For Ashley Iles fans:

[Canopener]

I hope this is OK with WCI; but I just finished reading Peter Bensons "Thoughts from the English Countryside" article in "Chip Chats".
I know that there are several members here that love Ashley Iles tools and the article covered his recent trip to their factory. I found it to be very informative as well as highly complimentory. This is a family run business with a small group of old world craftsmen turning out high quality tools.
He began the article talking about modern high tech and ended with a story about their anvil.
It seems they bought this massive beast of an anvil second hand, it was seated on an equally huge rock; and they were impressed by the natural spring it had when struck by the forgers hammer.
They took it apart, cleaned it up and hauled it back to the shop. When they started to use it, the spring was gone and the anvil had gone dead, so to speak.
They called up the previous owner and told him the problem.
When the old owner found out they had cleaned it up, he informed them that what they had cleaned out was old horse manure that had been used to bed the anvil; and they needed to put it back.
So they got some horse manure, reseated the anvil, and it was as good as before.
Don't you just love old technology?
And I guess you could say "Thats No Bull"
Jim
PS Kudos to the many members and their work that were also featured in that issue