trueing the surface on a hay budden anvi

[anvil]

Interesting take on refacing an anvil. It appears to have boiled down to two general concepts. How much wear warrants a repair and if the wear creats positive situations that are worth not having a flat face. 

lol, the first is truly personal opinion. End of story. However, if you have never worked on an anvil,,, I say anvil with a flat, not necessarily machined,, face, then you dont know what you are missing. I bought a brand new enders farrier anvil years ago, and refaced two for my shop since then.

And the second. There are absolutely uses for the sway in your anvil! And I'm the first to use them and not ever consider "surgery". But, to claim that this is a better option than a flat faced anvil?  That you may turn down a flat faced anvil because it has no sway? As an opinion, no problem. But there are plenty of excellent solutions to straightening and trueing on the face that don't preclude a flat face and its benefits.

22 hours ago, MC Hammer said:

but filling in the sway section isn't really the Gunther process

the "Gunther Process",, lol, I'm getting old. However if you choose to limit your tool, no matter the tool, that's your choice. But please those limits are your own self imposed limits, no one else's. Same goes for losing the temper and doing harm to your anvil. The above are your reasons, and your opinion. 

22 hours ago, bajajoaquin said:

Blacksmithing isn't an endeavor that requires precision tolerances and machined surfaces within thousandths of an inch. If you're looking for that, there's a different disconnect in this whole process. You're probably looking for a different process than blacksmithing.

Wow, ive just got to respond to this. Your implication is sorta supporting the "get a bigger hammer" concept. Should you pursue this craft and choose to be a "Traditional Smith" doing gates and railings, then be prepared to be able to forge to a sixtyfourth inch. I dont deal in thousandths, so not sure that works out to.

 

21 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

And sway is usually front to back

Lol, don't matter where its located, including chipped or worn edges, the question is when to fix it.

So to sum up my beliefs.

If you are satisfied with your anvil wear, enjoy.

If you want to explore working on a flat face, then the "Gunther process" works well if you follow the protocol no matter the state of repair needed.

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, anvil said:

And the second. There are absolutely uses for the sway in your a

Yes there are. A basic principle of working at the anvil being, "Any unsupported work will bend." Supported work forges, changes thickness and width/length dimensions. Yes? This is why half faced blows are so effective forging isolated material without forging both sides of the shoulder, say the stem on a leaf. The hammer hits both sides of the shoulder but only draws one down, the other side bends over the edge. Yes?

If you try straightening on a flat face, even a wooden mallet will do some drawing, a steel hammer will do serious drawing. Yes? Even HOT steel rebounds so you need to bend it that much farther to end up with a straight piece. Yes?

I can lay a straight edge on my 125 lb. Soderfors cast in 1926 and if you see light under it brush the dirt off.  I only straighten on it while doing gross forging work, usually before putting the piece back in the forge so I don't have to mess with it when I want to get things done. 

I straighten on the end grain of a birch block with a B'ball bat, wooden mallet. You CAN flatten on it IF you use a flatter and either adjust for the draw before or leave enough material to grind to profile. It's how I established the belly in the couple knives I forged early on. And no it wasn't one of the skinners you see today with profiles that look like half a pizza cutter, it was less than my Buck sheath knife and it skinned nicely. Fit in small spaces to cape out bear toes without damaging anything.

The older books (I used to have)  told the aspiring smith to straighten over the hardy hole if they actually needed it FLAT to account for rebound. 

Of course that's just my opinion I could be wrong.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I have a dead flat faced anvil, my 469# Fisher, owned it now about 20 years; however for most of my work the more worn anvils I own work fine and for bladesmithing I prefer my 91# A&H with the slight sway for straightening. I tend to "fit" rather than machine stuff, I do use kissblocks but I don't factor in heat expansion or scale thickness on them.

I think this come down to "Different Strokes for Different Folks".  I think some of us try to warn folks who don't have smithing experience and want to make what could be major changes to their most expensive tool BEFORE knowing if they really need to.  

I've mentioned a Friend who when he got started smithing paid to have 90% of his anvils face milled off to get square sharp edges. He then found that what was left was too soft/weak to smith on and ended up carrying it around unused for 20 years till we had an anvil repair day and he could get a usable face built up; as I recall it took about 5-6 hours by a professional welder using industrial equipment combined with a lot of grinding to get it both pretty and usable.  If he had just waited till he could have made a REASONED decision based on experience; he would have avoided  messing up his anvil. He would have either gone with: living with it as is; or building up from what he had. Or, to be fair, a much less drastic milling!  

I'm generally quite against removing face; but over the last 37 years I have seen now 4 anvils that my suggestion would have been to start with milling the face a slight bit (after truing the base to the face!)   I have also seen many more anvils severely damaged  from over enthusiastic milling; including two where they did not true the base to the face first and instead ended up milling COMPLETELY THROUGH THE FACE and into the wrought iron at one end of the face as the anvil had a slant to it that was greater than the face thickness.

My thoughts can be abbreviated as "First: Do No Harm"; but I do hold by "It's your tool you can do what you want with it, even if I think it's misguided." 

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

Out of my 8 anvils, only one has any face depression and that is the 138# Peter Wright with a bowl near the horn. I can work around it easy enough and it may come in handy at some point.

The point I was trying to make about the sway direction is that even if it has sway front to back the anvil is mostly used side to side. That direction is usually still flat even with sway. Also , unless you are working items that are really wide - 6" or so - it won't make a difference, depending on how much sway the face has.

 

[Marc1]

All this talk about anvil faces without a mention of what you forge on them? If you forge small things, you will always be able to find a flat section on your anvil, so any repair would be unnecessary. 

Having said that, the debate about repair or not, never considers the owners idiosyncrasy. There is such thing as OCD and for some, a chipped edge or a depression on a surface that was originally flat is a constant cause of aggravation that nags you every time you have a look at your anvil. 

The idea that a depression on the face is an advantage, is one way to compensate for this. I remember a guy who had a faulty exhaust valve and his exhaust backfired every time he lift the foot off the accelerator. He thought this was the reason he never had an accident since people jumped out of his way

Personally my OCD is not strong enough to compel me to do any repairs to my anvils. The one PW I use the most is a 280# that has a very nice flat surface but a few chips. My 480# has a lot of scars,  a minor depression on the face and a lot of cuts and big depression on the horn. i will eventually repair the horn but leave the face alone. To those who think a wongolated face is an advantage I say, each to his own, but when you ever buy a new anvil please don't go for your die grinder and make a depression on the face. That would be a real pita.

[MC Hammer]

7 hours ago, anvil said:

the "Gunther Process",, lol, I'm getting old. However if you choose to limit your tool, no matter the tool, that's your choice. But please those limits are your own self imposed limits, no one else's. Same goes for losing the temper and doing harm to your anvil. The above are your reasons, and your opinion. 

What I was referring to is that I've never heard of the Gunther process being done on a swayed anvil.  Chipped, big sections of the face missing, and as Thomas said badly milled faces, well yes I've heard of that, but I've not heard of someone taking a perfectly fine face and filling in the sway.  I'm not saying it can't be done, I just don't think anyone has done that before.  Will it work?  I have no clue, but I think over the years you or the next smith after you would regret that the sway was filled in.  

I think what you are seeing is a strong response to a common mistake seen here a lot, but mostly from new people entering this craft.  They want to square up the edges, make the top perfectly flat thinking this will get them off to a good start.  Many of us are just trying to convey the notion that this could be damaging to the anvil and is very much not necessary to forge well on it.  Many blacksmiths of old fed their families from swayed anvils.  In my picture above, I have a block of steel that is perfectly flat with sharp edges in the event I need that for something.  

[anvil]

A good thread. Thanks to Frosty, it gave me another little thought of farrier technique that can be brought over to a blacksmith shop. 

Frosty, your post was pretty good and thinking of "bending"and"forging" is a great way to differentiate changing cross section vs changing direction.  

One thought on levelling/straightening or bending on a flat anvil vs using a fault on the anvil face.

The key detail is when bending, there must be light between your work and the anvil face, as you said above. However, as long as you hit "daylight" you cannot forge what you hit, and it makes no difference if your anvil is flat or worn. It will not draw out, or thin unless you strike where there is no daylight. Think of a farrier. 

At least for me, the two things I do most when shaping a shoe is to turn it over the horn, then going to the "flat" face of my anvil and level the shoe. So, all things considered, I spend as much time "turning" the shoe as I do "leveling" the danged thing. And I do it by feel. I can feel the highs, lows, and twist with my hammer if hot, and with my fingers and thumb if cold. If my anvil had sway, I would have refaced it asap. My enders farriers anvil never developed any sway in 17 years as a full time business.

And, without a doubt, any stock removal on an amvil is an extreme measure.

A benefit of being a traditional blacksmith in our high te h age is that we have the tools to repair our anvils with relatively little problems

 Imagine refacing an anvil 100 years ago!

On 8/31/2018 at 7:48 PM, MC Hammer said:

What I was referring to is that I've never heard of the Gunther process being done on a swayed anvil.

Now you know of two, both done over 30 years ago. One needs re done because it eas done "pre-Robb. The other is fine. Never forget, the rod nor the parent material care a bit how much "flaw" you are fixing, they only insist that you follow proper protocol. 

So in summary,,

when/if to reface depends only on the blacksmith.

Yes, flaws can be used to level, but forging on a flat anvil means, you never have to factor in a correction for whatever you are doing.

No, stock removal should be a last hope for an anvil repair.

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

"Imagine refacing an anvil 100 years ago!"  

You mean when you could send it back to an anvil manufacturer and they would dress it and forge  weld a new face back on it and re heat treat it?   Anvils in America has some of the ads reprinted in it:  (Like page 266 "No matter how badly they are broken we can repair them in good shape"  Columbus Anvil and Forging  Co "We are experts at repairing old Wrought Iron Anvils" published in the American Blacksmith May 1908)

Somehow having the experts do it for me sounds easier...(Hmm maybe that is why I have them done at anvil repair clinics nowadays...)

[anvil]

Good info! I have not seen those ads.

How cool it would be to have a ledger from a shop that repaired anvils!

[ThomasPowers]

Talk with Richard Postman; he may have some; or know where they are located.