 20 days earlier than the projection we made in October based on 7 years of traffic records.
The average for that period was 6,451 visitors per day or 2.35 million per year.
This is a traffic rate we did not expect to reach for another year.
March 22, 2006 @ 8,016,000
Added new units to the popup conversions toolkit, square feet to meters, cubic inches to CM3 and cubic feet to M3.
March 24, 2006 @ 8,030,000
Wrote an English Hundredweight calculator and linked it to the Mathematics, anvil weights and anvil selection pages.
March 27, 2006 @ 8,050,000
Archived the 405th gurusden log. Early logs were monthly, then bi-weekly and are now weekly.
April 7, 2006 @ 8,130,747
Added a handful of images to the home page random image and linked them to pages with large size pages.
Added a Sawyers anvil to the Fisher Norris anvil page. Updated many of the banners on the Slack-Tub Pub.
Posted a page with Gauntlet pattern pieces and photos.
April 8 2006 @ 8,134,404
Updated the CSI anvilfire Hammer-In page and added directions to Ken's.
April 11 2006 @ 8,161,475
Added a new story An Excursion by Gronk Pensmudge to the Story Page
May 1, 2006 @ 8,262,713
Updated the MACHINERY'S HANDBOOK general review adding some small pieces of information and a paragraph about collectors prices.
Stats show we had 100,000 visitors in 20 days. That is 150,000 per month.
May 12, 2006 @ 8,322,193
Posted review of Al Cannella's
101 Metal Projects
May 15, 2006 @ 8,338,040
Posted review of The Spruce Forge Manual of Locksmithing.
Trying to catch up on old and NEW reviews as well as some standards.
June 1, 2006 @ 8,425,353
That is 162,640 visits for May a spring record.
Traffic usually drops off in good weather when folks are spending more time outdoors and in the shops.
June 12, 2006 @ 8,477,243
Posted review of Forgotten Technology Video by Wallace Wallington.
Posted review of Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel by Gies & Gies.
Posted review of Fire and Roses, Forging the Queens Rose Video by Hans Schlosser.
June 14, 2006 @ 8,488,322
Posted review of Forge and Anvil DIY Projects by Alan Rogers.
Also updated the Art of Blacksmithing review.
That is 6 new reviews (total 61) and two updated this month.
June 19, 2006 @ 8,500,000
That is 1/2 million visits to anvilfire in the last 3 months. That is a rate of two million visitors a year.
This is down a little which is typical in late spring but is still in line with our predicted growth.
June 24, 2006 @ 8,536,225
Posted review of Dona Meilach's newest book, Ironwork Today, Inside & Out
and updated the review of her classic Decorative & Sculptural Ironwork.
June 25, 2006 @ 8,540,108
Posted a review by Melissa Sullivan of Nancy Zastrow's book,
Lives Shaped by Steel
and updated another Dona Meilach book review.
Even though the Zastrow review was written and images scanned by someone else it still took a full day to edit the images and setup the review.
This is our 63rd book review. We also updated old reviews ocassionaly.
The Machinery's Handbook review has been updated at least 4 times and I just updated a couple reviews' formats because they are linked to new reviews.
July 4, 2006 @ 8,578,585
Posted two knife making book/cd reviews.
David Boye's classic Step-by-step Knifemaking, You can do it!
and J.D. Smith's cutting edge Advanced Damascus Patterning DVD and CD-ROM.
Although both are about knife making they are the extreme ends of the subject.
Boye's book is a very complete text on how-to from the beginning while Smith's digital production is one of the most advanced topics in knife making.
Both were added to our Sword making resources list and include links to other reviews.
These are our ninth and tenth reviews posted in less than 60 days.
My goal is to catch up on book reviews as well as post reviews of many standards on my book shelf.
July 25, 2006 @ 8,676,550
Posted delayed archives for Hammer-In April, May and June, gurusden for June 8 to July 24, a total of 9 archives.
July 28, 2006 @ 8,691,201
Posted the 2006 ABANA Conference NEWS
41 pages! 200 images with pop-up enlargements! Brent Bailey in Peru, Off-Center Induction Forge, Impressions by Frank Turley.
This edition of the NEWS used some semi-automated processes to generate pages that is much faster than hand coding every page.
Improvements will be made in the system to help process our graphic intensive NEWS.
If you see errors in our NEWS or can identify work and people drop us a line.
Please note the page and Figure number (in faint grey).
July 39, 2006 @ 8,695,000
Removed an Ex-advertiser from the banners and links.
July 30, 2006 @ 8,699,799
Installed a new hybrid random banner system on the Slack-Tub Pub.
It uses the same system I designed for the home page that corrects a browser "back arrow" bug . . . and then forgot.
Besides fixing a bug it also made banner maintenance the same in the Pub as on the rest of anvilfire.
If you notice any problem with the new system let us know.
This hybrid system will replace the system on all the pages in the future.
August 5, 2006 @ 8,727,734
Posted minor NEWS updates to the ABANA 2006 NEWS.
Identified the ABANA hammer as made by Hank Knickmeyer and Tom Clark, the African mask repousse' as made in Africa and displayed by Brent Bailey.
Also added some items to the index.
Next edition of the NEWS is already in progress.
September 1, 2006 @ 8,861,140
We had 160,000 visitors in August, averaging 5,161 unique visitors a day.
Posted a new FAQ on the Law and Blacksmithing. This was in response to a letter I replied to and numerous posts in the past.
Before posting this it had been viewed 8 times. I have added some information about taxes.
I also added an alphabetical index to the top and bottom of the FAQs page to make it easier to navigate.
September 4, 2006 @ 8,874,000
Posted 5 guru's den archives. Not sure how I got so far behind.
September 25, 2006 @ 8,981,534
Posted an updated Temper Color chart with Steel Hardnesses.
This chart has temper hardnesses of four common steels and a wider range of temperatures.
This chart was inspired by a graph with similar data that was alas highly inaccurate.
This anvilfire chart is as accurate as the most modern data will allow.
September 27, 2006 @ 8,993,883
Updated Heat Treating FAQ to the above temper chart (others will be changed as they are found).
Added links to the Riveting iForge demos to each other and to the Riveting Force Chart and a Math index link to the layout and squares iForge demo.
We are a day and a half or less from the 9 million visitor mark.
September 28, 2006, 9AM EST @ 9,000,000!
We passed this mark within a few weeks of when we predicted this a year ago.
We will pass the 10 million visitor mark early next spring.
November 1, 2006 @ 9,187,986
November 2, 2006 @ 9,194,238
Posted 11 archives for guru's den and hammer-in. Sorry for the delay.
November 8, 2006 @ 9,229,079
Posted a new iForge demo on swage blocks. This is a duplicate of an article written for SwageBlocks.com. More demos' coming.
December 5, 2006 @ 9,374,734
Calendar of Events is open to post 2007 events.
January 1, 2007 @ 9,512,158
We end the year with over 9.5 million hits and over 160,000 for the month of December. We have archived 452 forum pages.
We started 2006 with 7,465,897 accumulated visits to the pages for a total of 2,046,261 for the year.
Those are actual individual visits, not server hits.
February 1, 2007 @ 9,700,000
188,000 visitors in January.
February 2, 2007 @ 9,700,000 Groundhog Day
NEW NEW NEW! Launched a new anvilfire design. It is still in progeress but will cure a bunch of problems the site has had.
- Uses a uniform header on every page so that there is no question where one is.
- Standardized navigation (still rebuilding the sub pages).
- Corrected a nagging banner refresh problem that has been giving us trouble since day one.
- Installed a menu with obvious buttons for those that did not understand the Drop down menu.
- Added google ads to the site. Click throughs from these can generate needed advertising revenue.
CSI login is still the same but the old pages are still in use.
There will be numerous bugs in this pages for a while.
March 1, 2007 @ 9,869,188
One year ago we reported 7,870,085 visits to anvilfire.
That is almost exactly TWO MILLON visits to anvilfire in the past year!
We continue to update old pages to the new design and menu system.
March 10, 2007 @ 9,916,100
Twisted Bars . com : We have a new sponsor. These folks make twisted bar, embossed bar and textured bar for use in decorative iron work. You can save yourself a lot of effort and a lot of wear and tear on you and your equipment by starting here. Small shops without power equipment can produce "forged all over" look work competitively. Great for small projects too!
March 11, 2007 @ 9,927,000 / 66,005
Posted two NEW video DVD reviews of the two new Big BLU Productions videos.
Forging Solutions : Hand Hammer Techniques Vol.1 with Amit Har-lev and
Forging Solutions : Power Hammer Techniques Vol.1 also with Amit Har-lev.
March 15, 2007 @ 9,946,095 / 66,069
Posted two new FAQs, Hammer Eye Dimensions and Drilling Coolants/Lubricants.
In 12 days we will hit the 10,000,000 mark. WHO will be our 10,000,000th visitor?
March 16, 2007 @ 9,951,336 / 66,090
Rebuilt the AnvilCAM
for this weekend's BiG BLU Hammer-In. If you cannot make it, check the CAM.
Updated the indexes and menus on most of the system.
Made a lot of untested changes trying to get all the pages working properly under the new header system.
Due to caching in some browsers the site may seem unstable. If something doesn't work right try clearing your browser cache.
March 20, 2007 @ 9,972,538 / 66,171
Added a "Double Arch" anvil to the Fisher-Norris page @ 1966.
10,000,000: March 25, 2007 at 9:00 PM EDT!
That is the accumulated traffic from 9 years (8 years 11 months) of service to the blacksmithing community. In April of 2008 we will celebrate our 10th anniversary and 12 to 13 million visits to anvilfire.com! In that time I have answered an estimated 30,000 to 36,000 questions on-line and at least 2,000 via e-mail. The total answered is probably double that.
In that time to run anvilfire I have had 3PC's, all rebuilt at least once or twice in their life (I just rebuilt the newest from a hard drive crash). There have been three laptops for use in the field. I've worn out one digital camera and I am looking to replace the second that was bought less than 2 years ago. We've also gone through 3 commercial printers, a VCR, video capture device, assorted scanners and other peripherals. I'm driving my 5th used vehicle. I've traveled thousands of miles every year for anvilfire including flying to Calgary Canada and Flagstaff AZ. We have reported on every ABANA convention in our NEWS since 1998.
We are now on our 4th dedicated server and need to move to a 5th (a huge undertaking, since we also host dozens of other sites to help defray costs).
We have had 24 key industry sponsors several of which have been with us from day one. Centaur Forge under the late Bill Pieh was the first, then Bruce Wallace and Bull Hammers (now Pheonix Hammers) then Kayne and Son (now BlacksmithsDepot). The Kaynes have been our longest continuous advertiser.
CSI was launched in 2000 as a support group for anvilfire and had as many as 200 members at one time. CSI memberships kept anvilfire afloat for several years. CSI officialy became a non-profit last year. The goal was to develop enough revenue through memberships to properly support anvilfire.
We should hit the 20,000,000 mark in less than 5 years. We have a 10th anniversary coming up next year. Maybe we will have a 13 millionth visitor contest then!
April 28, 2007 @ 10,166,419 / 66,802
Added a catalog page image to the Fisher-Norris page.
Added a vise photo and diagram to the vise FAQ
Posted March and April Archives to date.
May 1, 2007 @ 10,178,379
June 1, 2007 @ 10,312,600 / 67,298
134,221 visitors in the last 30 days.
Added wrought iron sample images to the wrought iron FAQ. Posted some junk CI anvil photos.
Updated the travel FAQ on passport information.
Most of the month of May was taken up recovering from a second computer crash in as many months.
We had a hard drive failure in late March.
Luckily we only lost a few statistics files and current correspondence.
Cost to retrieve data from a so-called Raid backup was significant.
Then we had a main board failure caused by a small secondary cooling fan on whats called the Northbridge Chip.
The rebuid did not go well as numerous parts had compatibility problems delaying final assembly.
Now we have a mostly new PC at double the cost of new. . . Hopefully we are now back on track.
This was our main workstation. Anvilfire is maintained from three PCs.
The workstation, the old backup and billing PC and a laptop that is used primarily in the field but doubles as an emergency main PC.
These are in addition to the rented server.
June 13, 2007 @ 10,360,00 (late)
Posted an article about the Costa Rica Tire Hammer on the JYH page.
Also updated the NC-JYH page with some more photos.
June 14, 2007 @ 10,363,687
Posted an article about Built up DIY Power Hammer Anvils and links to JYH building articles on the JYH catalog page.
Also updated the NEW CR-JYH page with links and a third detail page.
June 15, 2007 @ 10,365,922 (early AM)
Posted 4 more articles in the anvil series and replaced one, also updated some of the links.
Anvil Radius
Anvils from Skeleton Scrap
Styles and Preferences
RR-Rail anvils
This is an on-going update of all our anvil articles as well as additions.
June 18, 2007 @ 10,381,255 (Midnight)
Posted our new Index to Anvil Making Articles including a half DOZEN all new articles and some that had been posted but hard to find.
It includes a growing Gallery of DIY anvils and updates to most of our anvil series.
June 21, 2007 @ 10,391,052
Updated the anvil making articles with a sketchbook of my anvil making ideas.
Also updated several articles with new illustrations including photographs of Daniel Boettger's Medieval Pentagonal anvil.
This has been a bigger project than it was supposed to be and is still not quite complete.
June 22, 2007 @ 10,396,692
Added four more drawings to my Anvil Sketch Book and one to the RR-rail anvils article.
June 26, 2007 @ 10,412,894
Posted an illustrated article on making swage blocks Fabricating a Swage Block on the anvil making page.
June 28, 2007 @ 10,420,000
Posted an article about Patrick Pelgroms Self Contained hammer on the JYH page.
Includes a short video! Will rotate as soon as I find the right software. . .
June 29, 2007 @ 10,422,404
In our continuing update of our anvil series the iForge article on stands has been added to the list links.
In recent months we have added 14 new anvil articles and updated numerous others. This includes the guru's anvil sketchbook with 16 anvil making drawings.
Late @ 10,425,000 Posted a diagram of how Patrick Pelgroms' self contained hammer operates.
July 15, 2007 @ 10,480,00
Posted the date for the anvilfire 10th anniversary hammer-in on the Calendar (April 18-20, 2007).
We are lining up demonstrators and events now. Let us know if you want to take part. 2008 CSI/anvilfire Hammer-In
August 13, 2007 @ 10,550,000
Posted an article a diagram of a water bellows in the guru's den. Would like to do an article on same but hate to have to build one. . . Maybe for the 10th Anniverssary.
August 31, 2007 @ 10,669,524
Posted an article on building a Woodworker's Bench
under FAQ's
September 1, 2007 @ 10,671,223
September 6, 2007 @ 10,692,128
Posted an article about the Chinese workholding bench and "Sen" sent to us by Sean Walker.
Also linked it to the woodworking bench article.
October 1, 2007 @ 10,800,855
November 1, 2007 @ 10,942,500
Trying something new. Signed up for ebay AuctionAds.
November 2, 2007 @ 10,947,297
Posted some 21 overdue archive pages of the guru's den and Hammer-In (June to October).
This makes over 500 forum archives pages!
We should hit the 11 million visitor mark by mid November and 12 million by our 10th anniversary!
November 13, 2007 @ 11,000,000
We have quietly passed the Eleven MILLION visitor mark. On March 25th we passed the ten million mark.
That is one million visits every 7.75 months or 1.55 million visits per year.
The ebay auctionads have not performed well and the ad server is quite buggy.
At least 3 times the system has stopped serving keyword ads and defaulted to so called "hot" items most of which are of little interest to our readers. . .
The experiment will continue for a while.
December 1, 2007 @ 11,076,000
We have caught up with out archiving and continue to test AuctionAds.
December 4, 2007
We have removed ALL AuctionAds from all our pages (including archives).
Ads with inappropriate content (sexualy targeted products) were served rather than the key word ads as stated by AuctionAds.
This combined with very poor performance (1/10th the revenue google provides for the same space) forced us to close our AuctionAds account.
We may try this again going direct to ebay but not through an intermediate.
January 1, 2008 @ 11,214,590 - The beginning of our 11th calendar year.
1,702,432 counted visits for the year.
This is the beginning of the 11th calendar year of anvilfire.com!
Conceived in December 1997, registered in February 1998 and launched in March 1998.
We've had over 11,214,590 visits since adding counters in June of 1998.
Our 10th anniversary will be celebrated in April 2009!
Happy NEW year!
The Calendar of Events page is now ready to accept events for the full year and the archives are all updated.
February 1, 2008 @ 11,357,600
143,000 counted visits for the month. Getting ready for the CSI Hammer-In and Auction!
July 21, 2008 @ 12,000,000
Passed the twelve million vist mark!
John David Dempsey May 18, 1925 - July 22, 2008:
My father, the guru's guru, passed away after a short battle with cancer.
Husband of Clara Lea, father of Jock, Paul, Shawn (dec.), Daniel, Moria, Steven, Ross and Jeniffer.
Grandfather to Skylar, Jacob, Noah, Helen, Andrew, Molly, Patrick, Shane, Samantha Jaclyn, Kimberly and Katherine.
August 3, 2008 @ 12,032,000
Posted 7 new swageblocks on SwageBlocks.com and an article on cheap cast iron anvils (see FAQs).
August 4, 2008 @ 12,033,500
Posted January through July 2008 V.Hammeri-In archives
September 30, 2008 @ 12,234,000
Posted a NEW =Edition of the NEWs with 100 photos covering SOFA Quadstate 2008
October 1, 2008 @ 12,234,500
Start of a new month.
December 6, 2008 @ 12,500,000
Passed the 12.5 million point. Too many things "in progress" too report.
January 1, 2009 @ 12,602,227
Start of another new year, our 11th.
February 11, 2009 @ 12,784,657
Making progress on moving to a new server (our 5th). Each move is more difficult than the last.
While moving we are still posting articles and FAQs. This means updating files on two servers with every change. . .
Posted the following new FAQ's this month
Hammer Handle Day
Drill Press Vise Mounting
Drilling Coolant
One Pass Tenons machined on a lathe.
Also updated articles such as the NC-JYH article and others.
April 2, 2009 @ 12,984,000
Posted Robert Nichols article on rebuilding an NC-Tool Whisper Momma.
Also updated the Russian anvil and NC-Tool forge reviews to our new format.
April 2, 2009 @ 13,000,000
Updated the the Websites for Craftsfolk FAQ and our Privacy Policy (added Google info per their request).
April 12, 2009 @ 13,031,897
Started removing the CSI/CafePress ads. After over 2 years they had only accumulated $48 (the 10% they pay).
With a minimum of $100 before a check is cut it would be over 4 years before we would see a check.
A check for the $48 will be issued on our closing the account.
Other ads in the same places had earned up to 10 times that in a month.
We currently have embroidered hats on our cart and the new cart will have shirts as well.
We give away more hats and shirts than we sell. . .
May 1, 2009 @ 13,098,762
Posted a review of the new 28th Edition of Machinery's Handbook.
Also updated the general Machinery's Handbook review with addition of 28th edition changes and the commerative 1st Edition reprint.
Posted an article on Bench Hooks and Bench Pins related to the Woodworking Bench article.
May 13, 2009 @ 13,141,342
Posted 4 new book reviews and updated the general Machinery's Handbook Review.
New reviews include,
1st Edition Commerative Reprint of Machinery's Handbook,
Lorelei Sims, The Backyard Blacksmith,
The Craft of the Japanese Sword,
28th Edition of Machinery's Handbook (linked to previous reviews). More to come
May 23, 2009
Posted another eBook reprint Hand Forging and Wrought-Iron Ornamental Work.
This is a popular classic that has often been quoted or extracted from in recent books.
May 27, 2009
Posted another eBook reprint On the Construction of Locks and Keys.
This is the first of several on Locks and Locksmithing we are going to put on-line.
June 1, 2009 @ 13,204,261
Posted new article on Making Repousse' Tools
that ties together several book reviews, anvilfire articles and articles on other sites. Also updated some of the linked content.
June 5, 2009 @ 13,215,300
Posted new article on Making a Motor Buffer.
Updated the related articles on wheels and buffing compounds and organized the cross links.
June 16, 2009 @ 13,254,685
Posted the past fourteen and one half months worth of archives.
Its taken a LONG week plus to edit them into weeks and setup the index.
I'm sorry for the delay. It started at the end of a big outside job and has continured.
Once behind on something like this it is tough to catch up.
Like the book reviews above I'm behind on many things and trying hard to catch up.
I've got four more book reviews to finsh and post next week and this is not all the catching up.
MORE TO COME. . .
Aug 1, 2009 @ 13,400,000
Launched the NEW anvilfire Anvil Gallery.
This feature page is launching with four different galleries with of forty anvils and a hundred images.
The gallery includes anvils from prestigious anvil collections, museums and image collections.
This feature will likely double in size in the coming months.
Besides the years collecting images this represents over a full month's intense labor processing images and setting up pages.
Aug 20, 2009 @ 13,465,638
Since launching the anvil gallery we have added another 28 anvils for a total of 68 to date.
These include a Hungarian anvil with tradmark, an Estonian anvil, Chinese anvils, more rare and classic anvils.
Aug 27, 2009 @ 13,486,071
We added another anvil to the anvilfire gallery but we miscounted the anvils in the gallery (above).
There is a total of 54 entries with several counting as more than on anvil (HD=2, Farriers=2, Chinese=5) for a total of 60.
We have also added a review of a Delta TFS 100b anvil by Robert Nichols and an article on lathe setup and reverse engineering drives.
Aug 31, 2009 @ 13,497,072
Posted a Cones and Ring Mandrels Gallery on SwageBlocks.com.
Over a dozen unique cone mandrels and five catalog pages.
We now have anvils, swage blocks and cones all well covered.
Sept 1, 2009 @ 13,500,000
Oct 1, 2009 @ 13,610,000
October 20, 2009 @ 13,688,000
Posted a new gallery of anvils from the Maison de l'Outil (House of Tools) Troyes, France.
Photos were graciously provided by Stefaan Meeus of Belgium.
October 27, 2009 @ 13,715,000
Posted a new file cutter's anvil in the Maison de l'Outil (House of Tools) Gallery, changed titles and updated links.
November 1, 2009 @ 13,730,000
November 25, 2009 @ 13,830,000
Launched another NEW feature, a Comic of the Week
featuring the work of Frank Tabor - "The Old Welder" and others.
Archived the first 3 weeks of the month.
November 26-28,30, 2009 @ 13,835,000
Server 1 had a hard drive failure and it was replaced. The next day the power supply failed and was replaced.
Two days later our "upgraded" replacement, "server2" was hacked and had to be shut down. . .
Yet another server is being setup.
December 7, 2009 @ 13,884,000
Posted 2 new anvils in the anvilfire collection, Lap Anvils and Vanadium Steel.
Also setting up and organizing the weekly cartoons for next year. . . Organizing more (drawing, contracting. . .)
Our goal is to have enough for a comic of the day!
December 9, 2009 @ 13,887,000
After some tense moments, dozens of support tickets and LONG hours we are moved to our new bigger "better" server and I think everything is working now.
This is our fourth server and ninth hard drive (we wore out several).
Besides anvilfire and our web-rings that includes all our affiliate sites like swageblocks.com, anvilsinamerica.com, a couple dozen blacksmithing organization sites and some business sites for a total of 120 sites.
Now I might be able to get to some other things. . .
We lost some statical data in the move. Several days of counter recording.
December 21, 2009 @ 13,937,140
Repaired the Blacksmith ring entry form - spammers had been hitting it and we had to turn it off several months ago.
Repaired the Blacksmiths ring statistics. For setting had broken them several years ago. Will reset to ZERO on the 1st of the year.
Updated the Calendar of Events. It is now ready to post 2010 events
Posted Guru and Calandar archives - Lost a month of the Hammer-in (November). . .
January 1, 2010 @ 13,975,000
1,372,500 visits this year (page views as reported by some sites are many times that).
2010 is our 13th Year. Anvilfire is a teenager!
January 4, 2010 @ 13,988,000
Added DAILY comics to our Comic of the Week page.
There will now be eight new comics on anvilfire every week!
Frank Tabor is sending us 6 new comics per week and our in-house artists are producing our own series of comics so that by year end we should have an inventory that will not need to be re-run in less than a year.
Hopefully I can keep up with the scanning and setting up on top of everything else including paying for the comics!
January 7, 2010 @ 14,000,000!
We have cleaned up dead entries in the Blacksmiths Ring.
Of the 85 sites removed the majority no longer exisited.
Many of these were businesses that have dropped their web presense and probably gone out of business.
These were lost URL's that registrations had not been kept up.
In the past we would lose 4-5 sites on the ring and gain 6-10 in an average year.
But in the last 18 months we lost 75 sites out of 205 to the decline in the economy. A sad situation.
We continue to add comics to the year's schedule.
January 10, 2010 @ 14,014,000
Posted 3 new Italian anvils in the donated section of the anvil gallery.
January 11, 2010 @ 14,016,385
Posted end of year archives.
The November Hammer-In was lost in the confusion of moving to a new server.
I thought we had been too lucky during the move. . .
January 13, 2010 @ 14,026,264
Cleaned up various page menus and menu includes adding recent new features, Comics, eBooks and Anvil Gallery.
January 14, 2010 @ 14,030,252
Added two touchmarks to the registry, Added a new Russian anvil to the donated section of the anvil gallery.
More toons to scan and setup. . . (60 to date).
January 15 - 16, 2010 @ 14,035,475
The anvil gallery recorded 10,000 visits since being launched on Aug 1, 2009 @ 13,400,000, (close to 6 months ago).
Currently there are 86 in the main galleries.
We are continuing to add more anvils as they come in or as we find them.
February 1, 2010 @ 14,101,000
Removed Striker Tools links due to their going out of business.
Launched numerous comics by TGN (The Great Nippulini) with color by the anvilfire guru.
Corrected the ID of one of the Italian anvils and updated information on same.
March 22, 2010 @ 14,316,500
Launched the NEW streaming AnvilCAM-II page.
Included of a dozen locally hosted and an hour's worth of video of the Big BLU - NC-ABANA Hammer-In
April 1, 2010 @ 14,354,266
April 4, 2010 @ 14,368,500
Posted a compiled FAQ and srticle on Lead, another on copyright and infringement.
Posted March archives of guru's den and Hammer-In.
April 18, 2010 @ 14,430,124
Updated the Blacksmith Vises article with new photos, drawings and text. Like many of our articles it is a continous work in progress.
Also added a Welding Benches article and one on Finding Anvils
April 21, 2010 @ 14,440,895
Added three new anvils to the anvil gallery, Columbian Anvil,
Vulcan Anvil and a
Arm and Hammer Anvil
May 1, 2010 @ 14,482,174
June 25, 2010 @ 14,685,000
Added two new YouTube videos, Making a Pine Cone with Michael Leggett and Manufacturing of JHM Anvils.
Posted 6 more new cartoons.
July 1, 2010 @ 14,711,517
Caught up on backlog of archives. April through June are now posted.
July 4, 2010 @ 14,719,502
Posted 7 new review videos and corrected links. Also posted an anvil shoot video for the 4th!
This is the first of a collection of videos taken by Paw-Paw for anvilfire.
We have only recently become technologicaly enabled (new software, converter and updated server) to convert and setup on anvilfire.
July 25, 2010 @ 14,787,992 / 7226 / 5
Posted a new Health and Safety page including the guru's health story and articles about healthy nutrition.
These include recipes, videos and links to more information and books.
July 27, 2010 @ 14,797,893
Updated the new Health and Safety page. Edited the articles, added two recipes and some photos.
Updated the Engine Lathe FAQ adding a couple images, a section on suggested precision tools and correcting minor errors.
August 1, 2010 @ 14,812,400 On the road. . .
August 3, 2010 @ 14,820,400
Added Part III - Exercise, to the guru's story on the
Health and Safety page.
Working on more updates to the page.
August 12, 2010 @ 14,853,383
Added Part IV - The Dilema of Eating Out, to the guru's story on the
Health and Safety page.
Also added an article on rigging and moving equipment. Some is still in progress.
August 15, 2010 @ 14,863,888
Posted the July Archives. Added a safety factor and testing paragraph to the
chain hoist article and images to the rigging article.
August 20, 2010 @ 14,881,810
Added a page to the anvil making series with a drawing I had posted a while back on how to machine a conical anvil horn.
It is also linked to some of the other articles as a detail.
August 24, 2010 @ 14,893,302
Added three four new anvil pages to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page..
They are also linked to other anvil articles.
August 26, 2010 @ 14,904,548
Added a Colonial anvil, Bohemian and Stake anvils pages to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page..
August 27, 2010 @ 14,908,952
Added four more anvils to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page.
A fine South German anvil and three Catalan (Spanish) anvils. More coming. . .
August 28, 2010 @ 14,912,875
Added two more anvil shaped objects to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page
and a Champion catalog page to the anvilfire collection gallery.
We are expecting another large collectors gallery of photos in the near future. . until then!
August 29, 2010 @ 14,915,733
Found and added another anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page,
a beautiful T-Stake anvil and references to modern examples.
August 30, 2010 @ 14,919,000
Added a page with over 30 stakes to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page,
and a stake name/glossary page - in progress.
August 31, 2010 @ 14,925,225
Added ANOTHER anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page.
In the past week we have added approximately 55 anvil and stake images to the Anvil Gallery pages.
September 4, 2010 @ 14,939,128
Added ANOTHER stake anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page.
This one is a stake anvil forged by Stefaan Meuus of Belgium. Also updated a number of related articles and links.
September 10, 2010 @ 14,964,500
Added an all NEW gallery to the anvilfire anvil gallery page. The Greenwood Collection
September 11, 2010 @ 14,967,500
Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection, a large German anvil.
More to come. . .
September 12, 2010 @ 14,971,312
Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection, a German Armour's anvil that we have featured before.
We also added dimensions and weights to all the posted anvils. More to come. . .
September 13 - 14, 2010 @ 14,977,837
Added several more anvils to the Greenwood Collection,
another Söding and Halbach (S&H) anvil, updated names, mark translation and and history.
Added aniother North German anvil and a Colonial Anvil now in the Historic Arkansas Museum. More to come. . .
September 14 - 15, 2010 @ 14,981,016
Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection,
The Ephrata Anvil.
An ancient and historically significant old German anvil.
That is the 15th in the collection with more to come. . .
September 15, 2010 @ 14,984,500
Added ANOTHER anvil to the Greenwood Collection,
A colonial American anvil with distict features matching another in the same collection.
Includes seperate article on the brand's features and is spawning yet another article. Updated links between these two anvils.
Also corrected mistakeen identification of the anvil sold to the Historic Arkansas Museum.
Monday September 20, 2010 - 00:00:00 : 15,000,000 Visits!
That is one million visits (not pages served of viewed) since January 7, 2010.
Multiple visits in one day from the same person do not increment the counters (honest data).
Pages served are about 10 times the visits.
Many of our new format pages are not counting as "visits" if they are the entry page so we need to address this issue.
Traffic in visits may be 10-20% higher as a result.
September 30, 2010 @ 15,042,950
Added (several days ago) a listing for FOUR Power hammers on the Power Hammer Page.
Added a very nice Peter Wright to the donated section of the Anvil Gallery.
Also added a new section to the anvil pages The Art & Science of Anvil Design leading with the Mystery of the 5th Foot
November 26, 2010 @ 15,302,618 Many updates missed in the past month.
Recently added two new anvils to the galleries, both WWII relics.
One, in the Greenwood collection, an anvil blown up in the bombing of a German factory, the other an anvil scrapped and buried in a dump on Guam is in our Donated gallery.
We also updated the article on
Manual Hydraulic Presses adding three DIY cases.
We also updated several of the articles linked to it including the iForge artice on presses. More coming.
December 31, 2010 - January 1, 2011 @ 15,446,190 NEW YEARS
Dempsey's Forge - anvilfire.com officially became a North Carolina business.
February 1, 2011 @ 15,580,733 Many updates missed in the past months.
Updated, reformated, many of the anvil articles linked to the anvil galleries. Added new collections.
March 1, 2011 @ 15,696,555 Many updates missed in the past months.
Have added hundreds of anvil and stake images to the anvil galleries. Updated counter system on all anvil gallery pages.
March 20, 2011 @ 15,772,455
Posted long overdue forum archives for October 2010 through February 2011 (31 archives).
April 6, 2011 @ 15,825,000
Launched an all new feature, The anvilfire Tailgate Sales page.
A place to buy, sell and advertise tools machinery your work. . .
May 18, 2011 16,000,000!
One million visits in six months. That is TWO million, 2,000,0000 visits a year!
May 20, 2011 @ 16,008,750
Posted an iForge article on Rosettes or Escutcheons.
June 26, 2011 @ 16,120,00
Posted a beautifully photographed Big Tex Farriers anvil in the anvil gallery
August 1, 2011 @ 16,251,638
Launched a new Tip of the Day featurette. Tips appear on our home page, health and saftey page and elsewhere as we develop them.
January 1, 2012 @ 16,
Tips of the Day have been expanded to seven categories and over 300 tips. General tips will repeat only twice a year others more often.
January 10, 2012 @ 17,000,000
Passed the 17,000,000 point - One million visits in less than seven months!
January 13, 2012 @ 17,011,500
Posted a new anvil making article by Patrick Nowak. Building a 1050 pound English Style anvil!
January 27, 2012 @ 17,108,083
Corrected the spelling of Patrick Nowak's name (including the page name) and added images and text the above article.
|
Almost every day we are adding new items. In order to help you find the newest additions we have added this page. Here we will try to log changes and additions by date as we make them. There will always be daily changes in the Virtual Hammer-In and the Guru page.
Blacksmith Touchmarks
We setup our own Ringlink webring hosting system and moved our webrings to it.
* New - no members
costs we moved again.
More below. . .
JANUARY 12, 2020
The change in year broke something in our comics scheduling and I have yet to figure it out. It has something to do with my system of using the first Monday of the year. .
I've been updating lots of old articles and writing a few new ones. Added an article on forge temperature and measurement. "Getting Started" has two paths, hobbiest and professional. I've just added an article on learning to draw. Related to that I added an anvil painting by Jon Gnagy in the anvil gallery.
Most of the rest of the work I am doing is fixing broken links, cleaning up old HTML and so on. Its a constant task.
NEW! MARCH 2, 2020
OCTOBER 12, 2019 @ 27,850,000 visitors!
We have moved (downgraded) our server situation. This is number 7 and one of our most difficult moves. The move with its change in OS (Operating System) versions (primarily Php) broke hundreds of our pages and our login system. These have all been fixed (that we have found) EXCEPT the login system. And our page counters are unsupported. . . (after 21years).
anvilfire consists of some 48,000 files and 3,400 "pages".
As part of this move we are doing some major reorganization.
IF you find it now there is a photo of Dolphins jumping an the words "Thanks for all the Fish". This is the good-by from the end of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
As we do this we are setting up hundreds of 301 redirects (invisible to you) to the new often edited pages (like this). This helps avoid the dreaded "404 page not found" error. Of which I am sure we have many due to this move. . .
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
We have been working day and night for a month now updating our pages and fixing links as we update them. So far we have only fixed about 200 pages out of thousands. This on top of building a new on-line store.
Our new page format is "liquid" as was our earliest pages. This means you can resize the pages considerably smaller than best viewed and much larger than necessary on large monitors. It's smallest size is limited by the largest item on the page (tables, images) and we limit images to a maximum of 640 wide. However, it is not "mobile friendly" (at least to satisfy google) and I do not think it every will be. We spent 20 years lagging a bit behind the growth in monitor size and connection speed so that more people could enjoy our content. But over the years we DID increase page and image sizes. Even returning to a 640x480 page and microscopic images will not make google happy.
For most of our pages including all of our gallery pages the best viewed size is a minimum of 900 pixels wide. Our new store without a side bar menu works at 640 pixels wide but is still not mobile friendly (google says the links are too close together).
We researched and added a floating alphabetical index to the 21st Century page and English Glossary. Some of you may find this useful. I do.
NOVEMBER 21, 2019
We are still updating pages moving them to our new system. Many are being edited and added to which slows things down. . . . The Guru bio is much updated and added to.
The latest addition was to add floating headers to the Inernational Glossary pages so that they are much easier to know the language of each column. Due to the size of these charts they do not fit our general framework. We are looking for other solutions but there are no simple fixes.
Google Mobile: We are also trying to make google's mobile device crawler (indexing robot) happy. This seems to be an impossible task on a site as mature as anvilfire. Since google's mobile crawler has been applied to anvilfire it has destroyed our overall ranking and traffic.
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
We have been searching for loose articles, those written and perhaps only linked from a forum archive or not at all and putting them in our new system and on the alphatetical index (FAQs/21st Century Blacksmithing list). Among these ar knives01 (one of out original articles), Vision Safety, Hydraulic Piping, Lafitte Welding plate, sweet iron, a page of hammer images and others.
NOVEMBER 1, 2002 * We have our 2,000,000th visitor!
That is over ONE MILLION per year (353 days). Our curent traffic rate is 1.67 million/year and will exceed 2 million/year sometime next year! This is following the same increase that has had us equaling the total accumulated traffic of the prior years!
January 1, 2003 @ 2,255,000 Year Start.
June 30, 2003 @ 3,000,000
We have broken the three million visitor mark this morning. Traffic is down a little. That is 745,000 visits since January 1st for an average of 4082 visits a day.
July 28, 2003 : TRANSFERED TO NEW SERVER
It took 30 days to setup and move to the new server. This included numerous other sites that we host. It then took another couple months to debug everything. . (Five months later we still have issues to address)
February 23, 2004 @ 4,000,000
We broke the FOUR MILLION visitor mark late today. That is one million visitors in less than 8 months!
October 7, 2004 @ 5,000,000
Sometime in the wee hours this morning we broke the 5 million visitor mark! That is another million visits in less 8 months again!
April 14, 2005 @ 6,000,000
We broke the 6 million visitor mark! That is another million visits in less than 7 months!
October 17, 2005 @ 7,000,000
We broke the 7 million visitor mark! That is another million visits in less than 6 months! We are now at the two million visitor per year traffic rate.
December 31, 2004 @ 12:PM and 5,405,192
Posted a year end edition of the NEWS covering the passing of Bill Gichner and closing of KeenJunk.com
January 1, 2005 @ 5,407,257
In December 2004 we had 133,641 visits.
In 2004 we had: 1,680,392 visits. In April we will be 7 years old.
Anvilfire Inventory:
378 News pages as of Jan. 1 (89.1 Mb)
334 Archive pages (51.8 Mb)
165 iForge demos (88.6 Mb)
55 Book reviews (68.9 Mb)
42 FAQs
30 Stories (not including Paw-Paw's TRB)
28 Articles not on the FAQs list
19 Power Hammer pages
15 JYH pages
13 Armoury pages
13 Plan File
----------------------
1092 TOTAL HTML article pages
Not including the home page, indexes, the Pub, Classroom, the Touchmark Registry, Mass3j calculator, Paw-Paw's TRB, Blacksmiths Ring "home", live forums and many others. Many of these HTML "pages" would equate to many print pages. The 200 iForge and book review pages would be 500 to 800 full size print pages.
3,000 in the iForge d
1,575 in the NEWS
3,000 in the iForge demos
500 in articles.
----------------------
+5,000 TOTAL images
January 6, 2005 @ 5,438,780
Updated the Calendar of events. You may now post your events for the entire year of 2005. Also archived the 2004 calendar for future reference.
January 10, 2005 @ 5,456,839
Updated the Swordmaking article with another letter and added another book to the Resource list. Posted a new book review, "Machine Shop Trade Secrets" by James A. Harvey. More to come.
February 14, 2005
Launched edition 37 of the NEWS covering my Costa Rica trip. Blacksmiths and ironwork in Costa Rica.
February 16, 2005
Found that I had lost the archives of the last two weeks of January while using somone elses computer in Costa Rica. I had saved them there but not uploaded them due to viruses on the computer. When I left I errased the files on their computer. . .
March 1, 2005 @ 5,797,100
March 28, 2005 @ 5,899,813
Lots has been going on since I got back including being out sick for a week and taking over a week to recuperate. . VERY bad flu! Have not been keeping up with this log
Posted TWO new reviews on the book review page. The Rolling Mill CD has been linked from the original review. The Hasluck's metalworking is new, great book.
Posted a FAQ on Hydraulic piping from a discusion the past few days. Thanks to Tony and ptree.
April 1, 2005 @ 5,924,340
Anvilfire's Brake Drum forge articles were featured in Farm Show Magazine, Vol 29 #2, p39.
Trafic was UP considerably in March
158,280 Visits (5,100 /day)
2,103,559 Pages served
5,581,869 Files served
44,363,570 Kbytes
Found via 23644 search terms and accessed from 128 countries and linked to by 10,000 sites!
April 3, 2005 @ 5,934,339
April 11, 2005 @ 5,980,300 Rapidly approaching six million visits!
Just updated the archives with 3 weeks from the Guru's Den and two entries for March. Updated the Anvil Making article.
April 14, 2005 @ 6,000,000 SIX MILLION VISITS!
April 16, 2005 @ 6,013,689 SIX MILLION VISITS!
Sometime on April 14th we passed the six million visit point. We are are at the two million visitor per year point. Daily visits are up to 6678 in the past week!
Friday May 13, 2005
Our good friend and Chairman of CSI Jim Paw-Paw Wilson died today. He will be sorely missed.
June 1, 2005 @ 6,280,991
Archived a record sized May Virtual Hammer-In at a whopping 529K. Much of this was tributes to Paw-Paw.
We have had a record 280K visitors in 47 days. Very close to 6,000 visitors a day. That is still a 2.1 MILLION visitors/year rate!
June 2, 2005 @ 6,286,111 5:00am
Posted the posthumous iForge safety demo on metal fume fever by Jim paw-Paw Wilson. Moved safety demos to top of the list.
June 2, 2005 @ 6,288,311 noon
Added "almost always misdiagnosed" to last paragraph of safety demo. . that's what I get for pulling all nighters.
June 23, 2005 @ 6,398,972
Posted the Jim Paw-Paw Wilson Memorial Hammer-In pages of the news.
June 24, 2005 @ 6,401,448
Posted the NC-ABANA March meeting pages of the news.
July, 2005
Moved anvilfire office. Maintenence tasks on site and seever only.
August 18, 2005 @ 6,659,292
Started posting the Uri Hofi, Power Hammer School edition of the news. More to come!
August 21, 2005 @ 6,674,430
Finished posting the Uri Hofi, Power Hammer School edition of the news. If you looked earlier there is much more!
August 27, 2005 @ 6,706,081
Posted July and August Archives (8). These use a new system that will reduce archiving work in the future. It will still be done by hand for the time being but several steps have been saved by some "smart" dynamic coding. Hope to make it smarter in the future.
September 19, 2005
Updated our store shipping system so that it would correctly calculate heavy packages and oversize for Kaowool. Kaowool in full case now shipped by UPS only, all other shipments by US Mail only. Updated cart to use Priority mail for all Richard Postman book orders.
September 21, 2005 @ 6,837,492
Added a Coal Fire Management FAQ and updated links to and from the forge hood and low loss stack plans. Will archive forums before leaving for SOFA in the AM.
September 29, 2005 @ 6,889,874
Posted a review of the NEW Uri Hofi power hammer video "Free Form Forging with Uri Hofi". Posted the same for sale in the store.
September 30, 2005 @ 6,892,096
AM - Corrected the price on the NEW Uri Hofi power hammer video to 49.95. Reduced shipping on several items.
October 1, 2005 @ 6,950,000
Updated the Math FAQ with a post on mathematical thought. Added two links.
October 5, 2005 @ 6,892,096
Updated the English glossary adding some anchors and updates.
October 17, 2005 @ 7,000,000!
We passed the seven million mark today. We passed the six million mark on April 14, 2005. That is one million visitors in less than six months for a rate of TWO MILLION visitors a year!
Added a RR-spike material FAQ.
Corrected a design error in the Blacksmiths Ring nav-bar that only showed up in the newest browsers. Line widths which could be defined as a percentage of the width of a table cell are now incorrectly displayed as the width of the full table thus extending into other cells or out of the table. The correction used a specific width in pixels. Maintaining HTML pages is a constant battle against changing standards. . .
October 19, 2005 @ 7,012,500
Added the color illustration to the Frank Turley Marc Simmons book review of Southwestern Colonial Ironwork.
October 20, 2005 @ 7,023,205
Posted Roman smithing illustrations from Bruce Blackistone in response to a question. Corrected links from Reference-Guides.com to Bible-History.com on the Blacksmiths in the Bible story page. External links are always changing and are becomming more difficult to maintain as the site grows. .
October 21, 2005 @ 7,029,891
Developed and posted a growth projection spread sheet and graph on the advertising page. Aproximately every three and a half years our hit rate increases by 1 million per year. We are now at two million per year. We should be at three million per year at the end of 2009.
Updated the new RR-spike FAQ and linked it from the Junkyard Steels FAQ. Also archived the guru's page today.
October 25, 2005
Added two German Anvil photos to the page on the same.
November 1, 2005 @ 7,100,000
We have had 100,000 visitors in 14 days and 150,000 for the month of October. Some of this spike in traffic may have been due to our mention in Fabricator Magazine where they used my photos for the Uri Hofi article. The rest is returning to the current traffic average which is over 167,000 visitors per month.
January 1, 2006 @ 7,465,897
March 1, 2006 @ 7,870,085
March 20, 2006 @ 8,000,000!
We have had one million visitors since October 17, 2005 (155 days). This is 20 days earlier than the projection we made in October based on 7 years of traffic records. The average for that period was 6,451 visitors per day or 2.35 million per year. This is a traffic rate we did not expect to reach for another year.
March 22, 2006 @ 8,016,000
Added new units to the popup conversions toolkit, square feet to meters, cubic inches to CM3 and cubic feet to M3.
March 24, 2006 @ 8,030,000
Wrote an English Hundredweight calculator and linked it to the Mathematics, anvil weights and anvil selection pages.
March 27, 2006 @ 8,050,000
Archived the 405th gurusden log. Early logs were monthly, then bi-weekly and are now weekly.
April 7, 2006 @ 8,130,747
Added a handful of images to the home page random image and linked them to pages with large size pages. Added a Sawyers anvil to the Fisher Norris anvil page. Updated many of the banners on the Slack-Tub Pub. Posted a page with Gauntlet pattern pieces and photos.
April 8 2006 @ 8,134,404
Updated the CSI anvilfire Hammer-In page and added directions to Ken's.
April 11 2006 @ 8,161,475
Added a new story An Excursion by Gronk Pensmudge to the Story Page
May 1, 2006 @ 8,262,713
Updated the MACHINERY'S HANDBOOK general review adding some small pieces of information and a paragraph about collectors prices.
Stats show we had 100,000 visitors in 20 days. That is 150,000 per month.
May 12, 2006 @ 8,322,193
Posted review of Al Cannella's 101 Metal Projects
May 15, 2006 @ 8,338,040
Posted review of The Spruce Forge Manual of Locksmithing. Trying to catch up on old and NEW reviews as well as some standards.
June 1, 2006 @ 8,425,353
That is 162,640 visits for May a spring record. Traffic usually drops off in good weather when folks are spending more time outdoors and in the shops.
June 12, 2006 @ 8,477,243
Posted review of Forgotten Technology Video by Wallace Wallington.
Posted review of Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel by Gies & Gies.
Posted review of Fire and Roses, Forging the Queens Rose Video by Hans Schlosser.
June 14, 2006 @ 8,488,322
Posted review of Forge and Anvil DIY Projects by Alan Rogers. Also updated the Art of Blacksmithing review.
That is 6 new reviews (total 61) and two updated this month.
June 19, 2006 @ 8,500,000
That is 1/2 million visits to anvilfire in the last 3 months. That is a rate of two million visitors a year. This is down a little which is typical in late spring but is still in line with our predicted growth.
June 24, 2006 @ 8,536,225
Posted review of Dona Meilach's newest book, Ironwork Today, Inside & Out and updated the review of her classic Decorative & Sculptural Ironwork.
June 25, 2006 @ 8,540,108
Posted a review by Melissa Sullivan of Nancy Zastrow's book, Lives Shaped by Steel and updated another Dona Meilach book review.
Even though the Zastrow review was written and images scanned by someone else it still took a full day to edit the images and setup the review. This is our 63rd book review. We also updated old reviews ocassionaly. The Machinery's Handbook review has been updated at least 4 times and I just updated a couple reviews' formats because they are linked to new reviews.
July 4, 2006 @ 8,578,585
Posted two knife making book/cd reviews. David Boye's classic Step-by-step Knifemaking, You can do it! and J.D. Smith's cutting edge Advanced Damascus Patterning DVD and CD-ROM. Although both are about knife making they are the extreme ends of the subject. Boye's book is a very complete text on how-to from the beginning while Smith's digital production is one of the most advanced topics in knife making. Both were added to our Sword making resources list and include links to other reviews.
These are our ninth and tenth reviews posted in less than 60 days. My goal is to catch up on book reviews as well as post reviews of many standards on my book shelf.
July 25, 2006 @ 8,676,550
Posted delayed archives for Hammer-In April, May and June, gurusden for June 8 to July 24, a total of 9 archives.
July 28, 2006 @ 8,691,201
Posted the 2006 ABANA Conference NEWS
41 pages! 200 images with pop-up enlargements! Brent Bailey in Peru, Off-Center Induction Forge, Impressions by Frank Turley.
This edition of the NEWS used some semi-automated processes to generate pages that is much faster than hand coding every page. Improvements will be made in the system to help process our graphic intensive NEWS.
If you see errors in our NEWS or can identify work and people drop us a line. Please note the page and Figure number (in faint grey).
July 39, 2006 @ 8,695,000
Removed an Ex-advertiser from the banners and links.
July 30, 2006 @ 8,699,799
Installed a new hybrid random banner system on the Slack-Tub Pub. It uses the same system I designed for the home page that corrects a browser "back arrow" bug . . . and then forgot. Besides fixing a bug it also made banner maintenance the same in the Pub as on the rest of anvilfire. If you notice any problem with the new system let us know.
This hybrid system will replace the system on all the pages in the future.
August 5, 2006 @ 8,727,734
Posted minor NEWS updates to the ABANA 2006 NEWS. Identified the ABANA hammer as made by Hank Knickmeyer and Tom Clark, the African mask repousse' as made in Africa and displayed by Brent Bailey. Also added some items to the index. Next edition of the NEWS is already in progress.
September 1, 2006 @ 8,861,140
We had 160,000 visitors in August, averaging 5,161 unique visitors a day.
Posted a new FAQ on the Law and Blacksmithing. This was in response to a letter I replied to and numerous posts in the past. Before posting this it had been viewed 8 times. I have added some information about taxes.
I also added an alphabetical index to the top and bottom of the FAQs page to make it easier to navigate.
September 4, 2006 @ 8,874,000
Posted 5 guru's den archives. Not sure how I got so far behind.
September 25, 2006 @ 8,981,534
Posted an updated Temper Color chart with Steel Hardnesses. This chart has temper hardnesses of four common steels and a wider range of temperatures. This chart was inspired by a graph with similar data that was alas highly inaccurate. This anvilfire chart is as accurate as the most modern data will allow.
September 27, 2006 @ 8,993,883
Updated Heat Treating FAQ to the above temper chart (others will be changed as they are found). Added links to the Riveting iForge demos to each other and to the Riveting Force Chart and a Math index link to the layout and squares iForge demo.
We are a day and a half or less from the 9 million visitor mark.
September 28, 2006, 9AM EST @ 9,000,000!
We passed this mark within a few weeks of when we predicted this a year ago. We will pass the 10 million visitor mark early next spring.
November 1, 2006 @ 9,187,986
November 2, 2006 @ 9,194,238
Posted 11 archives for guru's den and hammer-in. Sorry for the delay.
November 8, 2006 @ 9,229,079
Posted a new iForge demo on swage blocks. This is a duplicate of an article written for SwageBlocks.com. More demos' coming.
December 5, 2006 @ 9,374,734
Calendar of Events is open to post 2007 events.
January 1, 2007 @ 9,512,158
We end the year with over 9.5 million hits and over 160,000 for the month of December. We have archived 452 forum pages.
We started 2006 with 7,465,897 accumulated visits to the pages for a total of 2,046,261 for the year. Those are actual individual visits, not server hits.
February 1, 2007 @ 9,700,000
188,000 visitors in January.
February 2, 2007 @ 9,700,000 Groundhog Day
NEW NEW NEW! Launched a new anvilfire design. It is still in progeress but will cure a bunch of problems the site has had.
- Uses a uniform header on every page so that there is no question where one is.
- Standardized navigation (still rebuilding the sub pages).
- Corrected a nagging banner refresh problem that has been giving us trouble since day one.
- Installed a menu with obvious buttons for those that did not understand the Drop down menu.
- Added google ads to the site. Click throughs from these can generate needed advertising revenue.
CSI login is still the same but the old pages are still in use. There will be numerous bugs in this pages for a while.March 1, 2007 @ 9,869,188
One year ago we reported 7,870,085 visits to anvilfire. That is almost exactly TWO MILLON visits to anvilfire in the past year!
We continue to update old pages to the new design and menu system.
March 10, 2007 @ 9,916,100
Twisted Bars . com : We have a new sponsor. These folks make twisted bar, embossed bar and textured bar for use in decorative iron work. You can save yourself a lot of effort and a lot of wear and tear on you and your equipment by starting here. Small shops without power equipment can produce "forged all over" look work competitively. Great for small projects too!
March 11, 2007 @ 9,927,000 / 66,005
Posted two NEW video DVD reviews of the two new Big BLU Productions videos.
Forging Solutions : Hand Hammer Techniques Vol.1 with Amit Har-lev and Forging Solutions : Power Hammer Techniques Vol.1 also with Amit Har-lev.
March 15, 2007 @ 9,946,095 / 66,069
Posted two new FAQs, Hammer Eye Dimensions and Drilling Coolants/Lubricants.
In 12 days we will hit the 10,000,000 mark. WHO will be our 10,000,000th visitor?
March 16, 2007 @ 9,951,336 / 66,090
Rebuilt the AnvilCAM for this weekend's BiG BLU Hammer-In. If you cannot make it, check the CAM.
Updated the indexes and menus on most of the system. Made a lot of untested changes trying to get all the pages working properly under the new header system. Due to caching in some browsers the site may seem unstable. If something doesn't work right try clearing your browser cache.
March 20, 2007 @ 9,972,538 / 66,171
Added a "Double Arch" anvil to the Fisher-Norris page @ 1966.
10,000,000: March 25, 2007 at 9:00 PM EDT!
That is the accumulated traffic from 9 years (8 years 11 months) of service to the blacksmithing community. In April of 2008 we will celebrate our 10th anniversary and 12 to 13 million visits to anvilfire.com! In that time I have answered an estimated 30,000 to 36,000 questions on-line and at least 2,000 via e-mail. The total answered is probably double that.
In that time to run anvilfire I have had 3PC's, all rebuilt at least once or twice in their life (I just rebuilt the newest from a hard drive crash). There have been three laptops for use in the field. I've worn out one digital camera and I am looking to replace the second that was bought less than 2 years ago. We've also gone through 3 commercial printers, a VCR, video capture device, assorted scanners and other peripherals. I'm driving my 5th used vehicle. I've traveled thousands of miles every year for anvilfire including flying to Calgary Canada and Flagstaff AZ. We have reported on every ABANA convention in our NEWS since 1998.
We are now on our 4th dedicated server and need to move to a 5th (a huge undertaking, since we also host dozens of other sites to help defray costs).
We have had 24 key industry sponsors several of which have been with us from day one. Centaur Forge under the late Bill Pieh was the first, then Bruce Wallace and Bull Hammers (now Pheonix Hammers) then Kayne and Son (now BlacksmithsDepot). The Kaynes have been our longest continuous advertiser.
CSI was launched in 2000 as a support group for anvilfire and had as many as 200 members at one time. CSI memberships kept anvilfire afloat for several years. CSI officialy became a non-profit last year. The goal was to develop enough revenue through memberships to properly support anvilfire.
We should hit the 20,000,000 mark in less than 5 years. We have a 10th anniversary coming up next year. Maybe we will have a 13 millionth visitor contest then!
April 28, 2007 @ 10,166,419 / 66,802
Added a catalog page image to the Fisher-Norris page.
Added a vise photo and diagram to the vise FAQ
Posted March and April Archives to date.
May 1, 2007 @ 10,178,379
June 1, 2007 @ 10,312,600 / 67,298
134,221 visitors in the last 30 days. Added wrought iron sample images to the wrought iron FAQ. Posted some junk CI anvil photos. Updated the travel FAQ on passport information.
Most of the month of May was taken up recovering from a second computer crash in as many months. We had a hard drive failure in late March. Luckily we only lost a few statistics files and current correspondence. Cost to retrieve data from a so-called Raid backup was significant. Then we had a main board failure caused by a small secondary cooling fan on whats called the Northbridge Chip. The rebuid did not go well as numerous parts had compatibility problems delaying final assembly. Now we have a mostly new PC at double the cost of new. . . Hopefully we are now back on track.
This was our main workstation. Anvilfire is maintained from three PCs. The workstation, the old backup and billing PC and a laptop that is used primarily in the field but doubles as an emergency main PC. These are in addition to the rented server.
June 13, 2007 @ 10,360,00 (late)
Posted an article about the Costa Rica Tire Hammer on the JYH page. Also updated the NC-JYH page with some more photos.
June 14, 2007 @ 10,363,687
Posted an article about Built up DIY Power Hammer Anvils and links to JYH building articles on the JYH catalog page. Also updated the NEW CR-JYH page with links and a third detail page.
June 15, 2007 @ 10,365,922 (early AM)
Posted 4 more articles in the anvil series and replaced one, also updated some of the links.
Anvil Radius
Anvils from Skeleton Scrap
Styles and Preferences
RR-Rail anvils
This is an on-going update of all our anvil articles as well as additions.
June 18, 2007 @ 10,381,255 (Midnight)
Posted our new Index to Anvil Making Articles including a half DOZEN all new articles and some that had been posted but hard to find. It includes a growing Gallery of DIY anvils and updates to most of our anvil series.
June 21, 2007 @ 10,391,052
Updated the anvil making articles with a sketchbook of my anvil making ideas. Also updated several articles with new illustrations including photographs of Daniel Boettger's Medieval Pentagonal anvil.
This has been a bigger project than it was supposed to be and is still not quite complete.
June 22, 2007 @ 10,396,692
Added four more drawings to my Anvil Sketch Book and one to the RR-rail anvils article.
June 26, 2007 @ 10,412,894
Posted an illustrated article on making swage blocks Fabricating a Swage Block on the anvil making page.
June 28, 2007 @ 10,420,000
Posted an article about Patrick Pelgroms Self Contained hammer on the JYH page. Includes a short video! Will rotate as soon as I find the right software. . .
June 29, 2007 @ 10,422,404
In our continuing update of our anvil series the iForge article on stands has been added to the list links. In recent months we have added 14 new anvil articles and updated numerous others. This includes the guru's anvil sketchbook with 16 anvil making drawings.
Late @ 10,425,000 Posted a diagram of how Patrick Pelgroms' self contained hammer operates.
July 15, 2007 @ 10,480,00
Posted the date for the anvilfire 10th anniversary hammer-in on the Calendar (April 18-20, 2007). We are lining up demonstrators and events now. Let us know if you want to take part. 2008 CSI/anvilfire Hammer-In
August 13, 2007 @ 10,550,000
Posted an article a diagram of a water bellows in the guru's den. Would like to do an article on same but hate to have to build one. . . Maybe for the 10th Anniverssary.
August 31, 2007 @ 10,669,524
Posted an article on building a Woodworker's Bench under FAQ's
September 1, 2007 @ 10,671,223
September 6, 2007 @ 10,692,128
Posted an article about the Chinese workholding bench and "Sen" sent to us by Sean Walker. Also linked it to the woodworking bench article.
October 1, 2007 @ 10,800,855
November 1, 2007 @ 10,942,500
Trying something new. Signed up for ebay AuctionAds.
November 2, 2007 @ 10,947,297
Posted some 21 overdue archive pages of the guru's den and Hammer-In (June to October). This makes over 500 forum archives pages!
We should hit the 11 million visitor mark by mid November and 12 million by our 10th anniversary!
November 13, 2007 @ 11,000,000
We have quietly passed the Eleven MILLION visitor mark. On March 25th we passed the ten million mark. That is one million visits every 7.75 months or 1.55 million visits per year.
The ebay auctionads have not performed well and the ad server is quite buggy. At least 3 times the system has stopped serving keyword ads and defaulted to so called "hot" items most of which are of little interest to our readers. . . The experiment will continue for a while.
December 1, 2007 @ 11,076,000
We have caught up with out archiving and continue to test AuctionAds.
December 4, 2007
We have removed ALL AuctionAds from all our pages (including archives). Ads with inappropriate content (sexualy targeted products) were served rather than the key word ads as stated by AuctionAds. This combined with very poor performance (1/10th the revenue google provides for the same space) forced us to close our AuctionAds account. We may try this again going direct to ebay but not through an intermediate.
January 1, 2008 @ 11,214,590 - The beginning of our 11th calendar year.
1,702,432 counted visits for the year.
This is the beginning of the 11th calendar year of anvilfire.com! Conceived in December 1997, registered in February 1998 and launched in March 1998. We've had over 11,214,590 visits since adding counters in June of 1998. Our 10th anniversary will be celebrated in April 2009!
Happy NEW year!
The Calendar of Events page is now ready to accept events for the full year and the archives are all updated.
February 1, 2008 @ 11,357,600
143,000 counted visits for the month. Getting ready for the CSI Hammer-In and Auction!
July 21, 2008 @ 12,000,000
Passed the twelve million vist mark!
John David Dempsey May 18, 1925 - July 22, 2008:
My father, the guru's guru, passed away after a short battle with cancer. Husband of Clara Lea, father of Jock, Paul, Shawn (dec.), Daniel, Moria, Steven, Ross and Jeniffer. Grandfather to Skylar, Jacob, Noah, Helen, Andrew, Molly, Patrick, Shane, Samantha Jaclyn, Kimberly and Katherine.
August 3, 2008 @ 12,032,000
Posted 7 new swageblocks on SwageBlocks.com and an article on cheap cast iron anvils (see FAQs).
August 4, 2008 @ 12,033,500
Posted January through July 2008 V.Hammeri-In archives
September 30, 2008 @ 12,234,000
Posted a NEW =Edition of the NEWs with 100 photos covering SOFA Quadstate 2008
October 1, 2008 @ 12,234,500
Start of a new month.
December 6, 2008 @ 12,500,000
Passed the 12.5 million point. Too many things "in progress" too report.
January 1, 2009 @ 12,602,227
Start of another new year, our 11th.
February 11, 2009 @ 12,784,657
Making progress on moving to a new server (our 5th). Each move is more difficult than the last.
While moving we are still posting articles and FAQs. This means updating files on two servers with every change. . .
Posted the following new FAQ's this month
Hammer Handle Day
Drill Press Vise Mounting
Drilling Coolant
One Pass Tenons machined on a lathe.
Also updated articles such as the NC-JYH article and others.
April 2, 2009 @ 12,984,000
Posted Robert Nichols article on rebuilding an NC-Tool Whisper Momma. Also updated the Russian anvil and NC-Tool forge reviews to our new format.
April 2, 2009 @ 13,000,000
Updated the the Websites for Craftsfolk FAQ and our Privacy Policy (added Google info per their request).
April 12, 2009 @ 13,031,897
Started removing the CSI/CafePress ads. After over 2 years they had only accumulated $48 (the 10% they pay). With a minimum of $100 before a check is cut it would be over 4 years before we would see a check. A check for the $48 will be issued on our closing the account. Other ads in the same places had earned up to 10 times that in a month.
We currently have embroidered hats on our cart and the new cart will have shirts as well. We give away more hats and shirts than we sell. . .
May 1, 2009 @ 13,098,762
Posted a review of the new 28th Edition of Machinery's Handbook. Also updated the general Machinery's Handbook review with addition of 28th edition changes and the commerative 1st Edition reprint.
Posted an article on Bench Hooks and Bench Pins related to the Woodworking Bench article.
May 13, 2009 @ 13,141,342
Posted 4 new book reviews and updated the general Machinery's Handbook Review. New reviews include, 1st Edition Commerative Reprint of Machinery's Handbook, Lorelei Sims, The Backyard Blacksmith, The Craft of the Japanese Sword, 28th Edition of Machinery's Handbook (linked to previous reviews). More to come
May 23, 2009
Posted another eBook reprint Hand Forging and Wrought-Iron Ornamental Work. This is a popular classic that has often been quoted or extracted from in recent books.
May 27, 2009
Posted another eBook reprint On the Construction of Locks and Keys. This is the first of several on Locks and Locksmithing we are going to put on-line.
June 1, 2009 @ 13,204,261
Posted new article on Making Repousse' Tools that ties together several book reviews, anvilfire articles and articles on other sites. Also updated some of the linked content.
June 5, 2009 @ 13,215,300
Posted new article on Making a Motor Buffer. Updated the related articles on wheels and buffing compounds and organized the cross links.
June 16, 2009 @ 13,254,685
Posted the past fourteen and one half months worth of archives. Its taken a LONG week plus to edit them into weeks and setup the index. I'm sorry for the delay. It started at the end of a big outside job and has continured. Once behind on something like this it is tough to catch up. Like the book reviews above I'm behind on many things and trying hard to catch up. I've got four more book reviews to finsh and post next week and this is not all the catching up.
MORE TO COME. . .
Aug 1, 2009 @ 13,400,000
Launched the NEW anvilfire Anvil Gallery. This feature page is launching with four different galleries with of forty anvils and a hundred images. The gallery includes anvils from prestigious anvil collections, museums and image collections. This feature will likely double in size in the coming months. Besides the years collecting images this represents over a full month's intense labor processing images and setting up pages.
Aug 20, 2009 @ 13,465,638
Since launching the anvil gallery we have added another 28 anvils for a total of 68 to date. These include a Hungarian anvil with tradmark, an Estonian anvil, Chinese anvils, more rare and classic anvils.
Aug 27, 2009 @ 13,486,071
We added another anvil to the anvilfire gallery but we miscounted the anvils in the gallery (above). There is a total of 54 entries with several counting as more than on anvil (HD=2, Farriers=2, Chinese=5) for a total of 60. We have also added a review of a Delta TFS 100b anvil by Robert Nichols and an article on lathe setup and reverse engineering drives.
Aug 31, 2009 @ 13,497,072
Posted a Cones and Ring Mandrels Gallery on SwageBlocks.com. Over a dozen unique cone mandrels and five catalog pages. We now have anvils, swage blocks and cones all well covered.
Sept 1, 2009 @ 13,500,000
Oct 1, 2009 @ 13,610,000
October 20, 2009 @ 13,688,000
Posted a new gallery of anvils from the Maison de l'Outil (House of Tools) Troyes, France. Photos were graciously provided by Stefaan Meeus of Belgium.
October 27, 2009 @ 13,715,000
Posted a new file cutter's anvil in the Maison de l'Outil (House of Tools) Gallery, changed titles and updated links.
November 1, 2009 @ 13,730,000
November 25, 2009 @ 13,830,000
Launched another NEW feature, a Comic of the Week featuring the work of Frank Tabor - "The Old Welder" and others.
Archived the first 3 weeks of the month.
November 26-28,30, 2009 @ 13,835,000
Server 1 had a hard drive failure and it was replaced. The next day the power supply failed and was replaced. Two days later our "upgraded" replacement, "server2" was hacked and had to be shut down. . . Yet another server is being setup.
December 7, 2009 @ 13,884,000
Posted 2 new anvils in the anvilfire collection, Lap Anvils and Vanadium Steel. Also setting up and organizing the weekly cartoons for next year. . . Organizing more (drawing, contracting. . .) Our goal is to have enough for a comic of the day!
December 9, 2009 @ 13,887,000
After some tense moments, dozens of support tickets and LONG hours we are moved to our new bigger "better" server and I think everything is working now.
This is our fourth server and ninth hard drive (we wore out several). Besides anvilfire and our web-rings that includes all our affiliate sites like swageblocks.com, anvilsinamerica.com, a couple dozen blacksmithing organization sites and some business sites for a total of 120 sites. Now I might be able to get to some other things. . .
We lost some statical data in the move. Several days of counter recording.
December 21, 2009 @ 13,937,140
Repaired the Blacksmith ring entry form - spammers had been hitting it and we had to turn it off several months ago.
Repaired the Blacksmiths ring statistics. For setting had broken them several years ago. Will reset to ZERO on the 1st of the year.
Updated the Calendar of Events. It is now ready to post 2010 events
Posted Guru and Calandar archives - Lost a month of the Hammer-in (November). . .
January 1, 2010 @ 13,975,000
1,372,500 visits this year (page views as reported by some sites are many times that). 2010 is our 13th Year. Anvilfire is a teenager!
January 4, 2010 @ 13,988,000
Added DAILY comics to our Comic of the Week page. There will now be eight new comics on anvilfire every week!
Frank Tabor is sending us 6 new comics per week and our in-house artists are producing our own series of comics so that by year end we should have an inventory that will not need to be re-run in less than a year. Hopefully I can keep up with the scanning and setting up on top of everything else including paying for the comics!
January 7, 2010 @ 14,000,000!
We have cleaned up dead entries in the Blacksmiths Ring. Of the 85 sites removed the majority no longer exisited. Many of these were businesses that have dropped their web presense and probably gone out of business. These were lost URL's that registrations had not been kept up. In the past we would lose 4-5 sites on the ring and gain 6-10 in an average year. But in the last 18 months we lost 75 sites out of 205 to the decline in the economy. A sad situation.
We continue to add comics to the year's schedule.
January 10, 2010 @ 14,014,000
Posted 3 new Italian anvils in the donated section of the anvil gallery.
January 11, 2010 @ 14,016,385
Posted end of year archives. The November Hammer-In was lost in the confusion of moving to a new server. I thought we had been too lucky during the move. . .
January 13, 2010 @ 14,026,264
Cleaned up various page menus and menu includes adding recent new features, Comics, eBooks and Anvil Gallery.
January 14, 2010 @ 14,030,252
Added two touchmarks to the registry, Added a new Russian anvil to the donated section of the anvil gallery. More toons to scan and setup. . . (60 to date).
January 15 - 16, 2010 @ 14,035,475
The anvil gallery recorded 10,000 visits since being launched on Aug 1, 2009 @ 13,400,000, (close to 6 months ago). Currently there are 86 in the main galleries. We are continuing to add more anvils as they come in or as we find them.
February 1, 2010 @ 14,101,000
Removed Striker Tools links due to their going out of business.
Launched numerous comics by TGN (The Great Nippulini) with color by the anvilfire guru.
Corrected the ID of one of the Italian anvils and updated information on same.
March 22, 2010 @ 14,316,500 Launched the NEW streaming AnvilCAM-II page. Included of a dozen locally hosted and an hour's worth of video of the Big BLU - NC-ABANA Hammer-In
April 1, 2010 @ 14,354,266
April 4, 2010 @ 14,368,500 Posted a compiled FAQ and srticle on Lead, another on copyright and infringement.
Posted March archives of guru's den and Hammer-In.
April 18, 2010 @ 14,430,124 Updated the Blacksmith Vises article with new photos, drawings and text. Like many of our articles it is a continous work in progress. Also added a Welding Benches article and one on Finding Anvils
April 21, 2010 @ 14,440,895 Added three new anvils to the anvil gallery, Columbian Anvil, Vulcan Anvil and a Arm and Hammer Anvil
May 1, 2010 @ 14,482,174
June 25, 2010 @ 14,685,000 Added two new YouTube videos, Making a Pine Cone with Michael Leggett and Manufacturing of JHM Anvils. Posted 6 more new cartoons.
July 1, 2010 @ 14,711,517 Caught up on backlog of archives. April through June are now posted.
July 4, 2010 @ 14,719,502 Posted 7 new review videos and corrected links. Also posted an anvil shoot video for the 4th! This is the first of a collection of videos taken by Paw-Paw for anvilfire. We have only recently become technologicaly enabled (new software, converter and updated server) to convert and setup on anvilfire.
July 25, 2010 @ 14,787,992 / 7226 / 5 Posted a new Health and Safety page including the guru's health story and articles about healthy nutrition. These include recipes, videos and links to more information and books.
July 27, 2010 @ 14,797,893 Updated the new Health and Safety page. Edited the articles, added two recipes and some photos.
Updated the Engine Lathe FAQ adding a couple images, a section on suggested precision tools and correcting minor errors.
August 1, 2010 @ 14,812,400 On the road. . .
August 3, 2010 @ 14,820,400 Added Part III - Exercise, to the guru's story on the Health and Safety page. Working on more updates to the page.
August 12, 2010 @ 14,853,383 Added Part IV - The Dilema of Eating Out, to the guru's story on the Health and Safety page. Also added an article on rigging and moving equipment. Some is still in progress.
August 15, 2010 @ 14,863,888 Posted the July Archives. Added a safety factor and testing paragraph to the chain hoist article and images to the rigging article.
August 20, 2010 @ 14,881,810 Added a page to the anvil making series with a drawing I had posted a while back on how to machine a conical anvil horn. It is also linked to some of the other articles as a detail.
August 24, 2010 @ 14,893,302 Added
threefour new anvil pages to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page.. They are also linked to other anvil articles.August 26, 2010 @ 14,904,548 Added a Colonial anvil, Bohemian and Stake anvils pages to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page..
August 27, 2010 @ 14,908,952 Added four more anvils to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page. A fine South German anvil and three Catalan (Spanish) anvils. More coming. . .
August 28, 2010 @ 14,912,875 Added two more anvil shaped objects to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page and a Champion catalog page to the anvilfire collection gallery. We are expecting another large collectors gallery of photos in the near future. . until then!
August 29, 2010 @ 14,915,733 Found and added another anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page, a beautiful T-Stake anvil and references to modern examples.
August 30, 2010 @ 14,919,000 Added a page with over 30 stakes to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page, and a stake name/glossary page - in progress.
August 31, 2010 @ 14,925,225 Added ANOTHER anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page.
In the past week we have added approximately 55 anvil and stake images to the Anvil Gallery pages.
September 4, 2010 @ 14,939,128 Added ANOTHER stake anvil to the anvilfire anvil gallery donated images page. This one is a stake anvil forged by Stefaan Meuus of Belgium. Also updated a number of related articles and links.
September 10, 2010 @ 14,964,500 Added an all NEW gallery to the anvilfire anvil gallery page. The Greenwood Collection
September 11, 2010 @ 14,967,500 Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection, a large German anvil. More to come. . .
September 12, 2010 @ 14,971,312 Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection, a German Armour's anvil that we have featured before. We also added dimensions and weights to all the posted anvils. More to come. . .
September 13 - 14, 2010 @ 14,977,837 Added several more anvils to the Greenwood Collection, another Söding and Halbach (S&H) anvil, updated names, mark translation and and history. Added aniother North German anvil and a Colonial Anvil now in the Historic Arkansas Museum. More to come. . .
September 14 - 15, 2010 @ 14,981,016 Added another anvil to the Greenwood Collection, The Ephrata Anvil. An ancient and historically significant old German anvil.
That is the 15th in the collection with more to come. . .
September 15, 2010 @ 14,984,500 Added ANOTHER anvil to the Greenwood Collection, A colonial American anvil with distict features matching another in the same collection. Includes seperate article on the brand's features and is spawning yet another article. Updated links between these two anvils. Also corrected mistakeen identification of the anvil sold to the Historic Arkansas Museum.
Monday September 20, 2010 - 00:00:00 : 15,000,000 Visits!
That is one million visits (not pages served of viewed) since January 7, 2010. Multiple visits in one day from the same person do not increment the counters (honest data). Pages served are about 10 times the visits. Many of our new format pages are not counting as "visits" if they are the entry page so we need to address this issue. Traffic in visits may be 10-20% higher as a result.
September 30, 2010 @ 15,042,950
Added (several days ago) a listing for FOUR Power hammers on the Power Hammer Page. Added a very nice Peter Wright to the donated section of the Anvil Gallery. Also added a new section to the anvil pages The Art & Science of Anvil Design leading with the Mystery of the 5th Foot
November 26, 2010 @ 15,302,618 Many updates missed in the past month.
Recently added two new anvils to the galleries, both WWII relics. One, in the Greenwood collection, an anvil blown up in the bombing of a German factory, the other an anvil scrapped and buried in a dump on Guam is in our Donated gallery.
We also updated the article on Manual Hydraulic Presses adding three DIY cases. We also updated several of the articles linked to it including the iForge artice on presses. More coming.
December 31, 2010 - January 1, 2011 @ 15,446,190 NEW YEARS
Dempsey's Forge - anvilfire.com officially became a North Carolina business.
February 1, 2011 @ 15,580,733 Many updates missed in the past months.
Updated, reformated, many of the anvil articles linked to the anvil galleries. Added new collections.
March 1, 2011 @ 15,696,555 Many updates missed in the past months.
Have added hundreds of anvil and stake images to the anvil galleries. Updated counter system on all anvil gallery pages.
March 20, 2011 @ 15,772,455 Posted long overdue forum archives for October 2010 through February 2011 (31 archives).
April 6, 2011 @ 15,825,000 Launched an all new feature, The anvilfire Tailgate Sales page. A place to buy, sell and advertise tools machinery your work. . .
May 18, 2011 16,000,000!
One million visits in six months. That is TWO million, 2,000,0000 visits a year!
May 20, 2011 @ 16,008,750 Posted an iForge article on Rosettes or Escutcheons.
June 26, 2011 @ 16,120,00 Posted a beautifully photographed Big Tex Farriers anvil in the anvil gallery
August 1, 2011 @ 16,251,638 Launched a new Tip of the Day featurette. Tips appear on our home page, health and saftey page and elsewhere as we develop them.
January 1, 2012 @ 16, Tips of the Day have been expanded to seven categories and over 300 tips. General tips will repeat only twice a year others more often.
January 10, 2012 @ 17,000,000
Passed the 17,000,000 point - One million visits in less than seven months!
January 13, 2012 @ 17,011,500
Posted a new anvil making article by Patrick Nowak. Building a 1050 pound English Style anvil!
January 27, 2012 @ 17,108,083
Corrected the spelling of Patrick Nowak's name (including the page name) and added images and text the above article.