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D2 for anvil


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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