Anvil touch-up

Your approach sounds fine. But I encourage you to simply try using the anvil as is for a bit. Unless you're going to put it in your living room to show off .. :-)

GWE

Repair advice may be mulled for anywhere from a month to 10 years before being acted upon ;-)

Well here's another can of worms. I went to an old machine shop a while back to discuss resurfacing my anvil, and the machinist wasn't very keen on the idea of doing anything to it that involved any substantial amount of heat. Apparently he'd tried to weld on top of a couple of old anvils before and ended up destroying them - something about the way old anvils were made, cast upside down in two layers of steel with different degrees of heat expansion. To further add to this issue, my anvil has no markings of any kind that I can find anywhere on it. Anyways, point being that I'm not sure what to do with this beastie or who to believe. Not that it matters right now as I can neither afford to drive over hell's half acre to get coal nor to install a gas forge at the moment, and I'm getting a mite tired of charcoal.

-Rust

Have you seen the info on the "Ron Reil " type propane burners ? A small to medium forge can be made for under two hundred bucks ... I made two burners for less than twenty . Nice ones too , with chokes , nicely machined throat , they work very well . Might get around to the forge one of these days .

Ive a rather beat up old Hay-Budden, 36" long from tip of horn to heel, that someone had welded the top on in a couple places with regular rod. I didnt have to mark the soft spots..they were found in use......

Gunner

Nah, I can procrastinate longer than that. I was going to reply hours ago!:)

If the face only has a few rough spots or divots, just find the smooth spots and use those areas. I think you'll find you eventually tend to use only a small part of the face for most of your forging.

A pristine anvil face is not necessary for most work and for work that requires it you can just put the work on a smooth spot.

I worked for years on an old Mousehole that had a separated face for about 4 inches from the heel. Had no problems working on the good spots. That anvil is still in service part time to Saint Phlip.

BTW, A little swayback is a Good Thing. Even black hot steel often tends to spring back a bit when struck: Cooler steel is even worse. Some swayback lets you allow for that when straightening a piece.

Besides, it's a sign of long and honorable service. :)

"Snag" wrote in news:MVmQg.7223$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews2.bellsouth.net:

I was building a Riel burner, but at some point I seem to have mislaid the difficult-to-find reducer I'd machined up for it. And I never did figure out quite how to construct the flare without some heavy duty machine shop goodies at my disposal. I suppose, though, that it's one more project I ought to scrape back together and get done. Even for my jewellery work, it'd be nice to have a kiln for bulk soldering and a foundry for making ingots. I'll see about this once I recover a little from my latest finished project - vasectomy. Owie.

-Rust

Just how deep are the dings? Have you considered taking the anvil to a machine shop and having the face decked flat? Carbides will go through even hardface like a hot knife through butter. This is a cold operation with loads of coolant applied to the tool, and shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes on the machine. Auto machine shops deck cylinder heads and blocks every day, so an anvil shouldn't pose an 'overload the machine' situation.

Charly

I agree with Mr Bastard, a machine shop can do wonders for an anvil, if however the indents are too great then you might have to attach a new face.

I was looking into a cheap way of doing this, by forging a custom saddle out of 10 mm spring steel, heat treating it, and screwing it on (you could weld it on, but it's easier to make a new saddle later if the need arises).

Only do this if there are no other option.

Regards Charles

Hey Rust,

The reducer will be a royal pain unless you go for a galvanised one (which is okay as this part shouldn't get hot enough to make the zinc come off).

I found a pipe connector and a piece of stainless exhaust pipe makes a nice flare. Once the pipe connector is ground to a force fit inside the ss exhaust pipe it can screw on and off the burner tube. I don't seem to have an email address for you if you could supply one I can send you a pic.

A vasectomy project? Was that DIY? I had my gall bladder out on Wednesday, and that's owie enough for me... can't imagine that much pain to the boyz.

Regards Charles

BTDT , over twenty years ago . I still remember the pain ...

There's somebody selling the flares , but a bit pricey , I thought . I machined and welded stock pipe fittings , but also have one that a friend built , looks rougher , but functions just as well . I'm just more anal than he is ... I also saw in a link related to one of the Reil Burner sites a small forge/kiln that was made from like 10 or 12 firebricks and some scrap angle irons . Less than fifty for the brick , and free angle if you watch the curb ... I see a couple of old bed frames a month around my neighborhood .

An anvil should be cast iron.

- Regards Gordie

Chilla wrote in news:45132a4b$0$5108$ snipped-for-privacy@news.optusnet.com.au:

Oh, thanks. The address is snipped-for-privacy@bmts.com. I'll see what I can find for galvanized reducers. It's what I was working with before, but I think it was the last one in town by the look of it. Surely there's some more by now. I hope.

It's not supposed to be particularly painful, but I don't think the freezing really took. Four snips, and each one of them is kinda burned into my mind right now. Trying to wash the memory out.

The face should be better than that, so not all of it should be cast iron.

Regards Charles

"Snag" wrote in news:%RFQg.12674$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews4.bellsouth.net:

Yeah, I'm thinking I can put this together if I just launch myself at it.

-Rust

NONE of it should be cast iron if it is to be worth having around!

WROUGHT iron! It should be wrought iron. Wrought is a way different animal from cast iron.

Cast iron anvils are dead under the hammer, cast steel, not.

The typical construction of an anvil like a Peter Wright was for the base and horn to be forge welded together with a higher carbon steel plate on the top.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Hi Trevor,

As long as the face is good the rest just needs to have weight, sure a wrought iron body & horn would be great... if you can get the wrought iron in the first place. So cast iron would work, but it wouldn't be the best anvil around.

I was discussing the virtues of anvils with a couple of engineering and fabrication teachers recently, and asked the "casters" question.

"Could I cast an anvil out of bronze, but have a face made from spring steel?"

The answer was "Yes that would work really well".

An anvil can even be made from granite (although personally I wouldn't use one made from rock).

Again cat skinning can be done many ways ;-)

Regards Charles P.S. I have a few chunks of wrought iron... just got to decide what to do with them :-)

Just replying to the assertion that the anvil should be made of cast iron, is all. PW did not go to the trouble of pointing out that their goods were of "Solid Wrought" construction without having an inkling that there was a difference.

Bronze and spring steel, eh? I wonder if there would be problens with separation of the plate on the face with work.

I have heard from a few guys that the Vulcan cast anvils were sometimes reasonable to work on, and I suspect that they may have been a bit closer to the steel side of the mix, coming out of their cupola, making for a bit better action, though my supposition is grounded only in supposition. :-)

I know that there are re-creators that do Viking era smithing on rocks chosen for their anvilness. And I did see a 12 by 18 by 24 inches granite surface plate go through a surplus website a while back.... :-)

It pains me, most days, to have to walk past a 275 or so pound Peddinghaus (spelling?) at work. Pristine. Unused. Never gonna be either.... :-( Taking up space, and occasionally used to prop open a door.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Hi Trevor,

That's cool, I like to go into details a bit.

We were discussing how to attach the bronze body to the steel face, and figured that a key forged into the steel plate could lock into the bronze body. I suggested heavy screws (again like a semi permanent saddle).

I'm waiting for an auction, before I attempt this, 'cause if I buy a good anvil I wont have to make one ;-)

Not sure about Vulcan anvils, I'm sure there's some info on the net somewhere.

Wayne Goddard uses a granite surface on occasion, although I think it's only for light forging jobs. You'd definitely want to wear eye protection (well you should anyway) with rock chips flying off.

What??? Make an offer... it's a shame for that anvil to go to waste.

Regards Charles