[TheForge] Free at Last!

[GRAF]

Can you put a photo up somewhere ?

Mike Graf

Peter Hirst wrote:
> 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
>
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