Hello All

[Walkure486]

Hi everybody! New to the forum and blacksmithing. I've been looking around on iforgeiron for a couple weeks now and oh man so much good stuff to look at. The family and I went to a fall festival over the weekend and they had a blacksmith there, after talking to him for a while he said come back when he finished the squirrel cooker he was making and he'd teach me how to make a hook. Big thanks to that guy for the crash course. (He knows who he is) I think it turned out pretty good for a first. Basic but useful, have the oven mits on it now. 

Figured I'd share my forge, still working on a hood for it since there's all kinds of flammables around. My little one wouldn't appreciate me burning up his trike. Also need to scrounge up some pipe to finish the striking anvil build, as its the plate that's on the ground to the left. I have another piece the same as that one and when I weld them together it will be 2 1/2" thick. By the end of November I will have moved the forge to the back end of the yard away from all the stuff that's just waiting to catch fire. Got a lead on a free shed that I'll be setting up as the new "shop".

 

[Steve Sells]

You may wish to put in a meaningful location.  The World Wide Web is a large place.  We have members from over 150 countries here.  Is Middle River anywhere near Minas Tirith of Middle Earth ?

[Walkure486]

Point noted and updated location

[Daswulf]

Welcome to the madness Walkure. 

[Walkure486]

One step closer to having the striking anvil build done. Made the face of it so that it can be removed to be stored inside from the elements. Going to grab the mag-drill from work to drill the pritchel hole and a hole big enough to weld in a 1" square tube for the hardy hole. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have you. Welding two plates together like that is a waste of plate steel and rod/wire. You'd be farther ahead with one piece. Uncoupled plate actually diminishes energy returned to the stock in use.

However, if you were to scarf the joint out and make a solid weld along a narrow end, grind it smooth, mount it that end up you'd have a decent anvil. The effectiveness of an anvil is determined by how much SOLID steel/iron is directly under the hammer. 

A portable hole works a treat for bottom tooling, there isn't a need for the hardy hole to be attached to the anvil at all. Having it separate means you can use it as a helper to hold long stock or the anvil to hold long stock while you work it in a swage, fuller, etc.

I make and use hold fasts so a pritchel hole in the anvil is a good idea. Heck, put one in the portable hole too, that way it will hold your stock when it's being a helper!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Walkure486]

Frosty, thanks for the tip with the hardy. It will be way easier to weld a section of 1" square tube to the stand and have it next to the face of the anvil, instead of trying to put the hole in the middle of the plate. I defiantly want a pritchel hole since I was planning on making a hold fast or two. 

From the research I've done I know that typically a ASO such as the 1-1/4" plate I got should have been mounted on edge. Since I was aiming to have a striking anvil, I went with laying them flat and welded the two to make it one 2-1/2" thick slab. I agree that I'm not getting the most mass under the hammer in this configuration. That said do you think it would be better to scarf the edges and weld all the way around vs. a few 2" welds?  It's not hardened so it will dent if I hit it instead of chipping. Also I'm sure it leaves things to be desired as far as rebound.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Got your Jargon wrong: an ASO is an Anvil Shaped Object but made of cast iron and so works poorly as an anvil---more poorly than a same weight of a compact chunk of steel that is not London Pattern Anvil shaped.

So a block of steel is NOT an ASO it's an ANVIL; may not be a good one but not an ASO.  You have an improvised anvil and I suggest you review the improvised anvil thread.

[Buzzkill]

Yeah, those are OSA's  (Odd Shaped Anvils) not ASO's.  Let the confusion begin

 

[Walkure486]

oof.. I'll have to brush up on more of the jargon. Also the improvised anvil thread will be visited some more. Do you guys have a opinion on welding all the way around or just having it stitched?

Either way thanks for the tips and feed back. Got a lot more reading to do and good or bad I want to test it out before cutting stuff apart. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

Well the type of weld depends on the perpose. If you are building an anvil on wants full thickness welds (this requires wide filet and often a round spacer) for anvil stands and tooling that will be subjected to the vibration and shock of hammering fully welded joints, wile for welds intended to hold things to gether most 1” stitch welds resist some 1000’s of pounds of force so given full penetration on is good. 

[Walkure486]

 

Charles, I'm not worried about it coming apart. I forgot to mention I'm a certified welder. Used E7018 rod, which has 70,000 psi tensile strength min. for a 1" bead.  Put six 2" beads on it, two on the long sides one on each end.

What I'm asking is the squeeze worth the juice to scarf it for a full thickness (2-1/2") weld.

I assume your opinion is to scarf and weld full thickness? 

[Frosty]

It's not about strength it's about being a solid piece of steel under the hammer. The two different pieces, no matter how they're attached do not do a good job being an anvil. My suggestion was to weld one end solid, stand it with that end up and use it as the anvil face. While not perfect the hammer's energy will be conducted directly through the whole length. Two plates laying on each other however stop the energy at the boundary where it has to transit the gap the return is the same. It loses it's energy almost completely, you're better off with a single piece, the compression wave can resonate back to the work. It's not great but it's more effective.

In this instance, when we say full penetration weld we mean the full contact surface of the plates, not a 2 1/2" thick bead.

Uh, 7018 is 70k PSI tensile, not per inch of weld bead.  

Frosty The Lucky.

[Walkure486]

Now I'm confused don't we need a square inch to get the PSI rating?  Merely stated the process used to join the two plates.  Your also going to end up with a 2-1/2" cover pass on that bad boy if your scarfing it all the way to the middle. I don't know much about blacksmithing, I know how to do SMAW.

What is sounds like to me is that the juice isn't worth the squeeze in this case. While it may not be perfect, it should do its job well enough to see if I want to cut it apart and re-weld stuff some other way or sink some money into a better setup. What I built looks a lot like ALL the striking anvils I've seen. The ONLY difference being the two plates stacked since the local metal supplier didn't have anything 2-1/2" think to start with.

But that's enough puffing up. I'll let you all know how it goes when I get a chance to try it out.

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning Walk-er,

Don't let the dog barking put you off. It is yours, you can do it any way you like. What I read, that has been suggested, Stand your piece on it's end. This puts most mass under your working surface, the end of the welded plates. The more mass under your working surface, the better. When lying on the flat, you have the thickness of the two plates under your Hammer. Yes it will work, but if you are forging something larger, stand it on it's end.

This is only a suggestion, not a "Have-To do it this or that way". Sometimes people forget that this is the 'Swamp', there are lots of ways to drain it.

Neil

[ThomasPowers]

That "only difference" is a HUGE one in practice.

[Frosty]

The tensile strength in psi is the cross section of a test coupon. A coupon being a piece of the steel you're testing or testing the welding rod against, mild in this case. Two pieces of 1.25" square stock (If I recall correctly) is prepared to weld, scarfed (V groove ground at joint, etc.) to produce a 100% penetration weld. It is welded appropriately for the steel, and conditions, thickness, etc. Once cooled the weld is ground to a uniform 1" square cross section. 

It is then placed in a hydraulic breaker and pulled apart, the rebound, yield and failure is all tested and measured in the appropriate scales. We rarely broke steel coupons in the mat lab and never prepared them. We typically bent and broke welded coupons for welder certifications. 

When I earned my certs they did visual inspections of our welds, before, during and after and only bent and broke them for specific jobs, say a "pressure vessel cert" for a nuke reactor job. Sorry, I get going sometimes and ramble on. I'm responding to establish I'm not just spouting off, I actually used to be a certified welder fabricator. After all the years since I ran beads for a living some things the instructors really drove in like a "bead inch" vs a "square inch" still jump out at me.

I get sidetracked, it happens to me all the time I blame the TBI. 

I only brought it up in the first place to help you make the most effective anvil you could with what you have and explain the whats and whys of it. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[CMS3900]

Hey Walkure, Welcome Aboard.

 

You're located in a pretty good spot for Blacksmithing.  The Blacksmith's Guild of Central Maryland is located in Westminster not too far from you and is a really good group. They offer classes pretty regularly and have open forging nights.  MASA on the eastern shore is a good group too.  There actually is a show not too far from you in Perryville, MD on Oct 20th at Matt Harris Metalsmith Studio.  It's a great show with great demonstrators, usually some tailgating, and good food. It's free to get in, they just ask you to bring something for iron in the hat. PM for more details if interested.

FWIW I think that's a nice striking anvil.   I think there is some confusion in this thread over a striking anvil and its uses versus the normal advice given to folks using metal to make a shop anvil.

[Walkure486]

CMS3900 thanks for the info on the local groups. Haven't heard about the eastern shore group. Already have the application form filled out for the Central Maryland Guild filled out. The stuff I made the hook on is actually a guy who is a member of theirs. I will unfortunately be camping on the 20th. Sounds cool though.

Frosty, Yep. Since I'm a steamfitter we started on plate steel. Then had to pass a bend test with schedule 40 6" pipe, locked in the 6G position. Then after that moved on to a x-ray test with schedule 80 2" pipe also locked in a 6G. All the while they inspect your fitting of the joint, your tacks, and all the passes you make on it till its done. You'd be correct, just trying to hold something together is quite different than holding pressure.