Fun with Anvils

Grandpa Bill had a small blacksmith shop attached to the side of his home. I would often spend the day with him as he fashioned horseshoes, fixed hinges and othe items for neighbors.

When he wasn’t pounding on his anvils — he had several different sizes — he was using them for entertainment purposes. He called it, “Blowing up Anvils,” and it involved not only the two blocks of metal , but a fair amount of black powder and a fuse.

He would haul the larger anvil out into the pasture behind the house, place the black powder on top of it, place the fuse in contact with the black powder, stack a second anvil on top of that, lite the fuse and run. After get some distance from the set up, the whole thing would explode with a loud clap and the anvil atop the stack would fly up to a hundred feet or more into the air.

Then he’d start the entire process over — adding slightly more and more black powder to the situation in order to see how high he could get the anvil to fly into the sky. By the time he ran out of black powder, our ears were ringing and we were in danger of becoming deaf — yet we always came away grinning like idiots.

I have since figured out that grandpa’s like grandson’s can act like kids at times.