Anvil rebound,- horse poo?

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Couldn’t a body just get some 2” round stock of different materials or alloys and different hardness and then have some people forge on them to see if they can tell the difference? 

I was just thinking it would be easier and cheaper to get then have London pattern anvils made for the test, 

Either way it sounds like an interesting experiment! 

[ThomasPowers]

My current improvised anvil is an 80 pound rectangular solid of unknown unhardened steel; unfortunately I don't have an identical hardened one to compare with and so mass and shape differences mess up the comparisons. 

However it's still quite usable and using it for demo's is my blow against the London Pattern Hegemony!

[George N. M.]

The energy conservation idea could be tested by dropping a known weight from a known height onto a material (possibly something softer than steel so that there would be more deformation to measure, lead or copper maybe) and then measure the deformation when the test is done on a high rebound anvil and a "dead" one.

I have also questioned the correlation between ring and how good an anvil is except to see if there has been any face delamination.  I am one who does not like a sharp ring and there are plenty of good anvils around that have a more muted ring.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[anvil]

TW, that would be far too subjective to be valid. 

Bigun, I agree completely. I suspect that all the calculations you speak of have already been done in the real world of industrial smithing either by test or mathematics. I suspect that if a hammer driver has a one blow job to do, as a simple example example, if he knows the type of steel, size(mass) and its optimum forging temp, He can dial into the computer the force needed to get the job done. He can probably figure in any rebound from zero to whatever he needs. 

Rebound is still interesting to look at. Within a certain tolerance of error the above is prolly pretty accurate. When we add in the smith with a hand hammer we have at least two more imponderables. lets call one stamina and the other psychology. If i raise my hammer 10", I create potential energy. If I have a job, plus energy absorbed by the anvil, that can be done by raising my hammer 10" and dropping it, the job gets done and there is no rebound. However, if I raise the hammer 20" and the anvil has 80% rebound, I create more potential energy but this subtracts from my stamina, and the hammer rebounds 8". On the upswing, I only need to raise the hammer 2 more inches. There ain't no perpetual motion, so I'm at a net loss on my stamina and work spent. However, perhaps there is a psychological plus that makes me "feel" i gained on the deal. Lol, perhaps this is what makes the rebound from a modern anvil "seem" to be more efficient. And who's to say that feeling isn't worth the price... 

[ThomasPowers]

HMM we have a member that works for a modern high tech forge operation I wonder if he is following this discussion?  (Got to love a smithy where the "tongs" have seats and 4wd on them!)

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

37 minutes ago, anvil said:

TW, that would be far too subjective to be valid. 

Why so? I’ve seen pictures of small block anvils,

And weren’t there some famous Viking anvils found in a wood box in a swamp somewhere? 
 

you could have different 2” round stock set up exactly the same,

one mild, one ductile, one cast iron, one hardened steel, one cast steel, ect…

and then get a group of smiths to take turns forging the same project using the same hammer an the same steel stock,

and then see if the group of smiths could identify the difference between the anvils 

i imagine they would be able to pick out cast iron pretty easily

 

[ThomasPowers]

As I recall there was a big discussion on how to rate the power of large power hammers 150 years or so ago; falling weights vs steam assist vs etc and so on.  One method proposed by one manufacturer was to measure the  height of a cast lead block after a certain number of full force blows by each hammer.

[FlatLiner]

I'm in your camp biggundoctor. I don't see how a thin hardened face really makes that much difference on an anvil. I believe its more for longevity and it has an unintentional placibo side effect. Yes mild steel will dent and deform even lesser hardened anvils dent and deform over time. Mild steel is harder then wrought iron and there are plenty of saddled wrought iron anvils with hardended face faces out there that show that even they deform over time. But cast iron is a big no go. Any steel is better then cast iron.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

I wonder what the rebound was on the stone anvils the Vikings used

Thomas, obviously if the anvil is deforming while forging it is taking away some of the power of the blow from the part being worked, but could that be overcome by heating the stock up to a higher temperature? 

 

 

[George N. M.]

As an old geologist I can tell you that some rocks have a pretty high rebound if they are solid and don't have any fractures.  Metamorphic quartzite and various amphibolites come to mind.  That said, I don't know how much rebound is from the rock and how much from the steel rock hammer.  If I could find about a 100# chunk of amphibolite with a cut face I would mount it as an anvil in my shop in a heartbeat.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[anvil]

23 hours ago, TWISTEDWILLOW said:

Why so?

The simple answer is if two humans view an accident, there police reports will most likely be different. 

17 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

heating the stock up to a higher temperatur

I don't think so since a good forging temp is at a yellow heat. Much higher and it's burning.

I also think there is a good argument that the reason we see so many PW anvils that are saddled and far fewer Trenton's or HB's could be how they are tempered. I suspect that the harder the temper, the less wear and more rebound you will get. Perhaps the PW business model was planned obsolescence. 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Of course PW was making more anvils for a longer time period and there’s probably quite a few more PWs out in circulation getting used longer time lines, 

just like there’s millions of beat up Ford F-150 pickup trucks out there but I only see a few jeep gladiators,

people are gonna use what’s available, what’s affordable and their gonna use it hard! Lol

[ThomasPowers]

I was drooling yesterday as we were driving through a roadcut in a nice, not so vesicular, basalt.  Of course the old stone anvil folks were also forging real wrought iron at very high temps where you could probably forge with a nice hard wooden hammer!

Unfortunately one of the sites that has some good sized chunks is on the Rez, I'll have to stop someday and see if I can get permission to get one.

[George N. M.]

Because it is so hard and tough the amphibolite group rocks do not tend to have parallel fractures and anything moveable tends to be pretty "blobby" and irregular shaped.  Columnular basalts can have nice, flat and parallel faces.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

We've had this discussion a few times and pretty  much come to the same conclusion. One for each of us.

The test method is simple for each main question.

Hardness, pick the scale and method. Done and noted.

Rebound. Drop a bearing ball from a set distance and measure the rebound. Done and noted.

Smoosh. Set hammer weight from a set height, impacting on a standardized slug. Done and noted.

Compare the notes on a chart.

Do the tests in a pattern across the face from shelf to tail to map variances caused by depth of rebound.

For a meaningful study you must remove the human from as many aspects as possible. This is true of any study that isn't of humans and then you take the human out of the testing measures. 

Most of what we talk about is subjective opinion and in this instance I'm right because I say so.  My 125lb. Soderfors demonstrably moves metal with less effort than my 206lb. Trenton, the comparison has been made and confirmed by I don't know how many guys who've used both. A few dozen anyway.

Is the hardened face for improved metal moving qualities or wear resistance. I tend to believe blacksmiths being result oriented it leans to the former but the latter is inseparable in any case so it's a difference without distinction.

The biggest improvement I've noticed is in stands, welded steel tripods rule. They're naturally stable on uneven surfaces, conduct impact energy to the ground with the least loss to compression or damping and they to an excellent job of quieting loud anvils. 

I think that's about as far into this discussion as I want to get again.

Frosty The Lucky.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Lol I don’t care what y’all say with all yer fancy anvils

Peter Wrights, beat up, swayed, chipped, treated like a welding table with torch marks, accidental welding beads 

to paraphrase JHCC,

Peter Wrights ARE the undisputed Pickup truck of anvils!!! Lol

an they can move metal just fine! 

Peter Wrights can take a dinging and keep on ringing!