T Ritter

Forge welding a new face on the William Foster sound like fun. If you were the president of ABANA for a number of years that should give you some pull. Good luck with your rebuild and have fun forging those stake anvils.

That is quite a few anvils you have there Mr Powers. It is nice to know that bad beat up anvils are being repaired and not scrapped when possible. I like the wrought iron or steel based anvils for rebuilding at least it does not require ni-rod in the process and when it is missing some of the top face plate it just adds to the fun. I have rebuilt a few Peter Wright's, a Mouse Hole and a Hay Budden farrier style so far. They all varied in weight smallest being 107 lbs and the largest so far at 206 lbs. I think rebuilding is fun just don't put a due date on it or it will be frustrating. :lol:

I will keep an eye out for you when I am looking around.

The reason I started this thread was I am kind of looking for an anvil which needs a great deal of repair. I like having one in the shop to work on when I feel like it and I can not find any more around my area. I am not looking to spend a lot sense it costs quite a bit to rebuild something like that. I was hoping someone had an anvil that they were just moving around and did not feel like working on.

If your anvil rings to loud a piece of rubber can be placed underneath it, quiets it down very nicely. My Hay Budden was loud and now it is very quiet, I mean unless you like to hear the ring. Personal preference

I have re-built a few anvils and hard-facing can be ground down fairly fast with a Norton Norzon Plus grinding stone on a 7in grinder. I have mine on a 15 amp De-Walt and it moves that stuff. If you plan on re-building you anvil you can use regular mig wire for the base build-up, but you should use something like a 70s-2 wire for its resistance to deforming under use, otherwise the hard-facing could crack because the base material is not strong enough. Just my 2 cents

I would have to say that is one heck of a deal you have. I wish I had a friend at the scrap yard. That would be sweet. Great find with the anvil and swage block by the way.

Good deal, even if the anvil is missing part of it, it is still just too good for a scrap dealer.

Hello, I am just curious how many broken anvils are out there. Such as broken heels or missing faces in that sort.

Yes, In re-building an anvil with a cast iron waist a layer of nickle rod is need for the transition between cast iron and steel welding wires. When I re-build anvils I run hard-facing down the side a bit on my anvils also and to coat everything needed with a nickle rod that would be very expensive. Nickle rod, ni rod 99, in my area is $25 per lb last time I needed some and an anvil would require a few lbs of rod. So unless the anvil has sentimental value a different anvil with a steel waist would be a better investment. It would be a good beginner anvil, so if you get a better anvil there won't be as many hammer marks.

If you plan on repairing your Mousehole, you will need a welder at least capable of 200 amps. My Lincoln mig welder I use is 300 amps, so it is plenty big for the job. Any wrought iron or steel base anvil can be repaired using the correct process and equipment.

I use Rob Grunter's method of rebuilding anvils which has the pre-heat and post-heat temps. If the face is loose I would remove all of the face which is loose and leave what is not. I heat up an anvil with a weed burner and check heat temp with a 400 degree Tempil stick crayon. I rebuild starting with 70s2 welding electrode which is a mig wire. I use Stoody 965g and had luck so far with it. When starting the first pass on the edge I clamp a piece of copper block against the side and lay a piece of 3/4in steel under the other side of the anvil to tip it to the copper for a thicker weld bead. Hard-facing does not like a long arc so it needs to maintain a short arc for porosity free welds. The 965g Stoody which I use is a 2layer recommended and a 3 layer max, do not exceed the max. Make sure the anvil it heated and cooled properly each time you weld on it. When finished welding, I grind it down with 7in Dewalt and 9in Milwaukee angle grinders, one with a Norton, Norzon Plus flat stone, and the other with a 6in cup stone for flatness. This is just my way of doing a re-build, but I am sure there are other ways of doing it, just don't sway to far from Rob's process. If I remember correctly there was a blueprint on IFI which used a 7018 rod for in-tel build-up and finished with a hard-facing rod on top. Sounds like a lot of work but it is kind of fun.

Your shop or mine. LOL. Kind of far although ;)

I never encountered an anvil like that, but it looks like fun to reconstruct. You will have fun with that one. :P

Thanks for the comments on my anvil, I can' t wait to try it out. Darn 8hr day job, B)

Yes, You are correct, I did use flat stock to start and stop the hard-facing on. I did that so I could control the beginning of the arc and make sure the crater is off the anvil for a uniform height weld bead. It keeps the edges all the same height.

Wow, Today must have been your lucky day, good luck in you blacksmith learning!

Hello, I finally finished my needed re-build on my 125lb Hay Budden anvil Saturday. I used Rob Grunter's method and needless to say it works great. I re-built the anvil with 70s-2 wire, then Stoody Build-up, and the last 2 passes were of Stoody 965G. I was a long hard process, but now I can not wait to try it out. With the anvil mounted like it is, it does not have that high pitch ring to it, also if a ball bearing is dropped upon it the bearing will return 90-100 percent of its height.

I was thinking if someone knows how to weld, grind, then why not try to repair an old anvil if it is headed to the scrap yard anyways? It really can not end up in a worse condition than it was in the first place, only better. I like repairing old beat up anvils, just to watch them being converted from a almost scrap anvil into a very good useful tool. I sure do have to admit it does defiantly take a few hours to complete one.

For the beginning of the build up I used 70s-2 a mig wire which resists deformation then a layer of Stoody .045 Build-up and finally on the top I put down 2 layers of Stoody .045 965G hard-facing. I like to run mig wire instead of rods, so that is why I referenced the rods to wire. I think there is a total of about 6 lbs of hard-facing used on this anvil. I also sold a few re-builts so far and I never heard of anything bad about them. I am only a hobby blacksmith and my personal anvil holds up good, it is a 206 lb Peter Wright, which I also re-built.

Ya, You are right I looks almost to nice to use, but in its old state it would be almost useless. LOL

Hello, Here is an anvil I repaired using Rob Grunter's method, which works excellent.

Both of the anvils with the repaired heels are very impressive. Also thanks for the support on fixing my messed up anvil its going alright.

Hello again, This anvil is in pretty bad shape, but I like a challenge in things. I am new to the forum, but I have resurfaced 6 anvils with success so far. I am using Rob Grunter's method, except I run 965g hardfacing instead.