Lump of Steel

[Exo313]

Hi everybody! 

So, I'm working through -gasp- restoring an anvil! 

I'm only even attempting this because of a near- total delamination.  

I forgot to take before photos, but I have mid-process ones I will upload at home.

I'm considering this an experiment, the anvil was a door stopper as it was. I'm only out the time, the anvil is free, so is whatever wire/ consumables I use. 

So far:

I) Delaminating face removed from everywhere except the heel around the hardy hole. So. Much. Grinding.

II)  More grinding! Grind to sound metal,  including removing layer of rust that had developed between the wrought body and the face. 

III) 2x layers of build up (yes, I made sure to preheat) with what's the rough equivalent of 7018 rod, except in metal cored wire. 

IV) Debating on a few options we have in-house. Welcome thoughts on the following welding wires:

Stoody 130 

Stoody 101HC-G

Welding Alloys CNV-O

All have good-to-great hardness characteristics, but impact resistance is moderate at best. They all also develop relief checking/cracking, which I'm not particularly keen about. Uncertain as to the risk of chipping/spalling. 

Alternately I can have any of the Stoody wire ordered in if anyone has any other thoughts. 

(Side note to the uninitiated: the grade of wrought in anvil bodies ain't fun to weld on. Unless you like grinding out porosity for fun. Ugh. Plus it's hot and stinky. If you enjoy being punished, go for it. I'm just stubborn. And lacking in good sense.)

[ThomasPowers]

Why didn't you just pop off the delam with a chisel or cut into the wrought iron with a bandsaw rather than grinding it? 

As for welding rod: I always go with Robb Gunther and Karl Schuler's anvil repair process YOU DO NOT WANT HARD SPIDERWEBBING ALLOYS DESIGNED FOR ABRASION RESISTANCE so your question reads to me like: I'm going swimming; should I fasten 400 pounds of lead to myself or 400 pounds of concrete? (concrete of course for not contributing to heavy metals in the aquatic environment...)

[Daswulf]

I'm only going to mention on the "stinky" part. BUY A GOOD RESPIRATOR! They are cheap and replaceable unlike your lungs and sense of smell. Well, lungs might be replaceable sort of but you probably don't want to go through that. 

[Exo313]

Photos as promised

48 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Why didn't you just pop off the delam with a chisel or cut into the wrought iron with a bandsaw rather than grinding it

Did use a chisel for a bunch of it. Some of it was a bit more stubborn.

50 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

your question reads to me like: I'm going swimming; should I fasten 400 pounds of lead to myself or 400 pounds of concrete? (concrete of course for not contributing to heavy metals in the aquatic environment...)

 Yar. I was only pointing out what was currently available off our rack.  Already leaning towards ordering in based on preliminary research. 

46 minutes ago, Daswulf said:

I'm only going to mention on the "stinky" part. BUY A GOOD RESPIRATOR! They are cheap and replaceable unlike your lungs and sense of smell. Well, lungs might be replaceable sort of but you probably don't want to go through that. 

Excellent point. I should have mentioned. Anyone reading, +1 to Das' comment. Don't did what I did, do the other thing.

[Daswulf]

Well, ok. I'm not here to tell you what to do with your anvil. Just asking that you do it safely. Not only the readers of this but you. Go spend $15-25. On a good respirator like a 3m 6000 series or equivalent. 

Your welds look pretty good so far actually. 

Yeah, please just do it safely. Safety is so cheap comparatively. You are not done. Go get a respirator for welding And grinding please. And happy grinding and welding.   

[DavidF]

I haven’t attempted a project like this, but from my novice eye it appears like you are doing a great job of restoration on something that was not usable. I can’t wait to see the end product. I am curious, can you get a large piece of plate to weld on? Or is the preferred method to weld the top for a more complete weld throughout? My thought is that the plate would be better hardened quality for the steel, but I don’t know how you would weld the middle, so the build up process would be better for a uniform weld through out the striking surface.

On the rebound theory, I watched a video the other day where a guy used modeling clay as an example of the stock he was hitting. He used it as an exaggerated example to show the anvil face is really used as the backing for the hammer strike and his point was that the rebound theory was debunked since the energy was absorbed by the stock and the rebound to transfer energy or save energy for returning the hammer to striking position was lost by the absorption from the stock material. I wasn’t convinced his example was good, since modeling clay or play doh was not equivalent to the energy that would be transferred through a metal. But I thought I would share another person’s perspective that anvil rebound is a blown up theory and hear what others with deep knowledge would share on this subject. I will go and look for that video so others can weigh in after viewing it. I will post it back here once I locate it. The entire reason I brought this second subject up, is it may influence others’ approaches to anvil repair and I personally would love to read informed opinions as it will influence my choices for an anvil down the road. And it may have an influence in approaches to your repair.

Here is the video where the creator claims rebound theory is debunked: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2nfHZcVHPo    Language Alert

 

Also, please update the post as you progress. I would love to see the end result and read about your experiences and opinions as you continue on this project. It looks great to me and I would be proud of the work you are doing once you have this in your shop for real use!

 

Mod Note: Discussion on Anvil Rebound has been moved to another thread

 

[ThomasPowers]

David you need a full penetration weld between a top plate and the anvil.  That means offsetting the top plate by sticking a piece of say 3/8" stock between the plate and the face, clamping or tacking it together and then filling the gap totally with weld, stopping after you get a good section and removing the 3/8" bar so you can fill in from that side too.  You want zero porosity and as mentioned that's hard if you are welding into wrought iron with it's ferrous silicate content.

You can watch videos by people who don't know the correct stuff all day long; but with 37 years of testing I can say that you can tell the difference in work with an anvil with low rebound and one with high rebound.  (Perhaps his problem is that he didn't heat his clay to 1600 DegF before running the test...)

[DavidF]

Thanks for the feedback Thomas. I snorted when I read the heating of the clay. I am skeptical about his extreme choice of stock for the example. But it is on the Internet, so it must be genuine! That is why I wanted to hear from experienced practitioners. I have almost zero experience with anvils and plates. I have a cast iron model to experiment with and a 1” plate of A2 that I believe will be my go to surface. But I see damaged anvils and wanted to hear if it would be worthwhile to pick up one and do something similar to what is described on this post. Your described method makes a lot of sense for getting a good hardened surface welded back to the top of a damaged anvil. I see a lot of discouragement for a novice to do this type of repair, but would it be worthwhile to try if the price was low enough on a damaged piece? Could a rookie do a good enough job with some recommendations and a low end mig welder? I think I know what the feedback will be, but during my searches, I keep thinking it would be a fun project and could be done with a reasonably low investment. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. It is not something I would do immediately, unless I saw a deal I couldn’t refuse

[Glenn]

Work on a high rebound anvil for 4 hours, switch to a low rebound anvil for a couple of hours, and then switch back. You can answer your own question rather quickly. Or listen to the old timers who have worked on their anvils all day long and know what works. 

Ask the welders who do X-ray quality welds. They will say is full penetration, and perfect welds pass the X-rays.

[ThomasPowers]

It's a difficult weld especially with low quality equipment and lack of experience. I certainly wouldn't try it at my level of skill. I have an old Lincoln tombstone stick welder and use it for making tooling and a few items I sell from time to time. At least building up a face like the G/S method makes it easier to grind away your mistakes.

I have a low tolerance for folks doing videos when they don't really know their subject and are working from their guesses and bad assumptions. You will note that even though I've been using propane forges for 20 years or so I don't generally comment on burner construction. I'll let the experts handle that!

[Tennessee Cattleman]

This is making something useful out of something not useful. Wrought iron anvil faces have a tendency to become swayed under hard use, even with a piece of tool steel laminated to the the face, with just weld for the face I would imagine this will be a problem on top of the low rebound problem, however this should be a good anvil to beat something cold or sharp that might damage a high quality anvil face. I'm curious how many man hours this project took?

[Exo313]

Straight labor, not counting research time, I'm 8 hours in and not half done yet. 

 

[Charles R. Stevens]

David, you will find that IFI is an interactive pier reviewed document, working smiths and talented holiest both contribute, but if one presents bad information it will be dissected and debunked. Be warned, hobiests have day jobs, some are special process welding instructors ( want to know how to weld up a nucular containment vessel?) occupational rehabilitation specialists, Doctors, metallurgists even lawyers. YouTube not so much. 

Over the centuries smiths discovered that a hard faced hammer and a hard faced anvil moved hot steel more effecently, and that as the steel cooled that some of the energy was reflected as rebound lifting the hammer for the next blow. The diffrence between them is noticeable. One can certainly forge on a soft anvil, as hot steel is softer than cold, we often recommend that beginners do just that, and as your skill evolves and you get or build a hardfaced anvil you gentinuento learn, relishing that a hardware store hammer is soft to avoid Spaulding if it’s abused (they don’t want to to defend a suit because of your mishandling of a good tool). And that a properly hardened hammer brings up the effecency another notch. Even industry (always looking to save a $) uses hardened dies in their industrial forging presses.

Exo, how much $ do you have tied up in consumables? 

It isn’t that one can’t repair an anvil to better than new condition, it’s just time consuming, often expensive and sometimes difficult. More anvils have been damaged buy repairs than abuse I would wager. So be warned p, it isn’t for the faint of heart or the ignorant. 

Exo, I’m glad you did the home work.

David, you will find that IFI is an interactive pier reviewed document, working smiths and talented holiest both contribute, but if one presents bad information it will be dissected and debunked. Be warned, hobiests have day jobs, some are special process welding instructors ( want to know how to weld up a nucular containment vessel?) occupational rehabilitation specialists, Doctors, metallurgists even lawyers. YouTube not so much. 

Over the centuries smiths discovered that a hard faced hammer and a hard faced anvil moved hot steel more effecently, and that as the steel cooled that some of the energy was reflected as rebound lifting the hammer for the next blow. The diffrence between them is noticeable. One can certainly forge on a soft anvil, as hot steel is softer than cold, we often recommend that beginners do just that, and as your skill evolves and you get or build a hardfaced anvil you gentinuento learn, relishing that a hardware store hammer is soft to avoid Spaulding if it’s abused (they don’t want to to defend a suit because of your mishandling of a good tool). And that a properly hardened hammer brings up the effecency another notch. Even industry (always looking to save a $) uses hardened dies in their industrial forging presses.

Exo, how much $ do you have tied up in consumables? 

It isn’t that one can’t repair an anvil to better than new condition, it’s just time consuming, often expensive and sometimes difficult. More anvils have been damaged buy repairs than abuse I would wager. So be warned p, it isn’t for the faint of heart or the ignorant. 

Exo, I’m glad you did the home work.

as Thommas has mentioned Rob Gunther developed a method usinng two grades of impact resistant hard facing (about R55), we have also seen medium and high carbon faces fully welded (a round rod tacked in the middle so you can reach under and weld from the center of the plate to the edges in alternating passes) medium and high carbon faces much be quenched and tempered (not so much for medium) but with the mass it required a way to over come the steam jacket. Repairing an anvil is some what akin to the trials of Huculies

[JHCC]

55 minutes ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Over the centuries smiths discovered that a hard faced hammer and a hard faced anvil moved hot steel more effecently, and that as the steel cooled that some of the energy was reflected as rebound lifting the hammer for the next blow.

It's not so much that rebound is lifting the hammer for the next blow, as it is that a much larger portion of the blow is being directed into the workpiece. In other words, because each hammer blow is more efficient, you can move the same amount of metal with fewer hammer blows. That will have a major effect on the speed and efficiency of your forging.

To put it another way, the YouTubers who demonstrate that "rebound isn't a thing" (including Joey van der Steeg/@TechnicusJoe, who did a very good video on this subject) are correct in their assessments that rebound isn't lifting the hammer, but they are incorrect if they therefore conclude that anvil rebound has no benefits for blacksmithing.

To put it yet another way, the old timers @Charles R. Stevens mentions were correct in their observation that forging on a high-rebound anvil was easier and less fatiguing, but they were incorrect in their explanation of why.

(And on a side note, @TechnicusJoe's video shows that there's only an increase in rebound after the stock has cooled substantially, to below what most would consider an acceptable forging temperature.)

[Charles R. Stevens]

So now I am an old timer?! ( whoohoo, dances a little jig). Believe me I have tried a hard face dead blow hammer as well, not so good either. 

I remember a descusian as to wether steel heated up as we hammerd it, so the young guys wiped out some math saying no, Moonie however postid a video, he took a piece of cold 3/8 bare and hammers it till he could light a fag (her queens English for cigarette) don’t argue with the old timers ;-)

[JHCC]

Let me rephrase: there may be some small degree of rebound lifting the hammer, but the greater part of the advantage of a lively anvil is more efficient transfer of force into deformation of the workpiece.

[ThomasPowers]

or let me post once again my horror story:  Back in the early '80's when I was starting smithing I had been asked to do a demo at a local museum; well a couple of days beforehand my only anvil was stolen.  All I could find was a 220 pound "Buffalo" cast iron ASO.  So I spent way too much money and bought it new.  I used it for that Demo and NEVER AGAIN!.  When forging *hot* auto coil spring the anvil face would DENT under the hot workpiece---the energy was not going into deforming the workpiece but deforming the anvil face!   I finally sold it many years later for 1/2 what I paid for it to a person who swore on a stack of Bibles that he would NEVER try to use it as an anvil; but only as a "decor" piece.

And since it's Friday I would like to point out to my "friends" that there is a 19 in front of that '80's and not a couple of zeros...

[Daswulf]

Oh, I thought you meant the 1880's. I'd never suggest they made cast iron anvils THAT early in history.

[JHCC]

And thus was the genesis of the Thomas Power Applied Anvil Acquisition Project.

[sfeile]

I've watched that video before. I am only 6 months into this, but going from a rail "anvil" to a Vulcan with a hard face was a very noticeable difference even at my low experience level. I don't notice much for "lifting" the hammer, but steel moves much easier and I work  with less effort.

Common sense should tell you rebound is caused by a harder material. The harder your material the more rebound you get and less energy is allowed to transfer to the ground. Thus more energy transferred back into your piece. If it wasn't important we'd all be using just the stump.

[Exo313]

 

3 hours ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Exo, how much $ do you have tied up in consumables? 

$0, but government jobs are an amazing perk at my place of employment. I'm keeping rough track of what I use, so I may have a ballpark figure once I'm done. 

[Daswulf]

 we are paying for it?!

[ThomasPowers]

cough"China"cough---Das

And JHCC; yes that was the start of wanting to have a backup for every tool I used a lot!

Das; I didn't think you were paying Canadian taxes in PA; ( but any job you do at work for yourself has been known as a "Government Job" and if someone asks for details you tell them that it's classified!)

[Daswulf]

Come on Thomas, they probably even knew cast iron was a horrible choice to use as an anvil.

Ah ok. There I went assuming again. Lol. 

[Frosty]

If you can't find the rod recommended by Mr. Gunther use a "steel on rock" hard facing rod like that used on crusher drums or dozer blades, it's designed to take impacts and not deform. Proper build up rod works best as well. 

Though it's not recommended you can lay more than two passes of build up rod but NOT the hard face rod, that will cause checking.

And go ahead and grind it with a cup stone while it's still red hot and let it cool gradually once it's less than red. The pre-heated anvil's body will prevent adverse effects. I wrap the anvil in kaowool and bury it in perlite for an over night cool. Once cool I do the finish grinding, doing it all cold is a killer, physically and materially. Hard face EATS grinding disks and stones, just like it's supposed to.

Frosty The Lucky.

7 minutes ago, Daswulf said:

Come on Thomas, they probably even knew cast iron was a horrible choice to use as an anvil.

Ah ok. There I went assuming again. Lol. 

Malleable gray iron is okay, ever beat on a swage block? It's expensive though both materials and labor.

Frosty The Lucky.