[TheForge] Anvil repair workshop in NJ

[peter fels & phoebe palmer]

  Hi Andy:
It's great that you have had such success. Lots of anvils have been 
beaten to uselessness and would benefit from your attentions, doubtless.
But i've also seen usable anvils that only suffered from some edge 
chipping and some face dings "repaired"...and that's what i'm cautioning 
about.
I'm sure most of us have seen anvils that were repaired bu arc welding, 
where,  painfully large chunks have cracked off years later.
I did a very careful job of prep on my 240#er. Ground the cracks all the 
way out and ground  all the surfaces to be welded. Preheated to exact 
temperature and used the right rod, peining every bead right after it 
was laid. Reheated when needed and watched the interpass temps. Cooled 
it all slowly.
Now, about 10 years later i'm just beginning to see some micro-cracking 
in the HAZ of some of the edge repairs, where it's most heavily used. 
Admittedly, i'm kinda uncoordinated and miss hammer blows all too often.
The areas immediately adjacent to the welds ( the HAZ or heat affected 
zone) have areas that are markedly softer that the original " glass 
hard" face.
Even if the weld deposit  is perfect, the HAZ unavoidably,  has a zone 
of coarsened grain structure ( bad) and an adjacent band where the 
original temper is lost.
In the long run( an anvil should last many generations),  that means 
failure under heavy use.

On 10/14/2010 5:55 AM, Andrew Vida wrote:
>
> peter fels&  phoebe palmer wrote:
>>    Be extremely reluctant to weld on an anvil that has any life left in it.
>> Many functional anvils have been ruined that way.
>> The HAZ from any welding bead ruins the temper and grain structure of
>> the adjacent face.
>> In the long run, most welded-on anvils will catastrophically fail under use.
> 	WILL?  Might fail.  Example: my 124# mouse was the guinea pig for the
> NJBA event.  Marshall laid in  beads of several different compositions
> so we could determine which we liked best.  That was about 13 years ago
> and I've worked that anvil much.  It spent at least 2 years in the shop
> at Allaire with all manner of newbies doing all manner of horribly
> unsound things to it.  There is precisely ONE small ding in the edge and
> that was my doing when a rather strong blow went errant.
>
> 	If the job is done correctly, and we've rebuilt probably 100 or more by
> this time (Bruce?), the anvil will be left in better than new condition.
>    We preheat them carefully, even when rod mfr. says it is  not
> necessary, grind out all the edges deeply - chasing cracks pretty far
> into the face, lay the wire in properly, and then grind them (my job,
> mainly) to form.  I have yet to hear of a single failure in any of our
> jobs.  Of course, I'm now in WV and may be somewhat out of that loop.
> I"m thinking I may have to be present for the coming event.
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