[TheForge] Free at Last!

Wed Jan 23 18:27:49 EST 2008

Yep:  I'm gonna do a whole setup of the process, and I'll get closups if I 
can.  Now that everything is in pieces, I can reconstruct the whole process.

PGH
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GRAF" <adveniam at att.net>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Free at Last!

> 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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