HWooldridge

Miller publishes a very good set of training guides - here is the link: Miller - Resources - Tools You can get the student package for $25 and it's well worth the money.

That's a nice firepot. Time to set it in a hearth alongside a good blower and do some work!

I have an old hot-tap style Miller 150 that was made in the late 1970's - I bought it used in 1985 for $150 and have used it ever since. It's had one contactor replaced and the gun liner has been changed twice. Those few repairs probably cost another $150 over the years and it has given me over twenty years of reliable service.

On dual forge setups, I've seen folks set a piece of sheet metal on the cold side so there is a back to the chimney. Helps the one working firepot draw better...just a thought.

A big firehose would probably work quite well - anything to break up the steam pockets and remove the heat quickly.

No, a mechanical hammer cannot squeeze like an air or steam hammer. Most have to be set with the dies apart to run properly so there is some minimum stock size that can't even be touched when the dies are at rest in the lowermost position.

I have done edge repairs with a MIG on several anvils but about the best you can hope for is some carbon embrittlement of the welded areas so they aren't dead soft. 7018 would also probably work. Preheat slightly just around the fill with a propane torch; 300-400 degrees is plenty. The wide variety of exotic buildup rods yield varying amounts of success depending on the type and application - so I'm not going to comment on them here other than to say you will likely see a color mismatch after the anvil either begins to rust or develops a work patina. On the other hand, common steel rods or filler wire will blend into the surface pretty well and the patches will often completely disappear with time. There are several answers to the broken edge problem - all with varying degrees of difficulty. If the chips are minor, you can leave them alone and make a block with crisp edges to fit the hardy hole (Mark Aspery has shown this here). Another option is to take a right angle grinder with a flap wheel and clean them up a bit. I have a 100 lb anvil that was treated that way because it had one spalled place near the hardy and a single chip gone from one edge. I ground out about an inch so there is a large radius in that one place, which is useful for some work. You can also buildup the edges with welding as I alluded above. Finally, you can reheat an anvil using the technique I described in the first post (but to a yellow color) and use sledges and a flatter to clean up the top and edges. If the original forge weld is sound, this will make the anvil look almost new - and if you plan the work correctly, the heat treating can be done in the same heat right after the forging. I have not personally done this but I saw the process done in Mexico on a small 75lb anvil and it worked perfectly. However, it is not a one person job and you'll need at least two or three other brave souls to help out.

You are welcome - but part of me hopes you'll never have to do this as it is a lot of work...:-)

Someone in a related thread asked me to post a separate note on how I have repaired anvils, including the heat treatment - so here is an expanded text of a post I put up in May 2008. When I started blacksmithing in the early 1980's, good anvils were very hard to obtain and usually pretty expensive. I traded a couple of rifles for this 250 lb Peter Wright (at that time, I was gun-rich and anvil-poor) and it has been my regular shop anvil since it was repaired almost 30 years ago. Initially, a large piece of the face was gone plus the heel was cracked and trying to come off at the hardy. It was replated with a piece of spring steel off a scrapped bucket crawler and I was lucky that two of the helper springs on the rig were a uniform thickness, the right width and about 3 feet long. I'm not a "steel detective" so I tested a small piece of the spring by heating and hardening it before going to all that work. After I cut the piece to length, it was heated in a normal sized coal forge and flattened out of its curved position. I let it normalize then drilled and chiseled the pritchel and hardy. When it was time to attach the plate, I spaced it off the anvil with 3/8 round stock (including tight rings around the pritchel and hardy) and welded it from the inside out to the edge with E6011 rod. I did not clean between passes and simply piled on bead after bead until the gap was filled completely. Necessity is the mother of invention... At this point, I ground everything to final size then called a friend of mine over to the shop to help. We planned to hang the anvil upside down on a chain from a jib crane and heat in a coal forge. The forge box was specially made for this task by cutting an 18" slot (the length of the face), in a piece of 1/4 plate attached to 4 pipe legs, then I capped a piece of 3" pipe before splitting it down the center and welding it under the plate to act as an airbox. I stuck a short 3" nipple on the box and used a Champion 400 blower for an air source. The jib crane held the anvil about 4 inches above the plate so it would not settle into the fire. We used damp slack coal for the fire and initially built a long fire from wood tinder before piling up the coal. This was so the fire would burn consistently as I did not want one end to be hotter than the other. After about an hour of slow and steady heat, we could see color about 3 inches from the face into the body. We hoisted the anvil out of the fire, flipped it back over and set it on the ground then poured water from two wheelbarrows and a big galvanized tank on top of the anvil. It also took a garden hose to cool it enough not to draw the temper from the residual heat. This produced a good hard face but it really wasn't enough water as the heel around the hardy didn't get very hard. Whatever you do, DO NOT - under any circumstances, submerge a hot anvil in water as the steam pockets will make the face crack. I saw this first hand on a repair while helping another smith and had to hold my tongue after counseling him beforehand not to immerse the anvil. The only way to correctly cool an anvil face is with a cascading column - the bigger the better. I've successfully heat treated three anvils this way but if I did it regularly, I'd put a 1000 gal tank on legs with a 6" valve and elbow so the water could be dumped quickly. As you can see from the photo, the replated Peter Wright is taller than normal but is a great tool and it has served me faithfully for many years of hard and frequent use. The dark spot on top is an oil stain and there are no cracks or spalled spots anywhere on the face. It has great rebound and will last long after I'm off to the great Shop in the Sky...

You can re-heat treat an anvil - I've done a few. It can be done in a wood fire if you have nothing else, although I built a long custom firebox to hold coal. I can provide more detailed instructions if you go that route.

Try looking for bentonite.

Temperature extremes, continual damp and ground contact will all work against you. I have an old barrel smoker with walls that are about 1.5mm thick and it rusted out with only occasional use within 6-7 years. Of course, it was exposed to heat and the trace elements from wood smoke - but I also painted it black in the beginning so it did not start life as bare metal. In addition, I've salvaged a few steel items that laid in the dirt around our house for several years and they are about gone. If it were me, I'd let it rust evenly so there is no unprotected steel and then apply a good quality paste wax since that will have a tendency to shed moisture. If's it's off the ground and not under cover of shade, it will be able to dry out quickly and should last many years.

A36 is a relatively wide spec material because it is generally composed of melted down cars and other scrap. 1018 is a narrow spec material that you might see on an engineering print for machined or forged parts but it is unlikely to see A36 specified for anything other than structural work. Hot rolled often has seams and cold shuts but I have also seen it (recently) in premium steels such as 12L14 and 4140. Might have something to do with the "global market" and "economic supply and demand" or whatever... I have frequently experienced hard spots in A36 - some hard enough to make drilling a chore. In fact, you can likely grab a piece of material in any convenient size and bend it cold - you'll likely see kinks and not a smooth curve. A36 makes a pretty decent material for replacement springs on post vises, just forge to size, heat to cherry and quench in Super Quench without tempering. Makes a great spring that typically won't break or take a set. BTW, I was given some 1008 a few months ago - that stuff forges like butter and welds pretty easily. It's worth trying if you can find it.

Everybody does it a little differently but your basic description is correct. I bring the heat up fairly quickly so I have a lemon-white fire and then turn the blast down to a whisper. This allows the piece to soak so it's hot all the way thru and not just on the surface. You also don't want a dazzling shower of sparks because that means the piece is burned - instead, you want a few bursting sparks from the fire and the work to be the same color as the fire with a slippery, wet appearance. I'm sure others will also add their 2 cents...

The other replies pegged it pretty well and I can also relate to your angst to an extent. I've spent many years outfitting and upgrading my shop but occasionally, I just stand out there and stare at everything without much sense of purpose. It seems like the analytical, engineering side of the brain takes over and gets the mechanical part of the process completed but once all the machinery is working, the creative side goes to sleep and is hard to rouse. I went through a dry period about ten years ago when I didn't go into the shop for months at a time but fortunately, I got through that period. I've also known people who spent some number of years perfecting a hobby/vocation and then ditching it for something else because they became bored. In my case, jobs still come along pretty regularly and that keeps the juices flowing. I like variety so have pretty much abandoned high production items in favor of custom and low volume work - it's funny how a person is drawn to one or the other and you could find that one path or the other is right. It may be more comfortable to make 20 similar items and sell them as the opportunities arise or to work with clients to make unique commissions. In any case, I would certainly ruminate on the decision before making any snap decisions about dumping the equipment it's taken so long to accumulate.

I suppose Emerson owns them now. Emerson Power Transmission

Browning probably has one in the right size. Gates Industrial may also sell them.

Wow...I could not find it by searching but of course, I looked for 'blacksmith hammer' - silly me! Wonder how it behaves on hot iron?

They used to make a 2-1/2 lb crosspeen with the typical Estwing one piece handle and head but I assume they dropped it as I haven't seen them in the catalog.

I make normal scarfs and then tack on one side with the MIG to hold the pieces together. I can then heat, flux and weld normally without having to worry about chasing that loose piece around the anvil.

That could definitely be a blueprint - nice work!

Being in shape is also very helpful. I regularly lift weights to help my overall strength and fitness plus I jog for the aerobic benefit. Upright rowing helps the deltoids - and of course, pushups or bench press and tricep extension combined with curls helps the arms. In addition, working on your grip with a tennis ball or grip spring is good.

I used #8, 1/2" NF bolts and nuts. I also ground a heavy chamfer on the ends of the bolts and let them contact the anvil but did not grind detents in the anvil. It just pinches the h#$% out of the anvil in the box and won't let it come out. However, indentations would be a good idea.

Yes, the bolts go through the nuts and they do lock the anvil into the frame very solidly. You may not be able to see it but there is a short piece of angle iron opposite the bolts which is welded to the box and acts to trap the anvil foot so it can't rise out of the box. In fact, I move this assembly around the shop with a bridge crane and only have to sling under the horn and heel. The bolts secure the base to the anvil without it falling off - and the base weighs about 250 lbs. The harm with any vessel that is not specifically designed and certified for holding pressure (like an air tank) is some level of temperature variation will build air pressure in a container and cause it to rupture so you always leave a small hole(s) so it can breathe. I learned this from an engineer who used to build high pressure freon systems. He would always put a valve or blowoff on any closed tank so it could be dumped to atmosphere - even if was as simple as a bolt threaded into a hole somewhere in the system. If you don't think the pressure is much, try purging a tank to ambient then close the valve and set it out in the sun for a while. A simple enough thing to do on your stand is drilling a 1/16" hole in each leg in a discreet place and be done with it.