A friend gave me 4 14"x3"x3 1/2" blocks of D2 steel. I would like to weld them together to use as an anvil top plate for the "rusty" type power hammer I'm building. I understand D2 is air hardening. I'm wondering if the heat from arc welding thick pieces like these will make it too hard to drill for bolt-on dies or use as I hope to. The ram is 30 lbs. Adding these blocks will make the anvil close to 400 lbs.

Welding or flame cutting will very likely spot harden the blocks where they cannot be drilled but it won't be a proper heat treat so the hardening will be isolated. You can do a couple of things - either do all the machining ahead of time or weld everything together and anneal the entire mass. From the block sizes, I think the first option is easier.

From what I understand, joints between things like this that are intended to act as anvils need to either be through-welded or lapped to fit. I don't know the allowable tolerances, unfortunately. Don't suppose you might want to sell one? By the way, you may want to drill and tap before you do the cutting/welding if you're concerned about machinability.

Jerry, I would be interested in one as well, if you want to sell one.

Jerry the D2 you have should work just fine,,,My first choice would be an impact stell like one of the S series,,,But if I had the D-2 it would soon become my favorite. It may well get hard at the welds, you may be able to minimize that by welding short sections and letting it cool a bit...Check the steel with a good file before you weld and after. When I heat treat D-2 for blades it gets really hard,,,file will slip off without a bite,,takes along anneal to bring it down a bit. Blade blank about 2 hours in oven at 400f and then maybe more time dpending on file test. Would be quite a task for a small shop to anneal the welded assembly and not sure how many places could do it...Quenchcrack may have more techinical info.

Jerry you could make brackets and bolt it together. After doing the drilling and machining. Weld it together.

If you checked around you probably could trade the two pieces for a lot of steel that would do just as well. More to the specs that you need.

Good luck and congrats on having a good friend.

Sandpile