Grind out the chips? What would you do?

[vespdrone]

Hi all, I posted pictures of my second hand John Brooks anvil in the show me your anvil page -

I wanted to ask what you would do if you received this anvil - as you can see both sides are chipped, although one side isn't as bad

Besides the chips, around the heel of the anvil looks a bit mushroomed, so I need to radius the whole way around for sure.

I figure I could do some wide radii around the chips - I'm afraid to put any work near them right now

 

What would you do?

[JHCC]

Those are some nasty chips, but there's also a decent amount of good edge still on that thing. I'd recommend leaving them alone for now and working around them as much as possible. You might want to do the absolute minimum of grinding to take off any sharp edges, but I wouldn't do any more than that at present.

[Daswulf]

Were it mine I would radius the chipped areas if anything to avoid any more chipping. Like John said there is a lot of good edge area there. I would wait to do anything else to it other than just mildly smooth down any really sharp edges. 

If you radius the chipped area work slow, cool and don't go too far with it. You can modify more after working on it if you notice it needs it.

The more you use the anvil the more you'll know what you need in it and if you need an edge modified.

Remember, it is easy to take away metal from an anvil but much harder to add metal back to an anvil. That being that heat treating an anvil is not an easy task. 

Glad you are asking and did not grind on the face of the anvil. You will get differing opinions on this question so take what people advise and make your best educated decision from there. 

[Rojo Pedro]

Me too. I would take a worn flap disc and just soften the edges a little bit at a time until it is the shape you want. 

I am still shaping the edges of my new anvil 3 years later but I am taking my time based on the good advice I got here on this forum

 

[vespdrone]

2 hours ago, JHCC said:

Those are some nasty chips, but there's also a decent amount of good edge still on that thing. I'd recommend leaving them alone for now and working around them as much as possible. You might want to do the absolute minimum of grinding to take off any sharp edges, but I wouldn't do any more than that at present.

That seems pretty sound advice - I agree it's perfectly usable for now. My main worry would be causing new cracks, so I'll keep away from existing ones.

[vespdrone]

On 10/27/2021 at 9:15 AM, Daswulf said:

Were it mine I would radius the chipped areas if anything to avoid any more chipping. Like John said there is a lot of good edge area there.

I guess I was wondering if there's interesting "modifications" people have done in place of cracks. But I guess the best modifications depend what you're using it for!

Thanks for the advice!

On 10/27/2021 at 9:19 AM, Rojo Pedro said:

Me too. I would take a worn flap disc and just soften the edges a little bit at a time until it is the shape you want. 

I am still shaping the edges of my new anvil 3 years later but I am taking my time based on the good advice I got here on this forum

Wow, that's a gradual fix alright. I'll keep this in mind, thanks!

[FlatLiner]

Both of my main anvils were used for cold horseshoing so the edged were really chipped up so I had to grind them. If you Google Söderfors Paragon Anvil you will see a swedish Söderfors with the edges heavily radiused, fire Creek forge on you tube uses an anvil with heavily radiused edges, his anvil was also used for coldshoeing horses at one point in it's life. You usually don't need sharp edges on an anvil but you can always make an anvil block to fit in the Hardy with different radiused edges if you decide to grind or not to grind the edges of your anvil.

[JHCC]

I know a farrier whose travelling rig includes a Soderfors with massively chipped edges. Apparently he likes to weld up the edges every once in a while with a stick welder, which naturally weakens the HAZ, which in turn leads to more chipping.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I picked up a 106 pound Hay Budden in 2017 that has rough edges. I thought of grinding them out a little but decided after advice obtained here to use it for a year before doing that. Glad I took the advice because I haven't had any trouble when using it so it remains as it was.

[FlatLiner]

Those edges have been nicely rounded Iron Dragon. I wouldn't of touched it either.

[anvil]

I'd radius your edges from 3/8" at the step  to zero a couple of inches in front of your hardy hole. This gives you a number of good radii to use when forging and gets rid of the chips.

[Glenn]

As Iron Dragon said, use the anvil for a year (2000 hours) before you do anything.  

If you are new at the craft and blacksmithing, you MUST consider the source and reason for the advice you receive.  A farrier, bladesmith, general blacksmith, and an architectural blacksmith all have different ways to use their anvils.  All can give good advice for their way of blacksmithing that may not fit well for the others.

A year (2000 hours) of working on YOUR anvil and you should have figured out what YOU need.