[TheForge] To ring or not to ring[was anvil i d]

[Demon Buddha]

John Husvar wrote:
> 
> 
> On 4/28/06 8:28 AM, "Bruce Freeman" <FREEMAB at pt.fdah.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Mikey,
>>
>>First, a disclaimer.  I'm not a metalurgist and I've never cast iron.
>>I have only read about cast iron and iron casting.
>>
>>That said, no, reheating and cooling would in no way compare to using a
>>chill in the mold.  The idea of a chill is that the crystallization from
>>the molten iron is different at a chill than elsewhere.  And THAT's
>>about the only positive statement I can make about it.
>>
>>My suggestion is polish up the face of the Chinese ASO and give it a
>>go.  If it's not hard enough to be useful, BRAZE a plate to the
>>surface.
> 
> 
> Hmmm. Now that's an idea. I wonder how hard it would be to heat an anvil and
> plate enough to fully braze a plate onto the anvil, then continuously quench
> the plate as the assembly cooled.

	It will take a lot of heat to do this.  You can do it if you have a 
really large rosebud and plenty of gas.  I think this sort of braze 
would be best accomplished by two people.  Start heating the anvil and 
as it comes up to dull red or low cherry, start up on the plate.  Use 
the strongest, most shock resisting solder you can get.  The plate and 
the anvil should mate very closely.  If you can place each on a surface 
grinder, I would say do it. Do your initial heating (up to dull red) or 
the anvil and the plate SLOWLY to prevent warping of the surfaces.  A 
slow preheat of the anvil in a wood fire to, say, 600 or 800 degrees (if 
you can get it to 800) would also be a good idea.

I would finely divide the solder and tin each surface as minimally as 
possible.  When that is done, bring each to the upper reasonable heat 
range and then place the plate atop the anvil.  You may not have a whole 
lot of time to adjust the positioning, so perhaps a third and fourth 
person holding the torches would be a good investment in beer while you 
and your second position the plate.  Once it's where you want it, remove 
all heat and let the anvil air cool.  Use an air hardening grade of 
steel in the face plate and once the solder has reached solidus, a 
gentle air blast on the face should get you a fine hard face without 
stressing the soldered joint excessively.  To that end, I'm wondering if 
finely scoring the face of the plate (no more than perhaps .003" or so) 
in a grid-like pattern would also help with stress in the joint.  The 
idea is to allow the non-scored area to make more intimate contact with 
the iron body to absorb the bulk of the energy from hammering.  The 
threads of thicker solder would not be as stressed because they are not 
being as directly impacted.  You could take an 18-8 line graver and do a 
pattern all over the mating surface of the anvil, basically just 
scratching the surface to make the recesses.  I don't know if it would 
have the desired effect, but it seems that any area not undergoing the 
more direct impact would perhaps have a longer service life.
> 
> Maybe at that point it'd just be better to forge weld the plate on and
> forget the brazing. Seems to be what the anvil workshops at NJBA used to do.

	We didn't forge weld the plates on.  We ran hard face over and into the 
ground out areas where the damage had been, then reground the faces.  I 
recall Peter Ross once making the comment that he wasn't sure that 
anyone on the planet had the knowledge today to do welds that large. 
Indeed, that would be a great undertaking.  Just standing next to a 100# 
or larger chunk of iron at welding temperature would be a profound 
attention- getter.  I've brought 10 pound pieces up to that point and 
have had a hard time not getting burned from the radiating heat.
> 
> Of course, one could just save up his pennies and nickels and buy an anvil,
> but that might take half the fun out of it. :)

	Well, there you go. :)

I was wondering if the Fisher process would be worth resurrecting...  At 
least for fun, anyhow.