Over Heating an Anvil with use

[Glenn]

There was a discussion in the chat room as to overheating an anvil and anvil size.

I usually use my 300 lbs Peddinghaus, "just right" weight. Anything smaller as an anvil will heat up fast, anything bigger sucks the heat out of your work. When I forge stock bigger than 1 3/8 '' I will use my 550+

i over heat my 135# with 1/2" sq working 3 irons all day. Overheat is 150*F+

Can an anvil be over heated and damaged by forging hot iron?
At what temperature does the anvil start to be damaged?
How do we keep the anvil from being damaged from over heating?

Why does the anvil over heat and not the hammer that is being used?

[eric sprado]

I think it's just bragging... I am not a "real" blacksmith but crawled under probably 20,000 horses and spent all day making shoes and never heard of an anvil "overheating".... How can 150 degrees hurt an anvil?

[Bigcity]

I have heard old timers say that "If you can sit on your anvil for lunch you havnt done any work"

[John McPherson]

Metallurgically speaking, it would have to be a temperature high enough to draw the temper from a tool steel face on an older wrought iron or cast iron body anvil, or an induction hardened face on a newer homogenous cast steel model.

We have all heard the stories of soft anvils that have been thru barn fires, which raised the core temp to well above 1000F, and then slow cooled in the ashes to anneal the face. Compare that to the heat input of working, by hand, small billets over the course of a day. I very much doubt than anything less than 350F would have any scientifically measurable effect, and you as the user would probably not notice any effect below 500F. Remember, 500F is the preheat to repair an anvil by welding.

As to why the anvil heats up more than the hammer: contact time. The hammer is in contact for only a fraction of a second on each stroke, like firewalking on hot coals. Plus, you are waving it in the air with each stroke. The best blacksmiths lift the metal slightly off the face between blows when working small stock to get more work done in a heat. Larger stock just lays there, transferring heat at a constant rate.

[Rich Hale]

Years back there was an anvil named future, A two piece design with aluminum bottom and steel top half,.If I remember the weight was 100 lbs.The top half of the anvil was the same size as the companys larger anvil. The lighter weight made it easier for farriers to take in and oiut of truck at each stop.
The parting line had a rubber gasket, I have seen two man teams of farriers working on large draft horse shoes, get the anvil hot enough that the gasket would begin to soften and swell out of the joint. i never heard of any of these anvils soften the hardness of the working top half.

[pkrankow]

I would agree calling 150F too hot, only because at that temperature the anvil can burn ME, not because it would hurt the anvil. The anvil won't get hurt till it is showing temper colors starting at 500F.

Bigcity probably has a point about not being able to sit on the anvil at lunchtime, and how much work gets done.

Phil

[Timothy Miller]

I have when working large material for extended periods of time gotten the face of my anvil hot enough to boil water. I also have turned the edge of my hardie hole blue when upsetting tools into it.

[thingmaker3]

Odd, is it not, that this mythical effect applies to anvils but not the dies of power hammers?

[Francis Trez Cole]

black hot is over 500 degrees that is the the temp borax will melt. You will not move much metal at that temp. not until you get to the red stage you would have to have a lot of consent heat to reach that temp. I would think it unlikely good one for the mythbusters

[Larry H]

The bottom die of a power hammer gets to hot to hold

[peacock]

I realy don't enjoy useing my anvil till it gets too hot to hold my hand on. Thats over 125F. Little stuff can be worked much longer when it's hot. In the winter or when I'm welding smaller stock I have a20# chunk of sleet iI heat to red and lay on the anvil to warm it up. Even with a piece of koawool over it my 270 lber won't get too hot for me to touch easily.

[Quenchcrack]

Tempering can occur at 200 F, stress relieving at about 750F. I would not worry about an anvil face below about 500F. Strike while the iron, and the anvil, is hot!

[Chuck in Ms]

It's funny that I found this topic. Today I burnt my hand on the tail of my 175#er after about three hours of hard work. It surprised me that the heat had traveled so far back since I had been upsetting stock over the main body section for the last half hour or so. I have doubts that a person could over heat it simply because of the air cooling that takes place during heating.

[ThomasPowers]

Take a look at the suggested preheats for arc welding on an anvil. As I recall Bruce Wilcock has talked about boiling water for their lunchtime tea on an anvil after doing heavy work on it.

I admit the possibility but not in *my* little one man shop!

As for powerhammers in industrial settings drop forge dies are often cooled between strikes.

[Crunch]

Seems to me that if 150°+ damaged an anvil, you wouldn't be able to leave it outside in the sun during the summer!

160° is generally when things get too hot to touch (at least for me), and an anvil gets a lot hotter than that in the midsummer sun!

[Judson Yaggy]

The first professional blacksmith shop that I worked in back in the early 1990's had a MINT 550# Fisher anvil. On occasion we would do jobs that required texturing larger pieces of plate, say 3/8 thick by 2 or 3 feet square. The portions of the plate that didn't fit under the power hammer would be hand textured by smith and striker with fullers and sledge on the big anvil. Between power hammer work and heating time, there was a small percentage of the time where hot work was in contact with the anvil. But the mass and surface area of the workpiece combined to transfer a huge amount of energy to the anvil. Often by lunchtime the anvil would be too hot to touch, and then we would work for hours more...

Last time I visited that shop, some 20 years later, the anvil still looked and performed great.

There is little that we as mere mortals can do to damage an anvil, not counting 30# sledges or cutting torches or bulldozers or stupidity. The working faces of good anvils are tempered steel and a tough but still fairly hard tempering temperature is 500 deg f +/-. Perhaps some of our more physics minded members could run the numbers on what it would take to over heat an anvil forging 1/2" round bar.

[Jeff Seelye]

I used to test paint for automotive use. One of our tests was to put cars in direct sunlight in the hotest parts of the US. We routinely would hit 160°F.I have seen 150°F on a hood in MI. If a hood can be that temp witout damage all day long for several years, how are you going to damage an anvil? Yes, the paint fades but consider the steel under it.

[tomhw]

Now that I am old I sleep most soundly at about 74 degrees F in the summertime here in Louisiana. Anything above that is too hot for me to have have a reliable deep sleep. Steel? Steel is not interested in its heat-forced structural change until the temperature has pased well above the maximum temperature for human life.