Repairing a Peter Wright with a cracked face?

[Chad J.]

I have a Peter Wright that my guys grabbed from the scrap when it came in when I was a yard manager.  It had a crack in the face, no rebound along the waist, and a severe overhang on the sides.  I went to start addressing the problems and found the entire work face had busted free.  I still have it,  I am considering trying to repair it but that would be a lot of welding as about 8 inches of facing is gone completely.   I would hate to do it, the repairs are not beyond my welding skills but the cost and time may be.  My final thought, it is a cast wrought and I currently don't have any other wrought iron...

[ThomasPowers]

PW---pure WI with a steel face forge welded on. Early ones the face is forge welded on in sections and so you can sometimes see the weld seams going across the face. Later ones they got so they can weld the entire face on as one piece---less likely to lose a section of the face.

Why would you need Wrought iron if you are replacing the steel face?

A friend had an apx 200# anvil repaired because a machinist had milled the face and edges "pretty" for him making it too thin of a face to be used as an anvil.  He carried it around for a couple of decades and then took it to an anvil repair day we had out here and a professional welder, using industrial equipment, built the face back up to usability (and still "pretty").  As I recall after preheat it took him about 5 hours of sold work!  (Cost of having it done commercially would be $$$$$$$$!)

The Gunther-Schuler method of anvil repair is the gold standard;  but you need to find an anvil repair day or a welding class that might take it on as a project unless you have the skills and equipment or the $$$$ to have it done.

Now an old fashioned repair would be to forge weld on a new face plate---they did it as a Friday night demo at a Quad-State once.  As I recall they had two forges and several CENTURIES of experience in the folks working them and it still took them 4 tries to get it to stick!

[Latticino]

Thomas,  I think he meant that if restoring the anvil to serviceability would be too much effort he could always just use the wrought iron for another project.  After all these days decent chunks of wrought for forging things like steel faced wrought hammers and wrought axes with forge welded bits and polls are not that easy top come by.

[ThomasPowers]

A lot easier to find than cutting up an anvil for it!

[anvil]

I nearly always advocate refacing using the Gunther method. Especially if you can weld and follow instructions 

[Frosty]

Boy, it's a tough decision. I don't mind tinkering and have a wire feed for my Ranger 9 welder generator so I could lay down enough bead to put 1/2" on a moderate size anvil face in an hour+. I wouldn't use hard face wire, it has a 2 pass limit and tends to check if laid down thicker. I tried it doesn't work and becomes brittle. I laid hundreds of lbs of hard face wire on drill bits and augar as one of my hats on the drill crew. 

Build up wire on the other hand is impact and deformation resistant. It should make a decent anvil face itself or be used for it's intended purpose build up to support hard facing rod.

There is a proven Stoody rod listed in articles about using the Gunther method. It is hard face rod intended for Steel on Stone application as in rock crushers. You can buy flux core, hard face wire that is the equivalent. Do NOT buy the Steel on Steel or Abrasion resistant hard face alloys, they aren't so impact resistant and edges WILL chip.

I have lots (Too much )  experience laying Lincore 50 hardfacing wire and can attest to it's suitability. I just did a quick websearch and the recommendation has risen from a max of 2 passes to 4 passes and it's rated for: high carbon to mild, manganese, medium alloy and stainless steel applications. 

I'd be dropping the build up wire and just buy a spool of my old workhorse hardfacing wire. Were I doing this I'd grit my teeth and buy enough copper bar to make chill stops. Heck I may have enough copper bits and pieces available to cast my own. That's getting into another bit of tinkering to add to the project. BUT using chill stops means you don't have to worry about the edges flowing off the build up and will speed the build up significantly. Not to mention reducing the amount of HORRIBLY labor intensive job of grinding to finish. Hardfacing wire is ABRASION RESISTANT in the extreme. I bought cup stones for my 9" Milwaukee disk grinder and did all the rough grinding while it was still red hot. I used medium and one fine hard disk for the fine grinding and MAN do they smoke grinding on RED HOT steel. I've rebuilt one anvil to save it from a kid who had some welding rod, a friend with a welder and was going to do it anyway. 

Were I to take on a complete anvil face replacement I'd have to spend some time talking to the people at Lincoln for their input. They have "labs" that tackle these questions, take advantage. Yes?

Anyway, as Thomas says wrought iron is common enough, even in Alaska, I'd buy and ship it rather than turn an anvil into stock. When I'm smithing for money I charge for MY: education, skill, experience and time, not the materials. Unless it's some exotic metal the stock price is such a small % it falls under shop overhead, like: electric, propane, oxy, etc. The last time I worked for money I charged $100/hr + disposables and materials on the anvil repair. Materials was some darned expensive hardfacing rod and I only charged 1 hour and keep extras. The kid's Mother "tipped me another $150 and supplied lunch and a 6pack of good beer. She's a single Mother and has spent quite a bit on the anvil and shipping so her boy could hopefully learn the craft. He's a great kid, straight A student and off to college on scholarships. It was an honor to repair his anvil.

The repair? a piece of the face about 2" x 1 3/4" had been knocked out of the "left" corner at the step. Left side using the horn as the front. I spent close to $100 on burs for my die grinder to root out all the delamination without making the broken corner into a big wide curve. Had I actually charged time and materials it would've been a $1,000+ repair. 

DANG, I can't find a pic. <sigh> Go ahead guys don't believe.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I believe and the damage you described is common on a lot of anvils that I have seen. As a matter of fact, ESSA has an anvil that Bob Patrick repaired and is holding up well even under the students wild hammering.

[ThomasPowers]

SOFA has a shop with a number of forging stations for classes and smithing by members.  I was amazed at how they had found so many great condition anvils till I asked and was told they were all graduates of the Gunther Schuler method and have stood up to decades of use by new smiths!

[Chad J.]

I've read the Gunther Schuler method and I've priced the Stoody rods, 88 dollars for 5 pounds.  I'm looking at maybe 15 pounds of rods to do this at least but then I also need to find the time.  I could do it,  and it could be a wonderful center piece for my shop.  I think it may just go into a corner in the barn until I take some vacation and try this.   What's the worst that can happen?

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by Chad J.
Added photo of the anvil in question

[Goods]

Might plan on welding the full surface. What’s left of the face plate will end up soft when you’re done.

Just my 2cents (but may not even be worth that...)

David

[Chad J.]

I agree Goods.  Everything between the 2 cuts across has been ground away or came off.  The heat treatment is my biggest concern on this.   Now I am willing to fire up a smoker and fill a couple coolers with cool liquid refreshments if anyone in Wisconsin wants to try and make an event of this anvil repair.  My biggest concern is I never get around to doing anything with this and it sitting in my shop until I too over it one too many times.   Only reason I thought of using it as a source of wrought.

[JHCC]

12 hours ago, Chad J. said:

I've priced the Stoody rods, 88 dollars for 5 pounds.  I'm looking at maybe 15 pounds of rods to do this at least

Don't forget the cost of propane for preheating.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Also electricity to run the welder.

[ThomasPowers]

I thought the welder ran on Pizza and Brown Pop?

[Chad J.]

My stick welder is light duty.   Unless it retains enough heat from each pass that I don't have to heat it back up the propane use will be a good chunk too.  Maybe 2 or 3 tanks.

Thomas, He does

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Pizza and brown pop would probably add considerable to the cost, I can usually consume my weight in both.

[Chad J.]

My smoker lives at the entrance to my shop.  Saturdays I'll throw a pork shoulder on and let it cook while I work so I have lunch for the week.   I have a shelf that fills up with empty brown pop bottles fairly quickly as well.  Speaking of,  has anyone ever tried cleaning and forge welding a bunch of caps together?

[ThomasPowers]

Yes it used to be a NeoTribal Metalsmiths full moon party trick.  They would also carburize some too so they could make a blade.  Of course that was probably 20 years ago now.

[Frosty]

I preheated the anvil I welded up with 40lbs of Kingsford charcoal in a 55gl drum shortened to the 1st. chine. I set the anvil on a fire brick so I could pack charcoal under it. It came to 400f. in about 3 hrs and I used a piece of sheet steel as a heat shield from the fire while I welded it up and did the rough grinding. Then I covered it with some kaowool and left it overnight.

The only spot that got hotter than 400f was the area of the weld. 

I'd want to take the rest of the face plate off and hardface the whole thing. I haven't looked at the price but 15-20 lbs of Lincore 50 flux core wire should put 1/2" over a good sized face. With comfortable wire margin. Reading the literature if there's no high carbon Lincore 50 doesn't need pre or post heat. 

If that's the case then clamp on some chill stops and start laying down the wire. It's been a while but I'm thinking an hour of so burning wire and 4 grinding. Grind it HOT, the hotter the better. Maybe have a helper follow your bead with a flatter as soon as the slag curls up. Wire brush and hit it with the flatter, while I'm running bead. Sounds like a plan eh? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

We did 350 degF on my 400 pounder IIRC (Optical Pyrometer) and it kept up to temperature quite well on it's own during the welding.  Hot plannishing the weld would be monolithic biavicide!

[Frosty]

Am I going to find "biavicide" in a dictionary anywhere or at least enough root words to decipher a likely meaning? 

I did make a plannishing head for my air chisel and have a splitter for the air hose. I could lay: some bead, needle scale it, plannish and lay more bead. A little experimenting would establish how much bead to lay so it's cool enough to scale without poking a couple thousand pin holes in the bead. Maybe a wire cup brush would work better. Slag does lift itself off Lincore 50 beads as it cools. I just don't know if that'd be too cool to plannish. Biavicide it? 

I'd be willing to try a few things to avoid as much grinding as I could on hardfacing. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Come on; that's an easy one   Mono: one, lithic:  relating to stone; Bi 2 (like bicycle, biplane, etc) Avicide "the killing of birds"

Since a lot of the materials used for anvil face repairs are a pain to grind, plannishing the beads helps smooth and compact them and reduce the need for grinding.

[Frosty]

Oy, that is pretty obvious. My brain must be partially shut down today. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Don't sweat it; I'm looking forward to retiring so on those days my brain is on sabbatical I can just go sit in the shop and stare at the tools...I'm trying to learn that "somedays you can't win for losing" and NOT playing with fire and power tools will move the projects along faster than having to sit out till things heal because you did try to work when you shouldn't have.

[Frosty]

Knowing when to put the tools down is a good skill to develop. Not knowing put my Dad in the hospital a few times and finally in bed the last few years of his life. Changing a light bulb by standing on a chair instead of waiting for someone younger. He broke his shoulder, collar bone and several ribs. Being stuck in bed recovering caused pneumonia which exacerbated COPD and it was downhill from there. 

Now if I could apply it to my flapping gums, just because it sounds funny to me doesn't mean it's funny to anybody else. I used to have a better handle on that. 

Frosty The Lucky.