[TheForge] Top of a broken anvil

[Jonathan Barnhart]

I'm leaning towards Ron Childers ideas of fixing it.  I Just remembered that I have a friend who is an excellent certified welder(he used to weld for the navy in their shipyards) and could help me get the welds made.  My reasoning for this, is that I think that the weld will last longer and with this sort of fix we can add mass back to the anvil in the form of real steel.  If you look at the anvil building articles on Anvilfire, the basically advise against using concret to make an anvil for important reasons.  So, I'll quote them here: 

"This is a sore subject with the "guru". When anvilfire was only a few months old a fellow wrote off-line about his concrete anvil. It was an old concrete post with a cap attached to it and a wide bar of steel for the work surface. The fellow was so full of himself that I didn't argue the point and said, "It'll work" and then suggested a number of other methods that I indicated were MUCH better. 

The next thing you know the fellow was advertising concrete anvils with steel tops at real anvil prices quoting "the guru" that IT WILL WORK. . . The quote was taken out of context nor did he have my permission to endorse his scheme. We had some heated public discussions about his concrete anvils. 

So, here are the problems. 
Concrete is less than 1/3 as dense as steel. 
Concrete is less than 1/100th the strength of steel. 
Concrete shrinks and loses weight over time. 
Concrete spalls (explodes) when exposed to high heats. 
SO, while filling a hollow box with concrete may seem like a good way to make an anvil it is not. It does not weigh very much unless a LOT of it is involved. The concrete immediately under the steel will start to seperate and crumble fairly soon under heavy use. AND even if it doesn't loosen from use it will eventually shrink and become loose. 

There ARE good points to concrete. It is cheap and easy to use and it deadens noise. There are methods that improve its usefulness if you insist on using it."


So, in conclusion I think that steel and welding is the way to go.  I'll be working out the final details of the project.  So, if anyone can think of anything that hasn't been mentioned yet or a better way of doing something that I'm about to do, please speak up.  When I'm(we're) done fixing it, I'll send out some pics.