All,
I've read a reasonable handful of discussions of welding up an anvil out of raw material, and very few of them seem to follow what my Lincoln "Metals and How to Weld Them" book would call good practices, so I'm hoping to get some advice here on what the right procedure/design would be to do the project I want to do...
A year or so ago, I bought a giant block of steel from a local scrap yard, 350#, 8"x4"x30". I suspect it's something in the neighborhood of 1018 cold rolled, and was likely machined flat at some point by a previous owner. I also have a number of large rounds, from 4" up to about 6.5", most more than long enough to make an anvil horn, most also suspected of being mild hot or cold rolled. In total, well north of 450# of material to make a great beast of an anvil, and all acquired at a paltry $0.18/#. I would also probably go to the local steel supplier (Alro for me) and pick up some kind of tool steel for the top plate, which while up there at $1.99/# or more, is still much cheaper than the ballpark $6/# that I see old anvils going for around here. My rough design would be to attempt a fairly faithful London pattern shape. I would probably bandsaw a fair bit off of the end of the large rectangular block to make the waist, potentially in a couple of pieces, with welds from the meat of the anvil to the waist, from the waist to a foot, from the meat to the horn, and a final weld from the tool steel striking plate to the top.
I have a bandsaw big enough to do that cutting, a mill to square everything up afterward and rotary fixtures to do quite a lot of the shaping for the horn in advance.
My main question for this forum is this: when welding steel that thick (4"x8" cross section) in a lamination for the purposes of making an anvil, what are the particulars of the weld? How deep should I vee out? Root and a couple of cover passes? Do I need to preheat the large pieces to 400~500* and allow the whole thing to cool slowly to avoid weld cracking? I'd probably use a large AC arc welder, so what rod should I be using for 1018 to tool steel? Is there a tool steel that will be easier to weld and thus more desirable?
I've done a few welding classes at the local community college and a reasonable amount of repair welding, so I'm not afraid of sticking metal together, but I've never worked on something that heavy before.
Thanks,
Will
I've read a reasonable handful of discussions of welding up an anvil out of raw material, and very few of them seem to follow what my Lincoln "Metals and How to Weld Them" book would call good practices, so I'm hoping to get some advice here on what the right procedure/design would be to do the project I want to do...
A year or so ago, I bought a giant block of steel from a local scrap yard, 350#, 8"x4"x30". I suspect it's something in the neighborhood of 1018 cold rolled, and was likely machined flat at some point by a previous owner. I also have a number of large rounds, from 4" up to about 6.5", most more than long enough to make an anvil horn, most also suspected of being mild hot or cold rolled. In total, well north of 450# of material to make a great beast of an anvil, and all acquired at a paltry $0.18/#. I would also probably go to the local steel supplier (Alro for me) and pick up some kind of tool steel for the top plate, which while up there at $1.99/# or more, is still much cheaper than the ballpark $6/# that I see old anvils going for around here. My rough design would be to attempt a fairly faithful London pattern shape. I would probably bandsaw a fair bit off of the end of the large rectangular block to make the waist, potentially in a couple of pieces, with welds from the meat of the anvil to the waist, from the waist to a foot, from the meat to the horn, and a final weld from the tool steel striking plate to the top.
I have a bandsaw big enough to do that cutting, a mill to square everything up afterward and rotary fixtures to do quite a lot of the shaping for the horn in advance.
My main question for this forum is this: when welding steel that thick (4"x8" cross section) in a lamination for the purposes of making an anvil, what are the particulars of the weld? How deep should I vee out? Root and a couple of cover passes? Do I need to preheat the large pieces to 400~500* and allow the whole thing to cool slowly to avoid weld cracking? I'd probably use a large AC arc welder, so what rod should I be using for 1018 to tool steel? Is there a tool steel that will be easier to weld and thus more desirable?
I've done a few welding classes at the local community college and a reasonable amount of repair welding, so I'm not afraid of sticking metal together, but I've never worked on something that heavy before.
Thanks,
Will