Glad you enjoy the haphazard serendipities that guide me through these projects :D

I was gonna say Orlando Bloom, lol~!

I think that's his son he even looks like him

Much metal, very meta, wow! :D

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eamGi7mIr5zRkqs.html

It's a secret! Also ALL of that dust was from just one small part of the cutting and grinding on the anvil. That floor was clean directly before XD

@@BennettTheSmith Secrets are fun! (whispers) but what if you gave us a sneak preview though

@@zoyastorykeeper If he tells you the secret, then he has to kill you. It's the rules!

Thanks! :) I am proud of it. It might not be the best ever, but I've made a Bat'leth, an axe, and a whole bunch of knives on it. It'll do for now :D

@@BennettTheSmith Did you make videos?

@@stokeburner6730 Sure did! I'm editing the last of the Axe videos as I type this. The Bat'leth is from a few years ago, so the video isn't as good as my new stuff, but still pretty cool. I also have a pair of videos on a knife from Destiny.

Thanks! Once I thought of a way to do the heat treat, I knew I had to try it. I slowed down making videos a bit because I’m spending all my time trying to make enough to pay the bills. But I’m getting there!

@@BennettTheSmith I understand it's tough to keep a nice balance, either way was a great video.

Thank you! It’s my pleasure.

It worked very well! Just remember to do a dry run if you’re getting things hot. That helped us get the chains adjusted correctly.

I did the same thing...I spent 160 dollars on steel...30 dollars on electrodes and maybe 40 dollars on cutting discs. It was definitely worth it.

@@eduardosampoia5480 Hahaha it adds up fast! I have spent(so far) 200$ on mild steel(for the body) 50$ on a forklift tine(for the face) I'm currently on my third 10lb box of 6011 electrodes still on my first box of 7018. It's been a wild ride to put it lightly. Lol

@@dakota-joel7590 you should put up a link ...do you have a video?

Thanks! I'm just worried about any hidden stress cracks that may have already been in the railroad track pieces when I got them.... but I'm sure it'll be fiiiiine...

Quite possibly, yes. For a small piece of either steel I would default to oil. Based on when the big crack happened though, I probably could have prevented it by better normalizing or by removing the anvil from the water and tempering back much sooner. But all the cracks were far from the face so welding fixed everything :D

@@BennettTheSmith No oil hardening, you should not dip it in a bucket, just prepare water and pour on face of the anvil, when bucket get empty then cooling it down with a water hose. When you put anvil in a bucket full of water anvil create steam on surface and tenst to not cooling that rapidly. Pouring on it breaks that steam surface,and fresh, cold water cools metal rapidly faster. Im sorry for spealing english is not my mother leangue. I made 86 kg anvil, i had smaller crack. If you planing to make another one, go to the big metal scrap yard and find big chunk. Buy steel metal plate and weld on top, and buy round stock for lathe (better quality steel, more harder) and shape it with a angle grinder. Use a stick welder with electrodes that contain chromium (chrom allows to weld high carbon steel to mild steel). Preheat when welding.

Ivan Nekic that’s all very good advice. If I were to make another, I would likely do it differently. Your English is much better than my 2nd language :) The term used to refer to the steam is a “steam jacket”. You’re right, it does insulate the metal. In this case, I still got enough hardness, but dumping water over it definitely would have been better. What sucks is my state doesn’t have big scrap yards you can buy from. All the yards in Maryland don’t want to deal with liability I guess? So I’m trying to find companies that work with metal that might sell me off cuts.

@@ivannekic1722 A very valid point.

@@BennettTheSmith At the end it all comes to some heavy steel that you can pound on. I score great deal yestrday, got 214 kg anvil for 2200 kuna (Croatia value) is something arround 330 USD and its in good condition. I was watching local advertisment for 3 years and finnally scored one! :))

I still use this anvil. It’s got excellent rebound. :D

I'm glad seeing my process (and mistakes!) is helping to inform your plan, I couldn't hope for more. I'm a little confused though, do you mean you're going to forge weld the top plate on . . . after hardening it? Hardening a 1"+ thick plate before arc welding it on would preserve the hardness and temper easily, but the heat of forge welding would completely undo any prior heat treat. Or am I not quite getting what you meant?

@@BennettTheSmith No, your right, I guess I'll have rethink my process, thanks.

Yep! Especially the "slowing down and rounding up helpers instead of trying to do it all yourself on a whim" lesson. I had plans for a lever thingy to lift the anvil all by myself. That would have been dumb.

Years later, it's still solid and in good shape. :)

Thanks!

I know that feeling. I've been fixing up a bunch of different tools in the past few weeks and it is just so satisfying to fix something PROPERLY and not just "for now cause I'm in a hurry".

A log would have been better than the stand before I added the big plate of steel. I have a few pieces of wood I could use, but this table is actually more rigid and massive than a stump. It makes a significant difference as it is very heavy and my anvil is relatively light. I appreciate the thought, though!

@@BennettTheSmith you remind me so much of my old shop teacher lol

But behold frakenanvil!!

I’ve seen that as well. While I agree that would be optimal, this method was good enough to get a good enough quench. What I really should have done was harden the face before welding to the track. At 2.5” thick, I could easily have preheated and welded without ruining the temper and it would have been much easier to quench harden.

It's worked beautifully and I was able to use it in each iteration over four years, only spending a little money at a time. The sound of popping tac welds is physics' way of telling me to PREHEAT BETTER! :D

I know what you mean about using the rail on end. I’ve recommended that to many. You can point people at videos of people using Viking style post anvils for technique reference. :) I can recommend using a solid slave of forklift tine for the top. It’s thick enough you don’t really need to worry about hardenable weld material. And it’s about the right width for an anvil.

Ask your librarian to inter library loan the book 'anvils of america' Or buy it for $ 100

Thanks! How is yours holding up?

@@BennettTheSmith fantástico e hecho muchos trabajos , como hobby esta bien !kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rKujiK9emMC6lH0.html , saludos desde argentina

Possible indeed, though that money was spent over several years and I had the anvil to use at each stage of upgrade. If I had the money all at once back when I started and knew I’d stick with it, I would have bought one. I’ve been meaning to do a follow up actually, it’s still going strong and I finally did a ball bearing test to check the hardness and rebound. I was quite pleased with the results :D

... ouch o.o

Bennett Marschner I can share a video of you want! Our security cameras caught it

Braxton Nelson how do people miss pronounce it I’ve never heard it said any other way?

@@mercury6800 So many people say Cal-vary as opposed to Cav-alry.

Braxton Nelson ok that’s illegal

I’m curious why you would say that. Large objects are often quenched in water or very fast quenching oil due to the difficulty of getting it to cool fast enough. The square cube law is not always our friend :P Most of the cracking I saw seemed to be from stress induced in the railroad track from when it was being used to carry trains. Among other things the presence of rust in the cracks indicated that. The major crack was preventable though. The mistake was allowing it to stay in the water far too long. Often, heat treating instructions will say to begin tempering directly after a quench to relieve stresses as quickly as possible. Upon later examinations, you could see the heel of the anvil pulled down a little - showing that the forklift metal was pulling against the center web of the train track REALLY hard. If I had pulled that out and tempered it back 5 minutes sooner...ah well I’m glad you enjoyed it, though I wouldn’t go on record saying this saved me any money! :P

Not sure what you think I did, but I followed code for an over-breakered outlet (specifically intended for things like welders) Everything between the box and the arc, except the welder itself, is rated for 30amps+. So the welder could theoretically get fried, but it shouldn’t be pulling that much in any case.

*snort* Why not? And yeah, It was a lot of work, but also absolutely worth it for me. That anvil is still kicking and has significantly better rebound than my other, larger, professionally manufactured anvil - which only has a thin hardened plate on the face. If all you want do is just forge knives and you've got the money, sure, buy an anvil! But this taught me so much about welding, machining, heat treatment, etc.

Quenching in oil probably would not have cooled the steel quickly enough to harden it. As I’ve mentioned to several other folks, the issue was not moving to the tempering stage fast enough. Notice that the crack occurred after several minutes after it had been sitting in the water. This likely indicates that the crack that occurred could only have been avoided by tempering. As the stress was caused by the shapes and different alloys of the two pieces pulling against each other. Any quenching media that cooled the anvil fast enough to harden it would have produced the same stresses between the two parts. Even the striking face doesn’t /need/ to be hardened. Only relatively modern anvils have hard faces. As a fellow smith once said, all the great works of smithing were done on soft anvils. But sure, I could have tried to just quench the top part, certainly the web of the RR track base didn’t need to be hard.

Yep! But worth it :D

draznin ; what in the devil would you take an anvil camping for ????

shawbros lmao

Thanks, Having the right terminology is helpful. “Walking the cup” is usually a TiG welding thing, using it here is probably inaccurate of me. I definitely need more practice, a welder I ain’t. Fortunately the crack was in the web of the rail track, far away from the hardened face. So super easy to fix. And shows that the welds were strong enough to tear a crack in the thinner metal elsewhere. I’m kinda pleased with that in hindsight.

It’s the worst. Takes a 5 minute operation and turns it into an hour.

Along with lots more pre heating. You need to have someone heating it while you weld

Put your forge burner on the other side while you weld steel that thick

I'd also suggest getting a stick weld its alot more effective and cheaper nice job tho

Just like with knives etc, tempering back the hardness reduces how brittle/increases the toughness of the steel. Anvils commonly have a hardened face, to increase wear resistance and the amount of energy dispersed in the work piece. It’s a balancing act of getting the best performance but also best durability you can. And yes striking the anvil, especially on the edge, can be bad. Just look at any old antique anvils and you’ll see chipped out edges all over.

Simply because the whole process was done in multiple steps over many months. The quenched and tempered version was stage three and then four months later I added the extra weight to the sides to reach stage four. Also, the tempering temperature is pretty close to the pre-heat temperature, so it would more or less be tempering anyway.

Larger pieces of steel can be water quenched no problem and these alloys in particular can be water quenched. What cause the crack was the stress from the two different alloys pulling against each other. If I had pulled the anvil sooner and went right into tempering, it probably would not have cracked. But it was fine, the crack wasn’t on the face of the anvil, so it was easy to fix :)

Good thought, But my machine has an internal sensor that puts it into cool down mode if I run it too long. I was blowing the breaker within a minute of starting from cold at times. From what I have read about this specific machine it is likely a defect in the electronics. Klutch is sold through Northern Tool and has a really Good return policy for defective products, but since I had a 30amp circuit and that works fine.... *shrug*

Yep. Problem is the pretty ones are right next to the ugly ones. So even the pretty one end up looking meh because the overall is inconsistent. Ah well. They’re holding solid and that’s what matters most :)

That's what they say but sometimes You need to pull mig too

Mmmm, not really. It's much harder to mill a hardy hole through a single big block and much harder to heat treat as well. Someone else might be better off going with a big chunk of steel, for sure! But you'd be surprised how difficult it is to get a big chunk of steel around where I live. No scraps yards you can buy from for hundreds of miles unfortunately. Glad you enjoyed it :)

Heh, so I have discovered :P. Thanks!

@@BennettTheSmith hi , good luck , that is a real tuff job trying to weld all of that together without cracking . i have a few questions about your welding setup if you could answer them please ? how much amperage is your welder rated for ? what brand is your welder ? what gas or combination of gasses are you using ? what diameter welding wire are you using ? what brand is your electric panel ? the breaker in your panel is it a magnetic breaker or a thermal breaker or a dual model thermal and magnetic ???? nice work building your own anvil !!!!

My welder isn't nice enough to give actual numbers on the dial, but it was basically the maximum setting. Theoretically it will output ~90amps at that setting.

Well it depends, I suppose. If you achieve a REALLY hard face then yes. You want the anvil to be tough and resist chopping and cracking. The residual heat in such a large mass is going to do a lot of tempering work. The preheating I did for the welding after the quench completed the tempering. Even though I didn’t get a super hard face, it can still be beneficial for stress relief in the metal

Stop it from cracking although hard it's very brittle

Also you really need it to be a lower hardness than any hammer or other striking tool you’re likely to use. Otherwise, any direct blows between a striking tool and a harder anvil face are likely to result in damage to your striking tools at best, or at worst, your striking tool shattering with the force of a small explosion and burying a collection of hardened steel shrapnel into various parts of your face and body.

Interesting info, I respect your experience and have no doubt those are the optimum guidelines. I do have some additional observations tho: 1: definitely agree. Don’t remember if I showed it, but there were partial cracks all through the horn. I’ve since repaired them and added a hardened bit of 1040 to the end to extend the horn. Only the last two inches is still hard, but that’s ok. 2: makes sense. I definitely had trouble with tacks popping off until I preheated higher, close to 450 degrees. However all the welds did hold strong! 3: didn’t have shop air at the time. But also I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the water quench exactly. The shape of the crack combined with a slight downwards arcing of the heel show it was the very thick face of the anvil pulling against the web as they cooled at different rates pulled the metal apart. Better normalization and a more even heat by the time it hit the water would have helped. But I think beefing up the web with the additional plates I added later would have helped it be stronger and cool at a more similar rate. Again not disputing your expertise, just pointing out the additional nuance. Thanks for the info!

@@BennettTheSmith just here to help! Regardless, you made a sick ass anvil my friend! Keep that smashing that baby!