[TheForge] chinese ASOs

Sat Mar 29 19:30:04 2003

I can't disagree with anything you say Chuck except regarding the brazed
joint.

True, there's going to be plenty of prep work and if I could get suitable
steel locally I'd go a different route. Heck if there was much chance of
finding a decent anvil locally I wouldn't mess with making one at all. The
last one I found was in N. Dakota,  hauled it home myself and still paid
$3/lb. for a 200 lb. Trenton in "decent" shape.

Heat treating is indeed a touchy process under good conditions and we'll
have to take special care to make sure both the process is safe and the
final produce won't chip dangerously. If it dings easy it'll be a bummer but
not dangerous.

The braze on the other hand is unlikely to have voids if we do the prep work
properly and maintain good fire control. It'll be a good exercise in
matching faces for Richard if nothing else. I've told him about
smoking/dusting faces for matching but nothing's like practice. Once the
faces are matched and polished to a fine degree, the fluxed brass will sweat
like solder.

How well it'll hold up in use is something I think we will all be interested
in finding out.

Upon reconsidering though, I think we'll just let the thing air cool without
the quench. Grader blade may be plenty hard as cooled and need no further
heat treatment. This is something I can test safely and will also be a good
experience for Richard. If we have to build another fire to heat treat it, I
live on 30 acres of forested land.

There's no argument about this being a practical exercise, for the time
it'll take I could get a part time job and just buy another anvil. I could
also go to Pier 1 and buy some cool looking "rod" iron and forget about
anvils altogether. . . . . .  Yeah  RIGHT! <grin>

Thanks for the comments. I'd rather have mistakes, misconceptions, etc.
pointed out here on a public forum for us all to learn from than learn from
a catastrophic failure. I've made several changes in my plans for this
little experiment based on the comments made here.

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Robinson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] chinese ASOs

> As a maker of  specialized blade smithing anvils, I've looked at and
tested
> a lot of anvils in the past 15 years.
> One of the main reasons that most new anvils being commercially
manufactured
> today are cast, is because it is so hard to get  perfect complete fusion
> welds of anvils made from 2 or more pieces of metal.
> The older forged anvils can vary considerably in hammer rebound
(lively -to-
> dead) depending on how successfully the makers controlled the welding
> process. It was a real art, especially considering the lack of
sophisticated
> techniques available in the old days.
> The most critical factor in hammer rebound, assuming that you have no
metal
> voids or bad welds, is the mass of metal directly under the spot you are
> hammering. The vibrational harmonics of the metal are seriously degraded
if
> the metal has these imperfections, and I suspect that a brased joint woud
> also degrade the VH.
> To take  a questionable ASO casting and put a lot of time into it is a
waste
> of time. A person would be better off investing the time using a chunk of
> structural steel and sculpting it to shape with a cutting torch and side
> grinder, and hardening it in Gunther's super quench. (GSQ can only be
safely
> used for  simple medium carbon steels of less than >50 points of Carbon).
> I make my anvils from 1340  double melt Crucible steel and harden the face
> in GSQ.
> I try to harden my anvil faces to between RC 45- RC 50.  Much softer, and
> the face dings up too easily, Much harder and the edges tend to chip.
> If you attempt to harden any large mass of tool steel you had better check
> out the heat treating specs for it in the manufactures spec sheets or "The
> Heat Treaters  Guide".
> Chuck
>