Aso Anvil Hardening

[Avadon]

Simple Question: Do ASO Anvils work harden during use?

And what about other non-aso High Quality Cast Steel Anvils. Do these get hader over time?

[dablacksmith]

as far as i know most metals will work harden some...

[Quenchcrack]

Anvils might work harden over time but the effect would be very superficial. I doubt you could find evidence of work hardening deeper than .010" unless the surface was very soft to begin with. To work harden the steel, it needs to be COLD deformed and since most metal worked on the anvil is red hot, the heat would tend to stress relieve the cold worked part and the effect would be eliminated.

[Avadon]

Anvils might work harden over time but the effect would be very superficial. I doubt you could find evidence of work hardening deeper than .010" unless the surface was very soft to begin with. To work harden the steel, it needs to be COLD deformed and since most metal worked on the anvil is red hot, the heat would tend to stress relieve the cold worked part and the effect would be eliminated.

Interesting. I never thought about it that way. It's like your annealing/heating and your hardening at the same time so they basically eliminate each other. I'm sure on big anvils it really is almost undetectable. Although on my smaller little 10lb anvil I wonder if it's more possible.

[azIRonSmith]

More likely on an ASO, you would get crumbling before you would get much in the way of work hardening. In fact, that's what happens to most ASO anvils that are actually used. Cast Iron is what most ASOs are made of and will be too brittle be useful.

I think work hardening an anvil is more of a salesmans pitch answer than an actual fact. Just like the used car saleman will tell you, "The squeaking brakes are just the sound of it wearing in the new brake pads."

The actual work hardening would be minimal at best on a good anvil. If it were true, why heat treat an anvil? Just have a pneumatic planishing hammer beat on the face for a few hours for a few thousand blows and it would be work hardened right? Of course how long would it take for you to hand hammer enough blows to even be close to that? Let alone perfectly space the hits all over the anvil face. With that being with cold blows of the hammer?

To achieve a consistent hardness and uniformity, the anvil face needs to be hardened and then tempered to the right hardness. Work hardening is not a viable alternative, if it were, we'd be making anvils that way. ;-)