Chelonian

Recently someone gave me a bar of mystery steel that had been sitting in their barn for many years. Despite the conditions, it had not rusted and was still fairly shiny ( it was not plated). I spark tested it, and it strangely produced almost no sparks. The few sparks it did produce were reddish-orange. It is attracted to a magnet, and is soft and easy to file. Today, I tried forging it. Oddly, it hardly produces any scale at all, and only at high temperatures (at about bright orange, it seemed). I also drew a taper on the end and test quenched it it water. It did not harden at all and I was able to bend the quenched end of it over cold without it cracking. After this, I was satisfied that it was a decent material, and I decided to make a pair of bolt jaw tongs from it. It forged fine; it was just a little bit harder to move under the hammer than mild steel, but nothing like 5160 or anything like that. After the tongs were done and I was just doing the final tweaking of the jaws at a low heat, one of the jaws broke right off. The material did not give any prior indication that it was prone to cracking in my earlier tests, but it did here. The grain structure was pretty large at the break; I wonder if all the heats while forging it grew the grain size and made it weaker? I guess it was just another lesson on using mystery steels. Anyone know what sort of steel it could be, given the information above?

That thing looks enormous to me. Good luck!

It's the anvil part of a vise + anvil combination. Since they're cast iron and hollow, they aren't very suitable for forging.

Those tongs all look really good! What size was the starting stock for them?

I would try to get it to sit as flat as possible, and then use caulk. The caulk will also help reduce the ring.

I really like the narrow face, and the horn transition looks very useful.

Please be careful disassembling magnetrons. Most have a fragile beryllium oxide ceramic insulator that can easily break and become airborne. Breathing any of the dust can lead to Berylliosis.

Photos of the anvil would be very helpful in identifying when it was made.

Looks like the markings are 1, 0, 7. These are hundredweight markings and equate to 119lbs.

The low spot is called sway, and is common with older wrought iron anvils. It is not generally a problem, and can sometimes be beneficial.

The face certainly does not need to be repaired! It is in quite nice shape. The missing feet will likely not affect it's usefulness. And yes, it does look like a William Foster anvil. They are wrought iron anvils, with a high carbon steel face welded on top. The hardened face is usually only 3/8"-1/2" thick, hence why grinding or milling the face is almost always a bad idea.

If it says "William" on it, it is most likely a William Foster anvil.

As long as the threads are in working condition, it seems like you only need to make a handle bar to get the screw functioning again. Can you temporarily just use a bar for leverage to unscrew the lead screw to inspect it? That is a really remarkable vise you have.

Welcome to the forum! Your anvil looks a lot like the anvil I've been using for the past year and a half. It's not too difficult to work around not having the heel/hardy and pritchel holes once you make/scrounge some tools to take their place. I would remove the mushroomed edges, and I did grind the broken heel edge on mine to make it more useful. I would not recommend doing anything else to the face though. I keep a railroad track anvil next to mine which is very useful for replacing some of the anvil's shortcomings.

That is a really nice looking hatchet!

It's a John Brooks cast steel vise. They were made with the leg as a separate piece that threads into that hole and extends to the ground. It should be pretty doable to make a replacement leg.

Welcome the the forum! That would be 248lbs. By "cleaning" it, I hope you don't mean grinding the face at all. Any material removed from the thin steel faceplate removes a lot of life and usefulness from an anvil. We will need to see the stampings and general shape to determine the age.

That looks like a really nice anvil. I would suggest creating a radius on the edges somewhat (a variety of edge radii is best), since they look rather sharp right now. This will help avoid forming cold-shuts in your work and make the anvil edges less prone to chipping.

Thanks for the response! I must have just not cut deep enough.

The file should skate pretty well, yes. If it's a hard file (like a chainsaw file) it may bite a little bit, but it shouldn't much. You could also file the foot or another soft part of the anvil for hardness comparison. EDIT: Be sure to test several spots along the edges for hardness, since if it was milled, it could have been un-level and taken off more of the face in some places than others.

With a 5.25" wide face 250lb is pretty believable. I'm not sure about the hole going through it, but that shouldn't affect its usefulness. However, it does look suspiciously like someone milled the face down.

Really nice looking hammer, HammerHeart. I've always avoided using hydraulic cylinder rods because I thought they were chrome plated. Is this not the case?

Hi Jennifer, I just have a quick question. How do you break the stock into lengths for the chain links like you did in the beginning of the video on the chain-making session? I don't have a cold-cut or a hardy hole to hold a cold cut, so I tried making the notch with a cold chisel instead. However, when I tried to break it, the bar just bent, and didn't snap off like yours did. I tried it with 5/16 round bar, which looked similar to the stock you used. How deep are you cutting through it before breaking it? Is there a specific technique you need to use when breaking it off? It looked really easy at the competition when you did it, but I just couldn't get it to work right. Thanks

Has the face plate been milled down? It looks rather thin, especially on the left in the photo.

The alignment of the cheeks is fine. As I understood it, the bolt helps to keep it that way by taking some of the load off the forge welds. However, if I'm mistaken, I'll just leave it as-is and not worry about it. Yes, the original bolt does have the indexing nub.