[TheForge] Refacing old anvils?

Tue Apr 1 23:37:01 2003

As mentioned by Grant (hi Grant), grind out all the old weld, especially 
any cracks you see.

Can you tell if the anvil is cast or wrought body with a tool steel top? 
What brand is it?

Here's one method that works well (sort of, read on) for wrought 
body/tool steel top anvils like Peter Wrights:
1. Preheat anvil to about 300 degrees. During welding you don't want to 
exceed 400 or you start to temper the hardness on the rest of the face. 
I'm not arguing with Grant's 390 number, this is just the way I heard it.
2. Weld one layer of Stoody 1105 over any exposed body material.
3. Use Stoody 2110 to build up any areas missing a lot of metal (but 
2110 won't stick to wrought body material, thus #2 above).
4. The top layers (between 3 and 4 preferred) should be Stoody 1105.
5. The instructions I got on this said to post heat the anvil to 300 and 
then bury it in vermiculite. I'm not sure I believe that something the 
size of an anvil can air cool fast enough to induce much stress, I don't 
do this.

In your case, Kevin, I think you can skip the 2110 rod entirely. It 
depends somewhat on what size of rod you use, but I would think you 
could fill your hole with four layers of 1105. This is a good thing, as 
2110 runs 1.5 to 2x the price of 1105. I haven't bought any for years, 
but last time 1105 was running about $3.75 per pound (10 pound box). 
Shop around, prices on welding stuff varies a lot. My 1105 is either 
5/32" or 3/16, and I was probably welding at 180 amps DCRP. You will 
need a DC stick welder to use these rods.

There are lots of rods and procedures that will work, this is just one 
of them.

Steve Smith

Kevin wrote:
> I'm a relatively new member to the listserve and I wanted to ask for 
> opinions about making repairs to an anvil face.  I picked up an old 
> anvil about 8-9 years ago that has a pretty large divot in the work 
> face.  The defect is about 2x3 inches and is as deep as 1/2" at one 
> point.  I used the anvil to work smaller projects for about 3 years 
> before I could find another anvil in the area that I could afford.
> 
> At one point I tried to build up the divot using a hard surfacing weld 
> rod, but saw that over time the repair began to develop a lot of cracks 
> and eventually began to chip as I worked the anvil surface.  Over the 
> past month I've been considering making a second attempt at the repair, 
> this time using a low hydrogen weld rod (7018) instead.  The anvil face 
> has a pretty high carbon content (I'm basing this on a spark test) so 
> I'm not sure what kinds of pre- and post-heating procedures I should use 
> in the repair.  In my first attempt I did not try to preheat the 
> surface, and I've heard that this may have been the cause of the 
> cracking.  I've heard that I should preheat the surface to ~350 degrees 
> and maintain this temperature through the weld repair and for 2 to 3 
> hours after I've completed the repair in order to reduce cracking.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone else has had experience in making this type of 
> repair to an anvil face, and if so, I'd appreciate any insight that 
> could be provided.
> 
> Thanks,
> Kevin
> 
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