Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver

Call up Nimba Anvils in Port Townsend and get a real anvil! Its' not a purchase, it's an investment! Really. In the last forty years I have never seen GOOD anvils go down in value - ever. Whole lot more than I can say for my stocks. And you can drive down and pick it up, what a deal! I have no connection to Nimba Anvils.

Over time I'll try to annotate these pictures. The first on is my screw press that I do most of my forging on: http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/f82/my-100-ton-fly-press-11998/ To the left is a little Ingersoll-Rand Drill-sharpener/upsetter. We're talking rock drill there. I use for the great/fast pressing action in the front. I'll try to post some things about that machine in another post. The next picture is my grinding shed. Surface grinder on the right and a nice little 2 X 60 belt grinder on the left. In the background is a large-ish industrial belt grinder 3 X 120 with 14" contact wheels. This has two grinding belts about three feet apart. Each is driven by it's own 7-1/2HP motor. I use 24 or 36 grit in it and when I really lean into it it's like a flame-thrower! Sure takes metal off fast (flesh too, but we won't get into that)!

Well, I'd keep looking. 'Sup to you. It's a farrier's anvil, but a pretty good one even for general work, it looks to be a little soft and the price seems a tad high. You asked. $400 is top dollar around here - even Canadian!

It's cool to see people finding out that a big ol' hood don't work hardly at all. Yep, had one on my first forge 'bout 40 years ago. Smoke just rolled out around the sides. Well dang, it SEEMS right. Smaller is better. Somebody with a super sucker or side draft can try something for me, please! Tape some sheet metal or even wet cardboard to reduce the opening to about 3 or four inches high, but full width. Please report back your results. Friend of mine had a big hood that also did not work. He has like a 14" flue and he slipped a long 12" up inside it and hooked a wire to it with a counterweight to balance it. Well now he can just reach up and pull it down close to the fire and it will darn near suck the coal up! Nice way to fix a non-working hood.

Frosty(stop) Three containers arriving on the morrow(stop) Please have 15,000 lb forklift ready! (stop) Not sincerely, Grant Forgemaster: Yeah, in this business it's important to buy on opportunity rather than need. Most of the machines I bought, I didn't have a need for, but after I had them I always found work for them. Buying on need is for people with deep pockets.

Dang you, Forgemaster! Now you're gettin my taster up for a big hammer again! Just sold a nice 750 lb Nazel last year too. It had a 15,000 lb anvil too. Was savin it for my retirement too. Decided (in a fit of melancholy no doubt) to sell it. Dang you, Forgemaster!

KBAKNIFE:Looks pretty cool guy. These are the ideas I like to see.

There's what you should and then there's what you can get away with. When I converted Johnson forges from NG the only problem I had was with the solenoid valve because it was not made for the higher pressure and would not open. So I had to turn the forge on before I opened the service valve. Could have just put a regulator on it I guess.

They put a small orifice in for propane due to the (often) higher pressure. So you only have to change it if it came from the factory with the smaller orifice. The big orifice will allow too much gas if the valve is opened too far, that's all.

ORGTWISTER: You are right, of course. And in my picture, no less. Musta been someone else using it, yeah, that's the ticket, someone snuck in when I wasn't looking and did that, yeah, that's it.

Very nice! How did you do the texture on the frame? Nice rose!

I’m going to expand on that heavy welding thing a little for those who don’t understand it as well as they would like to. Weld stresses are mostly caused by shrinkage. The weld goes in hot and shrinks in relation to the cold plate being welded. If you tack two plates together to form an inverted “T” and weld one side you know it will “pull” towards the weld. It does so because the weld shrinks as it cools. Rule of thumb is it takes THREE times as much weld on the other side to pull it back. Now that balances the stresses, but they are still there. The two other legs will bend up and now you got a mess. Skipping back and forth from one side to the other helps but the stresses are still there. Most of the things we fabricate don’t mater that much. In thick plate fabrication the stresses go up exponentially. As I mentioned, most heavy plate fabrication gets stress relieved. The small distortion we get with thinner materials actually relieves the strain to some extent (or maybe more correctly allows it to spread out). Why are multi-pass welds bad, you ask? (And well you should!). each pass shrinks after it’s laid down. As you get to the outer passes they are going in hot and shrinking far from the other side creating tremendous stresses. Why is one pass better? Let’s take that Bechtel weld for example. We might have 2” plate butt jointed with a “U” shaped prep on the joint. The plates would be gapped about 1/16” (we often used welders clear covers for spacers so we could break them out easy). Now the joint is tacked up well and we would start welding at the bottom working up in one pass. As we welded we kept a “keyhole” open in the bottom (backside) of the joint. And we welded all the way to the top. So why would that have less stress? Well, because we didn’t have very much imbalance in heat front-to-back. While the weld is being made on one side, if you went around to the other side you’d see two things: a perfect weld bead made from the front and you’d see that the plate in the area of the weld progress was red hot for almost two inches wide! O.K. so now we have near equal heat on both sides so both sides shrink together creating very little stress. Gotta hand it to the guy who figured that out.

Avadon: Make sure you have a clear shot under your hardy hole. sometimes you need to get a punch under there to drive something out. Not sure what all the fuss over "penetration" is about, you ain't building a nuclear submarine! Unless you’re not burning into the surface, penetration only matters in a butt weld. Any fillet weld or prepared “V” weld creates the penetration mechanically. Multi-pass weld of more than 5 – 6 passes are usually not allowed. Multiple passes create accumulated stresses. You’re right that you don’t get as much distortion with heavy plate, but the stress is still there. I’ve seen beautiful multi-pass welds crack out from the stress. Lot of that kind of stuff goes into stress-relieving ovens. When I was with Bechtel any very heavy work that could not be stress relieved was positioned to weld “vertical up”. Didn’t have to be dead vertical, 10 – 20 degrees down from vertical was O.K. Then we welded the joint in one pass! Boy, I’ll tell ya, we didn’t climb very fast even with 7/32 or 1/4 inch rod. Now Bechtel probably has more and better welding engineers than anyone and the results proved them out. Many times since, when I had heavy welds to do, I would tip them up (sometimes only 45 degrees or a little better) and run them in one or sometimes two passes. Actually, it’s easier to get a solid, flux free weld going vertical than flat and (yes) it does give more penetration. It’s a good trick if you don’t have a big enough welder too. Don’t need your anvil anchored down? Just wait, one day you will. You don’t just hit your anvil with a hand hammer, you know. Someday you might be doing a big gate. You find you want to upset the end of that 1 X 2 heel bar. What are ya gonna do, stand on a chair and ram it down on the anvil? Whole lot easier to hold it horizontal and bash it into the side of the anvil. But don’t try that if it ain’t bolted down. Even small movements when you’re doing something non-vertical is frustrating. Brian has been around the block (or anvil, as the case may be). I obviously have way too much time on my hands.

You're a crafty guy, Forgemaster. I'm not seeing how the top half of your swage is attached. Is it on pins or what, I don't see the usual spring. Only 500? No offence, but that seems a little light for that work. Used to have a 500 lb Nazel that had a very nice personality, if you know what I mean. I probably would have used my 1500 for that job. You got only a slight "wasp-waist" so I guess it worked O.K. for ya. Really nice the way you have things set up.

Well, that's sure K.I.S.S. ain't it? Especially since many of these machines are available for next to nothing. Not quite as good as a fly press, but not bad.

Well, if you can find the rawhide, you should be able to just hammer the edge closed.

Jay Leno showed an ad once for an Australian translator! Heck, I know Australian! G’day! At’s hole rite, mite! Put a few shrimp on the barby! Good on ya! Just think: That blower may have been on a sailing vessel 100 years ago! Welcome, mate! Grant

Country Boy: Yeah, but when you get done whatcha gonna say "Here honey, I made you a cold chisel"? Anyway, welcome aboard! Grant

Well, here's mine. Bought it new about 6 - 8 years ago. Today I could buy a CNC for the same money! 17 X 60, taper attachment, DRO, Dorian tool post, four chucks, collet setup, all the bells and whistles. My default chuck is a four jaw scroll chuck. Was wishing I could justify a CNC, but then I realized I had one! I mounted a 3" chuck on a tool holder to go in my CNC vertical machining center (CNC mill), clamp a lathe tool bit in my table vise and I have a CNC chucker, great for short pieces. I center on "Y" and from there it's normal CNC lathe programming. Melsdad: What did you do to get full size pics in your post, cut and paste? You should use the attachment manager so it only posts a thumbnail. Some people have slow dial-up you know. Forces the page out wider too.

JohnN: Oooo, that is cool! Here's the link: YouTube - Chinese Press Automation At least they get to work sitting down!

John N: Dangerous yes, but not as dangerous as it looks at first. It is hot work, so even if he gets a slug it wrong there's no harm. Could be interesting if the tooling came loose. Seen worse in some old Ford videos, HUGE press running continuously, two guys on one side reaching in with a piece of sheet steel, CA...RUNCR! Two guys on the other side reach in and take out a door panel.

Worthwhile here maybe to explain the differences. One big difference is that a punch press has a fixed bottom of stroke. When you step on the pedal it will complete one stroke. Most cannot be stopped mid-stroke, modern air-clutch/air-brake machines can. The screw press can be stopped at any point the operator or the work determines. The screw press can be brought down very gently and back up. In forging velocity and time in contact with the dies are both very important. By it's nature, a crankshaft press accelerates the ram to it's maximum velocity at about 90 degrees of stroke and then decelerates it to zero at the bottom of the stroke. The screw press, on the other hand, accelerates all the way down to a velocity of 3 - 6 feet per second and only stops when it runs into the work or the operator reverses it. This give a real impact usually only seen in hammers. The ram also bounces immediately back up so there is very little time in contact to suck the heat out of the work. Because of it’s flexible operator-controlled stroke and the ability to hit hard or soft, it can readily be used for open-die forging just like a hammer. Nothing like that is possible with a punch press. So, in the end it looks sorta like a punch press, works sorta like a hammer. Hope this helps, Grant

Charlotte's post has reminded me that there is another way to obtain a differential result. Carbon steel has to quench in a little less than 1 second to get fully hard. This's why it's rated as a "water quenching" steel. Well, thin parts have no problem quenching this fast. Very thin sections will even harden in oil. So, if we quench a nice high-carbon like W-1 or 1095 in oil we will get an edge that is very close to fully hard and a spine that is not.

Well, I been afoging now for about 35 years. When I really got the bug I was working as a Certified welder/fabricator. Found a hundred-year old blacksmith shop that had turned to fabricating, but still had a very complete blacksmith shop - three Little Giants, 2 hundreds and one fifty. The walls were just dripping with tools of all description. Oops, guess I shouldn't turn this into a biography. Anyway, I worked there for a while and in the late 70's started my own shop. Almost exclusively industrial work. Kinda, sorta retired about eight years ago and now I just manufacture blacksmith tools, do some tool & die work and do some consulting for some eastern forge shops. I've attached a few pictures of my present shop, they're pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, raise your hand and I’ll get to you in order. note: I think there is a fire extinguisher in every picture! Now you know how I feel about that! Only recently started patronizing IFI. Once I got used to the threaded format I really came to like it. Ran into old friends and starting to make a few new ones. Like it or not I think I’ve found a home and I’m settin’ up housekeeping here. Hope to learn a few things and share some of what I’ve picked up over the years. Thanx, Grant

I moved this over here because no one is looking at the other thread anymore and don't know it's in there. http://www.maneklalexports.com/English/McTools/ScrewPress.htm Scroll to the bottom of the page.