Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin) Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 As the title says I am looking to find out how much weight is ideal for a granite anvil I will be making this summer. I know I will ding this one up a bunch and since it is literally free then I mind as well make a nice big one that will allow me to do double jack forging with my friends so that I can forge some large items. I wont keep this as my main anvil once I can replace it but as it is I do not have the kind of funds to buy a nice anvil or even a decent weight chunck of steel for the veriety of work I plan to do. I am located in Washington State. Thanks for all advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIGGUNDOCTOR Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 I bet you can afford a good sized chunk of scrap. $20-$40 should do it. I paid 15¢ a pound last time I was at the scrapyard. Check with some scrap yards, or steel suppliers for drops. If you are anywhere near Kent check out the Boeing surplus sales. Heavy equipment repair shops,rental yards,convention services (a guy I know just scored a free 200+ pound forklift time from the convention service company he works for in Las Vegas), and any other place that has large metal items. The problem I see with granite is hot steel will make the surface spall, and it won't stay flat long. But as a general rule, as heavy as you can get. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K. Bryan Morgan Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 A 24 inch piece of 4 inch square A36 weighs in at 108.72 pounds. Secure that into a five gallon bucket of concrete and you will have an anvil that any Viking blacksmith would envy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin) Posted March 19, 2014 Author Share Posted March 19, 2014 So is granite really that undesireable, I mean I know that steel is better, but is it really that bad? I will be on the lookout for that kind of steel but i have no idea if I'll be able to find it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K. Bryan Morgan Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 Its just basic structural steel. Nothing fancy. And no, granite will work. Large anvil stones were used for hundreds of years. There are quite a few in Iceland and Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and I'm sure on the European continent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin) Posted March 19, 2014 Author Share Posted March 19, 2014 So is there still some worth in having one? or would it be obsolete at this point if i can get a decent steel anvil? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K. Bryan Morgan Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 Absolutely I would say. Get the steel hot and hit it hard and take pics as you go. Show us and talk about your experience. I've seen people use hunks of concrete and while it may not be ideal it will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin) Posted March 19, 2014 Author Share Posted March 19, 2014 Ok, well then, I shall look for the steel anvil from a junk yard and also grab a heavy granite boulder from my friend. I wont be able to do any of this until mid april but I think gathering info before you act is best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaughnT Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 There's nothing wrong with using a granite boulder as an anvil. Great stuff was made on them back in the day, so you should be able to duplicate that greatness using the same tools. A cemetery would be a good place to look for granite chunks. They often have broken monuments that need replacing, and would know about granite suppliers in the area. Is mild steel or other scrap better? Yes. Stone anvils were phased out after large chunks of iron were available because the metal didn't wear as fast. Even mild steel would last longer than granite, but that doesn't mean that you can't use a rock. A big rail car axle would be absolutely dreamy as a post anvil! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 Note too that the heyday of the stone anvil was when real wrought iron was the only thing around to forge. You forge it at welding temps and it's dead soft. I have friends who use stone anvils for consolidating blooms, again high temps and very soft. You would not want to use a stone anvil for something like bladesmithing as the textured surface will increase cleanup time greatly. If you can get ahold of a heavy chunk of scrap steel you will be better off. As for the ideal weight for a stone anvil---well it would range from about 80 pounds to 8 million tons+ depending on information you didn't provide. (do you need to be able to move it? Will you be doing heavy sledging on it? Do you have a mountain available to use?... etc and so on. "Ideal", "Best", etc are *always* specific to the situation---"What's the best Vehicle?" well does it need to get you to the international space station? Across a lake? Win formula one races or haul 16 tons of gravel? The *best* for any one of those tasks would be pretty awful if you tried to use it for another of those tasks...So when you have such a question take of you Al foil hat and provide the details! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 You don't need granite, any fine grained stone will do, marble, or even limestone though limestone is pretty soft. I've used an ultramafic boulder, probably a hornblend and it was darned near indestructable. The thing to remember like it was biblical is do NOT lay the hot steel on the stone. Letting the heat soak in will cause spalling in many stone types, granite spalls in a foliate manner that can be dangerous. By foliate it means in large leaves or thin sharp slabs that generally follow the outer shape of the stone. It's caused by differential heating, the outer layer heats faster and expands more, after a while the boundry between layers breaks and the outer one takes off, sometimes really fast. There was an incident on a beach sometime in the past, maybe as early as the 1920's or as late as the 1960's I don't recall. There was a popular beach party spot called bonfire boulder. The boulder was IIRC something like 20' tall that had fallen from the cliff and landed with a wide smooth side facing the ocean. Kids had been building bonfires against it for years, maybe decades until one night a section weighing a couple tons spalled off killing several kids. Smaller boulders don't have quite the spalling problem large ones do, heat travels faster so spalling isn't as common but that's with campfires not forging. Laying a piece of yellow hot steel on a boulder is spot heating the dickens out of it so the danger of spallig is higher. Just lay the steel on it and hit it, don't leave it set longer than necessary, you should be fine. Don't make me tell you to wear eye protection! Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin) Posted March 19, 2014 Author Share Posted March 19, 2014 Thanks for the advice frosty. I always wear eye protection, I make bows and since I suck at it I often wind up with a bow exploding into many pieces and they can put out an eye easily. So when I'm beating the steel you mean that I should keep it on the stone for only as long as absolutely necessary? What about when consolidating blooms? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 consolidating blooms is done at welding heat; once it's cooled past that back into the forge! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eseemann Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 I saw this page a while back talking about bog iron http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm. It has a photo of the smith's anvil stone, it is a big one but I wonder how big it used to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefflus Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 I'll be having a granite anvil when I'm settled down, so you're not alone in wanting one. What one has to remember about smiths of old is that many of them travelled from job to job. Maybe that's how the Mästermyr chest wound up in a ditch/bog? It would be acceptable to carry along a stake anvil, but for the heavy work one might just find a suitable boulder at site. I loathe the sound and feel of a stake anvil in a stump, so I'd like to try to mount it in a boulder, too. I'm keeping my eyes open for archaeologic examples of this being done, but so far I haven't seen it. -Have any of you seen something like this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Ouch that page has a MAJOR issue with it. "Bog iron" is a TYPE OF IRON ORE so any place they say "in some places they used iron ore instead of bog iron" they are actually saying "they used iron ore instead of iron ore"! I've smelted bog iron, limonite/goethite, magnetite and taconite. My favorite is magnetite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monstermetal Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 You make bow's hu? I am a few hours south of you and would be willing to trade a nice hand made bow for a several hundred pound chunk of steel for an anvil. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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