Avadon

ps.. i have a brazeal type anvil.. it's just a huge block of steel on a stand.. and it's face is S7(ground and sanded). Easy to repair..dents, dings, etc just by welding S7 back in place and re-grinding. But i'm guessing you can't just do this on any ole anvil?

I'm sure we've had this convo before but nothing came up in the search. Dunno why.

I brought my anvil 3000 miles back from the east coast to the west coast. It was paletted and packed like it was read to go into space. However when I finally unwrapped all the packing somehow there were two dents in the brand new face. (tears) really painful to see. My only guess, somehow a screw or two must have gotten in there and gotten bounced between face of anvil and the plywood ontop of it. They are small dents 1/16'th deep by 1/8'th wide by 1/2" but this anvil is still totally brand new!! It's a 450lb cast gladiator.

So what should I do to fix it?

Sand the dents out and live with the low spots?
Can I make two small spot TIG welds of S7 and then sand it level?
(would it even weld well since it's cast steel?)
I should I just leave them? (my least attractive option)

Or does one just have to wait till the anvil is totally dinged up after a lifetime of use and ready to have the top sanded/milled.

I'm just sick over it. I baby'd my anvil so much. I was hoping I'd be the first one to put dents in it if anyone was going to. :(

More digging produced that people are using D2 tool steel out of rounds 6"dia x 3-4" which are shaped with beltsander or belt grinder and then hardened. Might be more than i'm willing to do for him in my small shop. But an interesting tool.

They are both hammered and spun. This customer wants to hammer on an anvil like above. Hammering apparently gives richer sound. He wants to raise over an anvil instead of dish. So I'm really stuck trying to make that shape. :-\

I'm looking to make a large cymbol anvil for a customer. He's thinking 10", perhaps even 14".
I've looked around at pipe caps and most schd40 stuff stops at 8" and the drop off from center to the side is to severe. As you can see from the picture the curvature is very minor. Anyone know where I can get a pipe cap like this? I've seen pvc caps with a very minor curve like this but trying to find one out of metal has escaped me. Already looked in major supply catalogs and no joy.

I have no lathe and paying to have a tool lathed this size would be bocu bucks. Taking a 2-3" piece of steel and cutting it into a circle and grinding it by hand seems like a huge effort. Gotta be some easy way to make this.

Please Halp! :P

Thanks for the great information. Interesting about the step distance to certain tools. This time i'm not sure I will drill concrete anchors anywhere till i'm certain where things go. I may even try these epoxy bolts which you adhere to the concrete. Anyone ever used these? They are supposed to be incredibly strong.

As dumb as this may sound, it helps. Get some cardboard boxes or buckets or anything light, label them and play shop. If you haven't built your shop yet you can do this in your livingroom or garage or front yard. The neighbors may think you are crazy but eh, what the hay. Arrange them how you would like your shop set up and move from one to the other as if you were working. If something feels awkward, move things around till they feel right.
It beats moving around hundreds of pounds of equipment and tools till things feel right.
I use clay to practice with when figuring out how to make something to visualize what to do. Boxes are easier than hugh clay anvils to re-arrange.

Mark <><

Thats actually a really good idea! I may just try that. My thing is I find i'm running back into the house to check the computer a lot (for notes) so I don't like a lot of obstructions to walk around. Catching your hip on an anvil or a table can ruin your day. I use the clay to practice a lot as well. In fact I have very hard oil clay just for this purpose. Works very similar to metal when it's cold as it is so dense and hard. Very fast way to simulate how metal moves when hit and a quick way to prototype something without wasting stock and forge fuel. Thanks for the tips.

Yah i've seen many peoples jpeg lay out of their shop showing placement of basic items I just can't remember where they were. I wanted to see what other people have done first, before I try something "new" for myself.

Anyone have some jpegs or pics of traditional shop layout? Stuff that shows typical arragement of forge, benches, anvils etc. I went to start arranging equipment, desks, forges today and realized I was totally just guessing. Not great when I have to run some temporary 220V lines. So if anyone has some plan-form pics that show basic tride and true layouts of equipment i'd love to see them.

The hard facing rod is stick? I hardfaced my steel anvil with S7 TIG Rod. It was all position and fairly easy to do. The grinding took a while but all in all it was easy to do and easy to repair dents in the surface. Welding on cast iron sounds very un-fun.

what the heck kinda of hammer is that? lol is that thing chromed?

Excellent. Thank you for all this great information guys. Yes I was talking about military forks as well as agricultural forks and not dinnerware. I guess the hardy square (pictured above in this thread) is really one of the best ways to work these types of tools if for some reason working over the horn will not make it. I can see one thing the flat hardy tool has an advantage in, and that is flattening where working over the horn is going to draw the metal out. So there would probably be times where you would use both the horn and that specific hardy. Neat stuff!! Thanks for the help all.

The distance between the face of the anvil and the opening below a bridge anvil is probably too thick to make a fork.

Are you referring to the "bridge" anvil tool that is used in the hardy hole when making forks and stuff? See Sketchup sketch below.

Wow, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a Hardy Bridge Tool. What do you think the thickness of that plate should be? Maybe i'll weld myself up something like that. B)

I am not sure how big of an anvil you are referring to? But here is a link to a video that clearly shows a bridge anvil in use.

That's crazy. Doesn't look like a single guy there has safety glasses either. And four sledges at the same time! lol

So are they of any use when making weapons like pikes, forks, tridents, pitchforks, etc? And other multi prong or multi-facet tools? Or would this just be better done over a horn of a traditional anvil?

Always thought bridge anvils were amazing and beautiful. But what exactly were they designed to do? And why didn't they just fill the bridge section with a solid bit of steel. Was there a need to be able to pass something directly under the face? Anyone ever worked on one and if so what are they like working with?

PS. I liked the Brazeal style anvil so much that this summer I intend to make another anvil (already purchased all the steel and parts for it) of similar design that will have 5-6 of the most common contours cut into the face and then I will weld over each of those faces with S-7 and then sand those faces to perfection.

I'm lucky that my new neighbor is a professional metal polisher so I can always have him go to town sanding the face of my anvils and his polishing skills are insane. He makes steel look like flawless chrome.

I was just wondering if it were possible for somebody to maybe find a chunk of metal big enough or weld enough pieces of tool steel together to form an anvil? Is this even possible for the average person? How could it be done if you could and how might you form it?

Have you seen this thread?




Brian Brazeal has inspired many of "Big Chunk of Metal Anvils" like this anvil I built about 2 years ago. The top of the surface is welded with S-7 Tool steel. It's actually a really fun anvil and it's great for practicing on. Also a great anvil to let beginners mess around on as any dent they do put in it I can just weld S-7 back into the dent and grind smooth again. Is it cheap? well it only cost the steel and the argon. I think I had about $300.00 into it or less. It's a fair bit of labor though as there was a lot of welding that hard tool steel in to a bed and then grinding it all down. The drilling of the two (2) FIVE inch bolt holes was fairly arduous but ultimately very rewarding once I got through. It's essentially one giant 377lb piece of anvil. Very Solid and very little ring thanks to sand in all the legs of the stand.

Refflinghaus
1245 lbs

Sweet! Now I know what heaven looks like. The amount of anvils in the background!!! UNREAL!! I LOVE YOUR SHOP!!

Thank you for making me green with jealousy! B)

Guess I need to add my anvil stand to the list. Made from a fork lift tine, it's adjustable for height with the 3 screw jacks and on wheels for ease of moving around the shop.

Holy macrole.. that may just be one of the scariest stands i've ever seen. (insert: worried scared face). You sure that thing isn't going to dump over on someone's foot? :unsure:

Here's my old Trenton on my new Avadon Forge clone:

LOOKS EXCELLENT! Yep that is exactly the design. I bet it functions extremely well and is seriously rigid. Looks like you even put a prying bolt underneath? That is a really handy feature. You'll see that all the little details really pay off when you add them all to one stand like this. How is the ring on it? And what is your total weight now? Now all you need is throw some hard rubber under those feet and bolt it to the concrete and you'll have perfection. Hope the design works very well for you. :D

Avadon: I had a local metal fabricator build me a stand for little old 120-pound Trenton based on your design. I am LOVING IT! Thanks for sharing your photos and philosophy.

Awesome! I hope you remember to send in your royalty check for my patent. lol Just Kidding! Actually the idea is not mine as much as it was a mixture of Hofi, Brian Brazeal, Thomas Powers, etc. etc. and I just took their idea and ran with it. So we really have these pro's to thank for the design. I picked their brains till the point I think they probably wanted to go to bed early. hehe But the end result is an extremely well constructed stand and very SAFE! Those gussets and corner pieces really increase strength but also increase safety. After all, none of us know if and when a weld will fail. Impurities, lack of penetration, stress, etc. can all cause a weld to fail and I'd bet none of us are are sending our welds out to be x-rayed, so those extra bits of bracing could be the difference of having an anvil in your lap and at these weights having the stand and anvil on your foot or you under it is just in unacceptable proposition. Glad you got some good use out of the design. Did you put the sand in it too? I'm still loving the design myself and haven't yet found anything to profound lacking. I sort of wished I would have cut holes in the plate for the hardy and pritchel, but even if I did anything dropped through would hit metal stand and the idea of trying to machine the stand portions to let things all the way through just seemed more work than necessary. I can still get most small pieces through hardy/pritchel holes.

How well does blued/black oxide hold up outside? In my experience they are rust catchers. Haven't tried the wax technique, that may be better. I think a lot of outdoor fasteners matching iron work is just either left to natural rust or painted over. Depending on where you live a lot of rust will just cover the surface and go no further. Of course in my experience, by the ocean or other acidic areas that rust just seems to get more and more corrosive as it takes effect.

I had some plans left on my welding/layut table one evening . Upon returning in the morning there were multiple racoon tracks on the plans.......no work done though .

ROFL!! nice

Don't ever feel you have to compete with the big box stores! That is a total dead end down a one way street. Why would you? You need to convey it in 1000 ways to sunday that you ARE CUSTOM! If they want the look that everyone else has then by all means go to lowes or depot. You need to let them know that having original blacksmith work is obviously more expensive but clearly comes with a prestige that is worth far beyond anything they can buy from lowes. This kind of language you need all over your website and brochures. Never make a customer feel that going to the big box is the right idea. Let them know that what your doing is the genuine article and anything less will not be authentic, and also may not actually hold up, match the theme, look good, be warrantied, etc. (your sales pitch)

Make the customer know that you are not APPLES TO APPLES with Lowes!! You are Ferarri to Apples and there is an ENORMOUS difference between the two. The more your customer knows this the more they will realize that wherever they can they should buy from you. This is the tactic i've used for the last 8 years of business and it's always worked. I simply tell the customers straight out of the gate that "I don't compete with big manufacturers... why would I do such poor work?" and I show them why my stuff is better, backed by replacement, installed properly, etc.


Essentially her argument is "Why would I buy a Ducati Motorcycle when a Bicycle will still get me from place to place."

You're argument is "The Ducati motorcycle is the most choice driving experience available and the best buy for the discerning customer"

Don't defend or attack her argument. Simply present your own smarter and stronger argument. If you can't convince the customer that way then there was little hope to begin with. Those samples are a good idea but I wouldn't try to compete in price to lowes. Make a few at different price ranges from cheaper to much more expensive. You often don't really know how deep a customers wallet is until they see something they just LOVE and have to have from you.
;)