Magnetic as in attracted to a magnet or magnetic as in being a magnet?  The latter would be a bad thing for a bounce test

Magnetic as in will stick to a magnet. It came out of an ancient mouse and I peeled the rubber off of it. Its actually a steel ball about .75 in dia. not sure how much it weighs but I wouldn't want anyone to throw it at me.

 

Anyway that's all I have right now. So I read about the rebound test and one thing said to drop it from 10". So I polished off half a tube of pringles, cut a 1" slit up the tube and marked 1/2" increments up it, I had about 9 1/2" on the cylinder. I held it about 1/2" above it and dropped it several times down the tube and the highest it got on the welded on face was maybe 4.25". I dropped in on the exposed part of the original slab and it bounced almost to 5". So I guess the added face has about a 42% and the original face had 50%. I guess that should be good for a hobby anvil?

Dawned on me a few minutes ago that you thought I might have tried the rebound test with a magnet, that's pretty dang funny.

norrin_radd

 

Just go to the scrap yard, get the biggest bearing you can get, cut it with a grinder, extract the steel balls and make the test. There are lots of youtube videos that show ball bearing rebound tests on anvils.

norrin_radd

 

Just go to the scrap yard, get the biggest bearing you can get, cut it with a grinder, extract the steel balls and make the test. There are lots of youtube videos that show ball bearing rebound tests on anvils.

 

I guess I will try and do that at some point. I think for what we need it will do an adequate job for now. I might even try to harden it some time in the future if I feel like its something I need to do.  Right now I want to get the forge fired up and make stuff.

 

In the process of fabricating me a "stump" out of that fat lighter beam too.

 

Thanks to all for the great info on this site.

Hammers work for rebound test too