Avadon

Can you link me to these pictures you speak of? ;)

Yah i've seen some height adjustment setups. Is the ole welded feet with lags into a stump just not all that great? I guess without height adjustment it means you have to find the right size stump or chainsaw it to your size. But I guess boards cut to fit may actually make that easy. See the size adjustment setups mean that your 5x5x? is only a good of a mass as the size adjusting supports it's on. It's kinda like suspending an anvil in the air. Not really the ideal. That is unless you have some nifty idea on size adjustment that still keeps that mass tight to it's earthbound anchor.

Well i was more curious about making some generic anvils that are mildly portable for some friends. I have some hard facing left over and was thinking about cutting up some 4x4 or 5x5 sq rod and hard facing it and putting some feet on it. Before asking I was thinking about the 25-50lb range. Any reccomends would be appreciated. Since I dont' know what people would make on them I can't say what kinda knives they would make.

These instructions say preheat thoroughly to 1200-1300dgs then raise to hardening temperature of 1725dgs F. Hold for one hour and then quench in still air. Upon reaching 150dgsF should be tempered without delay. But the thing is I don't have a tempering oven and don't intend to send it off for tempering. Should I just pre-heat the hell out of it, tig weld it up, keep it as hot as I can for an hour with a rosebud torch and let it cool in air? Or do I need to do some tempering heat after? What is the easiest way?

I was just looking for a general weight size. But Brasilikilt said 10-20 lb. That's probably close enough for me. ;)

What is a good approximate minimum weight and also a preferred weight for an anvil that is solely used for bladesmithing?

10#'s was $500!!! No way am I spending that. Am too cheap lol The anvil i'm making is a brazeal style anvil.. (basically a big chunk of upright steel ~ 4" x 13" x16") I ordered 12 rods @ about $6 a rod and got free shipping on it through MSC and it came the next day. Can't beat that! The stuff is "S-7 Hi-Shock Air Hardening Drill Rod - 36 In. Diameter: 3/32 Overall Length: 36" MSC Item #06095061 Had a chance to Tig Weld with this Rod today on a piece of scrap. HOLY FRIHOLIES!!! THIS STUFF IS STRONG!! Probably the strongest face i've ever seen. Right around 56-58Rockwell Hardness. I couldn't put a dent in it with any hammer, It dulled my chisels and even flattened one of my transfer punches. Not a dent in this stuff. It is insanely hard! Amazing stuff! I think 12 rods will probably do the whole 4x13" face. Probably have an 1/8'th or so surface after grinding. This should be a pretty amazing surface to work on considering whats under the hard surface is just a giant block of steel. Anyone looking to hard surface might want to try out this S-7 Rod. Pretty impressive stuff! If I have any left over I might hardface one of my smaller beat up H.F. jewelers anvils. Ps.. thanks for the point in the right direction everyone.

He's not even selling them on his site. Besides no one owns the patent on building a small portable forge as there are already many small single burner forges. Mapp is cool stuff, but I bet a mini forge would guzzle it pretty quick. If I remember it doesn't take long with mapp before the tank gets really cold the flame is reduced quite a bit. A propane torch on a hose is probably a better setup.

ahh I guess that makes sense. If it was a serious threat you'd think that forge manufacturers would include or highly reccomend their use. What other safety precautions can you install or do to make sure your gas forge is very safe?

Lol @ phillip hehe You know there is one silver lining in all this hard to find anvil business. It may make smiths turn to new Anvils, save up a summers or twos worth of cash before purchase. It may make new smiths more serious about the investment in anvils and it will help those who are working on making superior brand new anvils stay afloat in these hard times. I look at it this way, if foundry's stop making new anvils (because of expense or lack of demand) and the old anvils (those in any kind of decent condition) start getting harder to find then the price of anvils are going to skyrocket out of rarity. Also the diversity of anvil manufacturers will narrow down to even fewer sources then there are today. Perhaps this is an indication that it's really time to start supporting these businesses who are desperately trying to keep the industry alive for the backyard/small shop blacksmith.

How many people here use flashback arrestors in line with their propane tanks on their gas forge? I use them on my oxy/acet setup. I don't know how well they work because i've never had an incident but I suppose that is part of the point of safety equipment. :rolleyes:

Anyone who is so serious about collecting tons of anvils that they would deprive a budding blacksmith from a fair purchase does not have the heart of a true blacksmith in my opinion. This guy on craigslist can take a long walk off a short peer.

Okay maybe I should revise my question some. Which would be more commonly used or looked for in internet searches in America? Is one more modern and americanized and one more old or european?

Is the correct spelling Hardy or Hardie when referring to these tools? :confused: I've seen it both ways on the web. Wiki says Hardy, yet many blacksmithing sites call it "hardie"

Yah I think i'm gonna order the S7 Today. Got a call from Airgas about the UTP

Oh it was simple. The pic on the right looks like it may be a little underfilled. At least there I know that the weld pool brought both the metals together and the liklihood of a cold shut is probably less. But I guess it may be a toss up. Would you rather go with an undercut weld that may have decreased strength but good penetration or a weld that looks like it was overfilled/crowned and may have hardly broken the surface of the metals. To me at least with the undercut I can see that some welding occured. (i'm not an expert though, just saying if I had to choose the lesser of the two ) This is just a serious guess because when you look at a weld in a picture sometimes it can look undercut or crowned depending on the way the light shines on what should look like a stack of knocked over dimes. Looking at a picture from the end(profile) would be the best way to tell. Those welds in both pics though look 95% better then a lot of the homebrew welds you see floating around out there.. so I certainly wouldn't stress to much. Definitely on the right track.

omg lol.. measurements in mm like that mean absolutely nothing to me. It would be like me saying my work bench is 42 Bing cherries across x 13 Fiji apples wide (the ripe ones) x 2 cashews thick. hehe.. but if you can understand your measurement then that's all that really matters. :D

I'm in this same boat. I have such a ridiculous setup. But like all setups I had what I had to work with. To me back then the idea of putting a 3/16's top ontop of a wood desk was a good idea. Now the desk is warped in so many ways that trying to lay out anything remotely true on it is just a joke. Plus at 3' x 7' it's just ridiculously to large for small scale fabrication and blademaking. I'm thinking more like a 3'x5' 1" piece of plate with some sort of really thick walled square steel legs and the whole thing bolted down to the concrete. Put a post vice on one side and call it a day lol. It's nice to have the layout size but i'd rather have something that is true then something large and twisted.

One of the best knife makers (probably on the planet) told me that if you want to do incredible things then learn to draw and sketch. It was his opinion that good design starts with transferring what is in the mind to paper. I do put some stock in that even though I am terrible at drawing. But drawing really helps with one thing for sure, that is demonstrating your idea to others and visualizing appearance before you start utilizing time and materials. I also think being task oriented and creating processes, and improving the speed of those processes is a big part of fabrication, especially when performing fabrication services. You may be the best fabricator in the world but if you can't perform services timely with significant profit you will never earn a successful income with it. Anyway just some food for thought.

If I had to trust my life on one of those welds i'd choose the right picture. Simply because there I can tell you've gotten successful penetration. Now on the left you may have gotten good penetration even though it is slightly crowned. Or you may have no penetration in the center of that weld. I would take both of them and cut them in half and do Racers reccomendation. It's nearly impossible to tell from a picture what kind of penetration you've got there. Hence why do they all that xray testing and dye color penetrates, etc.

Roger on the M-2 as being too brittle. What is the 90SB2 Aikenvb, i've never heard of this. Where can I find it? Harris welding seemed to suggest that 80SD2 and 1034 will not work for hardfacing. So I gave up on both of those.

Okay Just figured it out.. S-7 and M-2 these are the serious drill rods. Rockwell hardness up to 60+ air/oil/salt hardening methods

Now i'm being told 4130 is also really tough stuff.. tougher then 80SD2 but the only place I could find 4130 is through aircraft spruce at 65$ a pound. ouch!

I don't really like stick welding. It's just so messy and never seems to produce as nice of results on precision stuff. I've actually been looking at ER 80SD2. I don't know if this is considered a "hard facing rod" but someone at airgas told me that it will produce a high strength weld :confused: Anyone used ER 80SD2 for hardfacing? It's readily available to me so it would be easy to get.

There are so many ways to make an anvil stand and most of them are right that this really comes down to preference. I've seen some really good boxes full of sand with a floating plate on top. There is one interesting advantage about this in that you can raise and lower the anvil by lifting the anvil out and tamping in more sand or taking some out. With a wood or steel stand the same thing is accomplished by standing on something to lower the anvil or putting something under the feet to raise the anvil. The sand does take the ring out of the metal, but in my opinion a big part of ring is how tied together the stand is to the anvil. The greater grip the stand and anvil have on each other the greater you increase your overall mass and thus help decrease that ring. There are a lot of different way to bolt, crimp, or clamp the anvil to the stand. Of course a lot of this comes down to the tools and materials you have access to. There is also a tutorial out there I saw that walks you through taking a stump, debarking it, using 2x4's to setup a router and plane true flat surfaces top and bottom and to mount your anvil but I can't remember where it was lol I went with a metal stand on a 2" bed and used 1" welded down square rod that bolts the anvil in place. Learned the technique here. The legs are 5x3 tubing filled with sand. The cross bracing is also filled with sand. It's a Nimba and has what most people would consider an usual ring in that it really doesn't ring much at all. But if you really start giving it the business it does give a throaty roar which is hard to explain in text here. The two together are 715lbs. The one thing I like about tripod stands that makes me stay away from the box is the ability to stand with one foot under the anvil itself and my right footback adjacent to the heel. This allows you to get really close to the anvil. With the box I've seen people actually cut a space or have an open end in there so they can have their foot under the anvil. Did you get a chance to weigh the Centurion and the Stand? I bet your topping 500lb of mass! Now you'll have to device some way of hoisting or jacking it up when you want to move it.