MattBower

Yep, SG7 looks like it'd work pretty well for an anvil. (Nice Google-fu, Phil. I struck out. Maybe I quit too soon. )

If you can post the chemical composition of SG7, we can probably tell you whether it has potential as a good anvil steel. The foundry ought to be able to get you this information. But as Bob S suggested, even a piece of heavy mild steel plate can make a very functional anvil. Here is a picture of an anvil like the one of Brian Brazeal's that Bob mentioned:

Absolutely. But the recommendation I've seen is for a flash temper to around 300. IIRC, tempering much higher can actually stabilize any retained austenite, which makes it harder to push over the edge into martensite land. (As I said, it's a complex subject. ) So quench, temper at 300, then cryo and temper normally. Or just use simple steels, quench them properly, do at most a double temper, and be happy!

Retained austenite is a rather complex subject, and my understanding is simplistic. But I suggest you do some reading on Ms and Mf (martensite start and martensite finish points), soak temperature, and quench speed. There's a lot of good info out there on the Net. (Add "Cashen" to your search terms. Kevin Cashen has written a lot about this, and it tends to be more accessible to us laymen than the discussion you'll find in a metallurgy text.) With that said, with a proper soak and quench (meaning a soak at the right temp, for the right time, and a sufficiently fast quench for your steel), I believe generally it's only the high alloy tool steels that have will have significant amounts of retained austenite. If you're using simple 10xx and other relatively low alloy steels, particularly hypoeutectoid (around 0.8% carbon and below), retained austenite isn't likely to be a problem and a trip to subzero temps probably shouldn't be necessary. But soaking at the wrong temp, or for the wrong time, or quenching too slow (this is where some of the homebrew quench oils can be problematic), can cause RA problems. The best solution to those problems would be to correct your quenching process, rather than trying to make up for earlier mistakes with a cold treatment. I'm not trying to play hide-the-ball by suggesting that you do your own research. I'd give you more specific advice if I could, but as I said this is a complex subject and I don't feel qualified to try to explain it in detail. I do know that there's lots of good information out there; I just haven't fully digested it all myself, yet. Mod note: at teh top of this section there are sticky posts on heat treating including the links Matt just talked about, if you would take the time to read it, you may have your answers

Yes. Yes again. It looks like you might have a couple inches of fuel between your steel, and the outlet of your air tube (a.k.a. the tuyere). Shoot for more like five inches. There's no reason that rig can't get plenty hot enough to weld. (If you're melting steel, you're already exceeding welding temps.) As someone else said, the red bricks really aren't very suitable for your purpose. Hard firebricks would be better, and they're not very expensive. I think they're like $1.25 each at my local brick yard. They're only rated for like 2000 F, but they're much more suitable than what you're using. (You can get firebricks rated for much higher temps, but they're more expensive and you may need to have them shipped.)

Sure, legit farrier sites carry decent or better anvils, as long as you don't mind paying $5 or $6 per pound plus shipping. But you said you don't have much money . . .

That site is not offering used anvils. It is offering new anvils -- a 55 pounder for $99 and a 110 pounder for $149. This is one of those cases that exemplifies the saying, "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is." I promise you these are cast iron ASOs. At those prices they can't be anything else. The picture appears to be of a real anvil, though. Very shady in my book. And Wooginator, limiting yourself to the Internet for anvil purchases really isn't going to help your cause. You're a starving college student, right? So you don't want to pay a lot? On the Internet you're going to find ASOs (which you don't want), or real anvils -- which dozens of other would-be anvil buyers will also find. That's sort of the nature of the 'Net, see? And those people will compete with you to buy the anvil you want. That drives up the price. To find the deals, you need to track down the anvil under the junk pile in the little old lady's garage, the one that nobody else in the world knows about. You say you don't know anyone, but that doesn't seem very plausible. You're at college; you're not dead. You don't know any fellow students? Students have families. Families have deceased grandfathers and crazy uncles. Professors? Ditto. Professors in the art department may even know metal workers. Some of them may even be blacksmiths themselves, or may have played with it at some point. Have you tried hooking up with a local ABANA chapter? Is there a student bulletin board (real-world or electronic) that you could post to?

Lol PT Barnum was sooooo right. (Assuming that he actually made the "sucker born every minute" crack, which may not be the case.)

One word of caution on this subject: bigger stones must run slower. If you run 'em too fast they can basically explode, with potentially fatal consequences. I know you said you were planning to run it slow, but others might not realize how big a deal that can be.

Steel is a difficult metal to cast well. Leaving that aside, as others have suggested, building a foundry furnace capable of melting the amount of steel you're talking about, then providing sufficient fuel to do the job, then coming up with enough casting sand, and a way to mull it, and a way to handle the very heavy cope and drag full of many hundreds of pounds of sand, and a crucible large enough to handle that much steel (forget a cupola furnace unless you want to turn your RR track into cast iron), and a way to manipulate the crucible . . . will cost you probably many times more than a new commercial anvil of the size you want. And then you'll have to suffer through many failures until you figure out how to get it right. How many years do you want to spend making an anvil?

You're going to find that decent abrasive belts will pretty easily chew through O1 tempered at 1000F. I could go into a long explanation about the hardness of the various carbides (most of them are softer than the abrasive on your belts), and how even vanadium carbide in a soft matrix is liable to tear out. But just try it. For what you're trying to do, tungsten carbide would be a vastly better material. (Added later: Even nearly full hard O1 would be a vast improvement over what you propose. Yes, it'd be brittle. But you can probably design around that.)

Whoa. That's not what I thought this discussion was about! lol That's pretty cool, though; I hope you get it working.

I've read that Indiana 4th Amendment case (having been born and raised in Indiana, I'm still always kind of interested in what's happening back there), and there's more (or maybe less) to it than most folks understand. (The court didn't actually approve warrantless searches.) But I guess you're right that we've gotten awfully far afield. I don't mean to pour fuel on the fire -- so I won't.

Could be wrong, but I think that was a joke.

One tip for melting cartridge cases is to melt a small ingot first. Then submerge your (COMPLETELY DRY, PREHEATED AND PRIMER-FREE) cases in the molten bath to melt them. That cuts down some on oxidation losses. I melted a bunch of scrap .223 a while back. Even though they were all previously fired empties, one of them somehow had something live in it. Whole primer, some unfired primer compound, I don't know what. I have no good explanation. All I know is that it went into the hot crucible and a few seconds later it went bang. Fortunately it was not submerged in liquid brass at the time, so it was a non-event -- except for the effect it had on my heart rate. Kind of put me off wanting to melt cases, though. Did I mention that anything you put in the crucible needs to be completely dry, preheated, and primer-free? Even a tiny bit of moisture is a Bad Thing.

Steve, you're very vigorously asserting some things in this thread that sound a little fishy to me -- specifically, I mean your assertion that a commercial landlord is somehow criminally liable for his renter's actions in hiring illegal immigrant workers. I'd be very interested in seeing you cite to some official source of information to back you up. Statutes, regulations, even just government agency websites -- something that supports your understanding of the law. I write and help negotiate forty-plus page, multi-year, multi-million dollar commercial leases on a reasonably regular basis, and I can tell you the issue you're raising isn't even on our radar. I've seen commercial leases prepared by some of the biggest law firms in the country, and none of them touched upon the alleged problem you're raising. So again, if you could just cite to some reliable source that backs up your position, I'd extremely interested to see it. After 9/11, commercial landlords did add clauses to their leases to address Executive Order 13224, which has to do with doing business with known or suspected terrorists. But that has almost nothing to do with illegal immigration generally.

I like it! That's quite a bit nicer than most brake drum forges I've seen. I probably would've shortened the "downspout" a bit to make room for a bigger ash bucket. That's my only real criticism. (I will assume you know what you're doing with regard to the wiring. I don't.)

Thanks for that, Dennis. I haven't seen that one before!

Running 60 PSI through a 0.5" orifice is very different than running 60 PSI through a 0.001" orifice. Make sense? Then there's the fact that the size and design of the forge and how well insulated it is will determine how much gas you need to deliver to get to the temperature you want. And the temperature you want will vary depending on what you're trying to do. Etc., etc. Point is, as others have suggested, it's much easier to determine the answer to your question through experimentation with your own burner and forge than it is to try to calculate it from theory.

1" works just as well as 2", if you use two layers of it. You should coat your fiber blanket either way, because free ceramic particles are a respiratory hazard.

The main purpose of the wood is to keep the anvil from bouncing around. Beyond that it's not going to do much for your anvil in terms of increasing its efficiency, no matter what you do. Putting the smallest face of the anvil up puts the most possible mass directly under the hammer, where it does the most good. The small face is least likely to flex and absorb energy. But in truth I doubt this makes a very big difference in an anvil as small as yours. It's much more likely to matter if you're using a piece of rail that's a meter long. In that case, standing it on end can make a significant difference.

Very, very cool. But you need a bigger anvil and a stable anvil stand! And a striker with a sledge! :)

It's a trademarked brand name, so if they're calling it Stellite I'm pretty sure it's the same stuff. There are different Stellite alloys, but they all have lots of Co and Cr. I believe Talonite is very similar (the same?) stuff made by someone else.

They look pretty respectable to me, especially for your first time out. As far as making them better, just use 'em for a while. You'll soon know if they need improvement.

Stellite is better than half cobalt, a bunch of chromium, and a couple other odds and ends. No iron at all in the alloys I've seen. For whatever that's worth.