Golden_eagle

If this keeps up I'll start making new anvils in the Fisher Norris style, Except with my touch-mark instead of the old eagle and anchor... Time to call the foundry.

Proof in point, My uncle, a long time smith and the man who got me interested metal working, has a vaughan that he's had almost 20 years now. and my current mentor, a blacksmith and caster of more years then is known, has a Estwing framing hammer and a plumb ball pein(link to plumb Ball peins)(link to plumb cross pein) that he got in 1992, and the ball pein has stood up to years of abuse by his students.

Cheap hammer, years of rough use, or bad temper. get a good American made forging hammer, like an armstrong(armstrong tools), Estwing, Klein, vaughanm, stanley, or Wright. Don't be like me and forge with shiny Chinese trash for the first three years. Just now getting a good old fashioned hickory handled Vaughan, real nice 48 ouncer.

its a Fisher Norris eagle anvil, dead certain. good anvil, It'll last longer then you... Assuming that you keep it away from Numb Skulls with angle grinders.

This is a picture of my new anvil, I looks even Uglier now that I've worked on it! Uploaded with ImageShack.us You guys thought I had defaced a real anvil, didn't you? Now I gotta clean up the mess that I made after that guy ground the horn on the Fisher-Norris Eagle flat....

I've forged chrome alloys with no ill effects, though I rarely heat anything up above orange. I have however had a lovely case of zinc oxide poisoning, A bit of Phosgene poisoning, and some light lead poisoning, <sarcasm on> It's a great experience and I strongly suggest everyone try it!<end sarcasm> Honestly, HMP/MFF was the worst I've ever felt in my life. If you gotta ask if a plating/coatings safe, GRIND IT OFF! And remember to wear a respirator! I'd of spared my self a week of cramps if I had been wearing mine. Welding health hazards Grind and then do what with it ? You seem to have missed the posts about responsible disposal of hazmat. Also an alloy is not the same as a coating .

If it looks like this> Then Its a fisher-norris eagle anvil, If I'm correct it has a cast iron body welded to a forged horn and tool steel face.

bees wax or peanut/vegetable oil and a blowtorch, paint the whole thing(except the face) with a thin layer of wax/oil and LIGHTLY heat it with the torch till it turns golden brown. serve hot over a bed of rice or you could just douse it in a bunch of WD-40 and let it lay...

It's proverbs 27:17, paraphrased Hebrew translation: iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens his brothers literal Hebrew translation: iron sharpens iron; and, along the - other. scholars translation (or intent translation,): Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. original Hebrew: יז בַּרְזֶל בְּבַרְזֶל יָחַד; וְאִישׁ, יַחַד פְּנֵי-רֵעֵהוּ.

use a piece of mild steel as a strop.

iron wears against iron, ergo iron sharpens iron, if it can dull a knife, it can sharpen a knife.

yep, if I could do all my work there it'd really simplify things as we have a 150 lbs Fisher&Norris eagle. but alas, I only have classes m-w-f, and I'm looking at having an apprentice next year, which in and of its self is daunting as I only consider my self a journeyman smith.

it makes me feel better about breathing lead dust, and it gives me an excuse to drink milk from a cup in the middle of the day. perhaps the fact I had the filters and air evac hood running should give me more comfort then drinking cow milk. but yeah, I should probably get a under-mask respirator... and the axle is 3 inches in diameter, and about 2.5 foot long.

Its fairly sizable, about 150 pounds of useable steel, mostly agricultural steels ranging from 1040 to 1085, with some railroad steels, Axles, rusty hammers, a 70-100 year old 90-100 pound tractor weight made out of forge welded steel, you can still see the steam hammer marks, unused rusty horseshoes, Ect. I also have access to a HUGE dumpster of mild steel scrap. which is what I'm gonna build the base out of. for the longest time I used the tractor weight as a anvil, and my varying sizes of steel rod as 'horns', but the tractor weight was to hard to fasten down, and the round rods liked jumping out of my hand-me-down leg vice and on to my toe. so I caved, and started welding the rods to the tractor weight. I've almost got a cone now, after I finish the horn I'm gonna weld the Hardy hole on and a 1 inch thick piece of cold rolled sheet to the end for the toe, and fill the back with mild steel. [and now to what I was going to post before Inventorying all the steel I have set aside for the anvil project,] I started today by testing the 'body' of my 'anvil' for rebound, I dropped a 32 oz ballpein hammer 10 inches onto the face of the 'body' and it returned to 2.5 inches, giving it a score of %25, next I started looking for something to strip the 'rust' that had accumulated on the 'body' I checked in all the usual places you would find somethin that would eat rust, the storage room, the machine shop[i'm building my anvil at a local community collage.] the grinding room, so on and so forth, yet I couldn't find a single bottle of WD-40 or other rust dissolving spray any where, then it hit me the BREAK ROOM! low and behold, a shiny, fresh container of the highest grade rust stripper! unfortunately, it was already marked for a different use Uploaded with ImageShack.us, so, undaunted, I moved on to mechanical means of removal, taking my little 4.5 inch angle grinder I started to strip the 'rust' from the steel, after about two seconds of grinding, I noticed something strange about 'rust', It was flaking off like 2/8th of an inch thick chunks, leaving behind clean[ish] steel! It wasn't rust! it was PAINT! old paint, lead paint... I'm drinking a tall glass of milk now... Uploaded with ImageShack.us rebound after de-painting - %55, next I cut the carry loop off and preheated the body to 400f, and, using the largest rod we have set really hot, began welding a bit of axle to the place the carry loop used to live, then Railroad lagbolts to the sides of that, then filled in all the gaps, and started to make it look like a real anvil horn! then my instructor walked up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and said "Roper, class has been over for 20 minutes, I'm going for lunch, clean up and close the door behind you.".... At the end of the day: Uploaded with ImageShack.us Uploaded with ImageShack.us I apologize for the bad resolution, it was taken with a camera phone. rebound at end of day, %55.

I do most of my heavy forging with a 3.5 lbs crosspein, the light duty forging with a 24 oz. ballpein and general forging with a 36 oz ballpein. I thought long and hard on getting a 36 oz hofi to replace my ballpein and a 48 oz ballpein to replace my crosspein, but I couldent dig up the cash then, I'll probably get them for Christmas. [all my hammers currently have fiberglass handles, I'm phasing out all my plastic handles to wood.]

That would probably be easier, but I've never gone for easy.

hey everyone, golden eagle here, a while back I decided to ditch my Cast ASO and get a real anvil, but after many moons [a week] of searching I still failed to find an anvil in my price range [Roughly $40, I spent all my money on hammers steel propane leathers wood [mt.dew and tic-tacs]...] So now I've turned to my sizable [mediocre] steel reserves [heap] with intent on grinding, welding, beating and cutting a new [old] shiny [rusty] 200 lbs anvil outta them. this is the recording of this monumental [pitiful] feat [attempt] so that others may learn from my example [mistakes]. the plan: Uploaded with ImageShack.us more updates as the week month year [unspecified length of time] goes on interspersed with random bits of truthful humor.

7.8 in 43, better then my last try.

I'd edit my previous post, but it locks them after 24 hours. I did the polishing and some file work today, finish is 'Greystar' polished, I've also chosen to go with black walnut burl with copper-brass Mokume gane fittings

I've already quenched it, (5W-30 motor oil,) but I also found my old tempering block, so I've both hardened and tempered it, took the edge to bronze, but the handles normalized and then taken to gunmetal grey, so it should drill nicely with the tungsten carbide bits I got.

Hey all, sorry for being gone so long, but its been awhile since I had any thing to post. Blade area:Estm. 2.5 inches, Total length:Estm. 6.5 inches Blade thickness: 0.390 inches (a little over 3/8th inches) Steel: Unidentified oil hardening steel.further research and spark testing on scrap from the same bar this came from has proven this steel to be either 5160 or 1085, its old as dirt, so its probably 1085. it's currently completely annealed, I'll be hardening later today and be doing the tempering this Friday suggestions for handle material? I have some cedar, black walnut, and pairpear wood I can use.

After about a year hiatus from this forum, I'm back. slightly dazed by how much this place has changed, but i'm back... Really need to change my avatar...

I now it's been a while since I've been on but i had to share this, Earlier today i was melting aluminum in my furnace, my ceramic crucible hasn't come in yet- so i have been using an old steel cup, we've had a rainy spell as of late, (Rust...) so i haven't been out to do anything in the forge area, i drop some bits of aluminum into the (rusty) cup, put it into the furnace and fire it up, three minutes later the door on the furnace blasts open and (molten) cup bits spray out, aluminum is dripping down the front of the furnace, iron is collecting like stalactites of the roof, and theirs a hole in the bottom of the cup... now i have to clean up the mess.

melting metal in a home foundry, backyard metalcasting, metal casting This guy has a lot of good information on wast oil burners,

I Tried one just after i started, my files were rather... ineffective (after quenching in superquench, in feb.). get the good stuff, it pays off.