[TheForge] Free at Last!

[Peter Hirst]

Good God Almighty, the Stake is Free at Last.

After taking in all your posts here, and using a mostly well-planned 
approach, I spent the last four hours in the shop and am very happy to 
report that what rust and simple machines had joined, man hath torn asunder. 
After soaking the assembled stake anvil and swage block in PB Blaster for a 
week (1/2 a can) I was prepared to go the red-heat, 10lb sledge and drift 
route.  I prepared by cranking up my wood stove in my cold shop (20 F this 
morning) and hitting both sides of the joint with PB Blaster.  When the 
block got to an estimated 150 F, I took a wire brush to the joint  on both 
sides of the block and made an important discovery.  After the PB and wire 
brush removed a good 1/4 inch of rust and sludge, it revealed that this was 
not a 2 " stake in a 2" hole, but a 1 3/4" stake in a 2" hole, with wedges 
driven in on 2 sides, flush with the surface of the block.  This changes 
everything, I thought, since I could destructively remove the wedges, 
something I did not want to do with either the block or the stake itself.  I 
could see that one of the wedges was well-worn and deeply grained wrought 
iron, while the other appeared to be mild steel.

I immediately attacked the iron wedge with a rectangular drift 1/4" thick 
and a 4-lb drill hammer.  It crumbled before this onslaught, and soon I had 
a 1/4" slot right through the swage hole, completely clearing one entire 
embedded face of the stake.  Elapsed time about 1/2 hour.

Applying the drift to the second  wedge, the first blow felt like a broken 
bat foul ball on a very cold day.  This one was not going to be so easy.  I 
took the wire brush to it a little more to see if I could see better what I 
was dealing with, and it slowly brightened to a light grey satiny surface. 
Uh-oh.  I then took a 1/4" high speed steel drill to the end of the wedge, 
and while it didn't exacly skip off, it sure didnt bite, either,  This stuff 
was almost as hard as the drift I was hitting it with, which was made from 
an old file.  This wasnt going to be so easy.  elapsed time, 1 hour.

I still had that one face free however, and 1/4" of space on one face all 
the way through the hole.  Surely I could
use that the  get a little movement going between the still tightly wedged 
faces.  More PB and alternate series of blows on opposite sides of the 
shank, parallel with the wedged faces.  I figured if I could use leverage 
and sheer power to rotate the shaft even a degree or two, that woul be 
enough to break the rust on the wedged faces, and the rest would be easy. 
Using the 10 pounder, 10 blows to a side, I could get the wedged faces to 
rotate about 2 degrees with repect to each other, but no more.  Elapsed 
time, 1 1/2 hrs.

Having got this much lateral movement aolong the tightly wedged faces, I 
figured the basic rust bond was broken, and now its time to drift the stake 
frm the bottom of the block.  I have a beautiful old wrought iron drift, 
about 1" square at the business end and about 2" across the head.  Best 
thing I could think of to apply a blow to the stick end of the stake without 
risking peening it into the block.  50 or so blows and many checks and 
measurements later, the stake had not budged in the hole.  Elapsed time, 
2hrs.

More PB.  ANd more lateral movement.  Instead of trying to rock the shaft 
laterally in the hole, I starting applying lateral blows with the 10 pounder 
and the iron drift right at the base of the stake, right up against the 
swage block.  20 or so blows  finally opened up a hairline gap. 20 or so on 
the other side closed it back up again.  ANd so on for 10 or so sets.  I was 
now moving the stake laterally back and forth across the wedged faces maybe 
100th of an inch.  Another 10 sets and it was moving maybe 1/50th.  More PB 
and another attempt at drifting it out.  Nothing.  Elapsed time, 2 1/2 hrs.

What was going on?  The stake was clearly moving laterally in the hole but 
would not budge vertically.  I was beginning to suspect that there was 
something very peculiar about the wedge.  Could someone have used a piece of 
a file for this thing?

More PB, and back to the lateral movement with the sledge hammer.  In 
another 20 minutes or so, each 2 or three lateral blowls with the 10 pounder 
would slide the base of the stake sideways the full 1/4 inch of slack in the 
hole.  At this point I could get about 4 or 5 degrees of rotation between 
the wedged faces with alternating blows oth the end of the stake farthest 
from the block.  After 10 or so cycles of this, I could rock the stake back 
and forth about 10 degrees by hand.  Even with more PB, it still took 10 
good blows with the heavy sledge to finally drift the stake free from the 
bottom of the anvil.  As it slid out, the wedge didnt fall free, but 
remained in place.

Also, as it finally slid free I noticed that the two parallel surfaces that 
had been hard against the wedge and the  against the inside of the block 
WERE BONE DRY!!  Those two surfaces had been touched by not a a DROP of the 
1/2 can of  penetrant I had applied.  The other 2 surfaces, that had been 
wedged with the iron wedge, were soaked with the stuff.  But even when 
freed, these two surfaces that had been wedged so tightly were basically dry 
rust with a little bright metal shining through.  Elapsed time, 3hrs, 10 
min.  Elapsed energy:  probably 4-500 blows with the 10 pounder and twice 
number that with the drill hammer.

I went back to the swage block to remove the wedge, and sure enough, there 
it was, the telltale pattern of a bastard cut file,  very  coarse and deep, 
like a a farriers rasp.  But on one side only, the side that contacted the 
inside of the swage block.  The other face, which contacted the shank of the 
stake, had been ground smooth, and was as noted, bone dry.  So there it was. 
A previous owner had mounted this thing with a soft iron wedge on one face 
and a piece of file on the other.  God knows what the result would have been 
if both wedges had been files.

Anyway, I now have beatifully separate stake anvil and swage block.  The 
anvil is not as heavy as I had thougt: only about 60 lbs.  It measures 27" 
high and 29" tip to tip.  The face is about 3x 6" and the octagonal shank is 
about 3" in diameter at the base, where its necked down to the 1 3/4 " 
stake.   The block is much heavier than I thought at over 200 lbs.  It was 
once heavier, but the years of use as an anvil base, obvously on bare dirt, 
rusted away significant voids on the bottom side.  It is 5" thick in the 
sound sections, however, so there's plenty of mass left there to dress up 
right.

I am alittle torn about whether to dress the anvil.  Its obviously very old 
and I certainly won't touch anything but the working surfaces, and some 
deformations at the ends of the horns.  I would like to grind and polish the 
face and horns, and use it for fine work.  What do you think?  Should I 
leave it as is or dress it up?

Thanks to everyone for all of their input on freeing the stake.  The time 
and attention really paid off.  I hope this will be useful to others 
sometime.  I think I used a little bit of most everyones suggestions, and I 
would be glad to post pics when I can .

Thanks again, everyone.

Peter Hirst