I bet it will be just fine. You have researched it and you are following your plan. A while back I bought a used, and abused drill press, it was built in 1963 here in Japan by a good manufacturer, but the thing had like 8 coats of paint on it and the "Smile of Shame" on the drill press table was really bad (all the holes drilled into the actual table in a crescent shape). I was told that I could NOT weld it by lots of guys, I was welding with my MIG, 200V CO2 gas shield unit. I did my research and I found out from guys who had actually done it, not just keyboard warriors, that you can do it, it has to be clean clean clean and it has to be warmed up. I ground out the smile of shame a LOT and I heated the table up until it was the right temp, I welded it and after it cooled I ground it flat with a big 6" cup grinding thing on my big 6" angle grinder, it looks great, and in fact most people don't even see the weld unless I point it out to them. Its been ten years and it's just ticky-boo. It looks like your extraction fan is kicking arse! Cheers from Tokyo!

Coming along. Very nice. I was glad to see it over by the exhaust fan.

Good job Jim, your right bicep is going to be real good!! Nice to see you getting the finish you want without damaging the anvil! All the best Graham 🇬🇧🇬🇧

You should have welded 3 strips of 5160 leaf spring! With the bow of the spring up, hold and push down in place with 20ton press as you weld in place! I did Omg the rebound is incredible!

You said something about re heat treating the anvil. Someone I knew a knife maker had a shop fire a few years ago, was able to save their hammers and huge anvils but they had to be re hardened. They built a huge fire on the sore a nearby river i think. Incredible thing to watch.

I have all confidence in the world in Jim.

Mr. Jim so far so good seams like it is working Love it Brother.

It's worth remembering if you do the pad welding your local machine shop can mill the top flat and remachine the hardy hole if needed. Commercial shops stay in business by doing what they're best at and outsourcing where it's not cost-effective to add a machine, process etc.

Morning Jim, have a great Sunday

Evening Jim... you look like a professor in that jacket, or a scientist. I trust you will do a great job on that anvil, especially as particular as you are with everything you work on.

I have faith in your abilities, l am sure that it will be fine. I am a tool maker by trade, but l also farm, collect old gas engines and currently build my blacksmith shop. I have used hard surface rods before and they work good. I redressed my anvil on my mill and she is good and flat now. Good luck, l will keep watching you

Essential Craftsman did a video a while back on how to repair and anvil. His came out really nice. Check out how he used a grinder to clean it up. But my other point is that if EC welds up an anvil to repair it, you should be fine. Don't listen to the naysayers!

Great job! Looking good. Cup grinder should be a good start. -Will

Dear Jim, Your project looks like it's a slow & carefully prepared restauration. better to go twice as slow & get it right then motoring through it like a bull in a China shop. I am sure it'll end up looking like new when you're done. Very well done. Kind regards.

Nice Job back to Spinach Jim.

Sent you a FR on FB. I really appreciate the mix of woodworking and blacksmithing. I'm planning on doing both as well once I can get some land to build my own shops.

In short; Rebound = hard. Ring = with out flaws. Both born to vintage anvils.

Pro maestro bravo

You do great work 👍

Nice trick with the Pritchel Hole and Hardy Hole! Now I am talking out of my arse now because I haven't done it myself, and I am a lazy get, but .......... You used a trick with the router to make it act as a plane ..... could you not rig something similar for an angle grinder and use a cup wheel grinder on it? If it isn't good enough for the finish you could just rough it in and then hand tool it!

Jims gonna look like popeye with his new forearm work out!

Scary... You and I have done too many of the exact same projects.. Ha.. I have about 10 hours of video when I refaced an old swaybacked mushroomed anvil.. One day, I'll sit down for a day or two and put it together.. Ha.. I did it a little different.. I spent an hour with a torch cutting all of the mushrooms off and then spent about 4 hours grinding after that with a 7 inch grinder to find the edge of the anvil again.. I burned 10lbs of 7018 filling up the low spots and getting the edges back on the sides/corners, and ends.. Then, I ground it all flat and smooth (with no significant low spots and then I bought a piece of 4140 steel 1.5" thick and took it to a machine shop and had the hardy and pritchel hole cut out and spent the next day preheating to 450 and beveling and welding about 5 passes all around to get it on there solid with a good rebound across the anvil.. I built 4 burners, and sit the 150 pounder on my coal forge and coked up 10 gallons of coal and started the process of heating to non-magnetic to quench and temper in one step.. Learned that from an old smith in lower Mississippi.. Took me 4 full days for the job.. Prettest damn anvil you have ever seen when I finished it, and the perfect hardness for an anvil.. I will never sell, barter, give away, that anvil.. Too much respect for it, and the project.. I have to look at it every now and then to remember.. Anything is possible... I was told what I was doing could not be done.. I sort of agree with the old smith that told me that, but, can't argue with the results.. BTW.. The only way to get one of those things flat again is to use a Stone Cup Wheel.. But,,, don't worry about messing up the anvil.. Nice thing about welding on an anvil and not being scared of it is,,, you can fix the damn thing up if you ever have to fix some nicks, etc.. You have to get it pretty damn hot to screw up the temper.. We are talking "getting to orange/red hot.. You don't have to worry about it.. Your welder will overcycle before you heat it up that much.. Even if you start at 450 degrees F before you start welding.. I had a buddy and we doubleteamed it.. Stacking welds and walking from one side to another and kept the anvil between 400 and 600 the whole time.. 4140 is a tough steel and great for an anvil face.. BTW.. Turn the Anvil upside down, build a tin house around it. Stack the burners in on all 4 sides and get the coal going under it.. Get one or two speaker magnets and fix them to a pipe or pole to reach in and check to see if you have reached non-critical.. Once there,, I took a 1/2 of a 55 gallon drum and cut some 6" square tube lengths standing straight up to sit the anvil on when I had it ready to quench to get it 5 inches or so off of the bottom of the drum (Plastic by the way).. I built a rack to pick up the anvil with and take it to the tank to quench it.. Basically a 1" square tube ladder with a sliding rung on it with 1-1/2" square tube slides over the 1".. I put one piece of 3/8" x 1" flat bar on each side of the anvil (on the rungs), that fit into the mouse holes just under the mass of the anvil.. That way, I could pick it up and know it was not going anywhere.. I only quenched what needed to be quenched.. Just the top 1.5'' of the anvil.. I did it in water and steam quenched it.. It will also temper when you quench it.. (The Steam Jacket).. it is how they did it years ago.. I had a hose ready to fill the drum back and kept it at 1.5" up on the face of the anvil until it cooled black again.. I just kept spraying the water around the anvil to keep it cooling.. Worked perfectly.. So, don't worry about going that route.. If you are happy with the face of the anvil, your done.. If not, build it up and take it to a machine shop and have the surface it,, or do the best you can and put some 4140 on top of it and do what I did.. A flat anvil is a happy anvil and the smith behind it also happy.. I put a graduated radius on the edges.. More round where I work it the most and on the front and tail edges, I kept the edges sharp, so I could mark my steel with the front and rear edges, where I don't usually pound on anything.. A good rounder radius in the meat of the anvil and a little sharper as you go to either end, if you need some good creases in something.. Found your channel looking at some ideas for an oil burner.. Building a naturally aspirated 20lb cylinder just to see how it will work and get some heat in the shop, then I will play with some Compressor air and blowers, etc, and put an insulated riser like on a Rocket Mass heater and do some experimenting with that to see what I like there. Hopefully, in a year or two will be building a multi fuel stove that I can burn either Coal, Oil or wood with a few minutes of modification.. Something that is easy to maintain, regulate, and is plenty of heat for the shop.. Wish I had more time to post the hundreds of gigs of video that I have on my computer.. Basically, the only thing I post is something I can do at one recording on my phone for the last few years.. I spent some time editing a few here an there and decided I would rather spend that time building something else.. Ha.. Love to work.. Weird isn't it.. Ha..Ha.. The only complaint I have ever had out of a female companion.. You work too much.. Ha..Ha..Ha.. Screwey me,, I just don't quite consider 90% of it work.. It's just another challenge waiting to fall into a priority slot on my Novel Sized Todo list... Ha..Ha.. Cheers Fella.. Keep the videos rolling..

You said it sir, it's all in the parameters

Its easy to get that straight Jim, Just use a file in different direction to identify the highs then hit it with a flap disk, just do a little at a time, draw filing works well, there are a lot of turkeys on blacksmithing for begginers, they are clueless and just want to sound like an expert by repeating the myths they have heard

no fail, keep it going.... on the other hand it might be epic the act of throwing that thing into a pond after heating it.... I'd build a catapult!!! LOL

I tried going back to hear what rod you used in the center but I can't tell what you said. What rod did you use in the middle of the anvil?

In the end Jim your anvil to do as you please it’s looking better for the face lift anyway have a great week🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

Heating it up for long periods will anneal it and the way to test hardness is to have it Rockwell tested. I could be wrong.

It'll all be worth it in the end...I sure as hell hope so anyway.

I suspect being able to tighten up the hardy hole and put new shoulder edges on the badly worn deck was probably well worth the sacrifice of a couple points of rockwell hardness of the work deck. Probably dropped from HRC 54 to 52 (that's a blind guess). Kudos on the preheat ... I cringe at all the vids out there of people adding hot weld to cold unheated anvils, or building them from scratch by welding together unheated pieces via full-pen.

Did you invite the nay-sayers to view your videos on it? Would love to hear the apologies! Good job, Jim! And the chrome sucker seems to have paid for itself in your wellbeing! 👍🏻✌🏻

Good Lord, dork-snorkel, we get it, you're not a professional welder or welding instructor. LOL Just jabbing at ya, my friend. How's that leg doing with the dropping temperatures and weather? If it wasn't so heavy, you could build your belt grinder and use a flat platter to plane the top. But you, and I, aren't that strong. If you have a belt sander that has a long enough platter, you could sand/grind it on the diagonal, switching the diagonal with each grit change. Can't wait to see how you go about surfacing that plate. See ya next time.

looking good Jim, blacksmith for beginners is a very hostile group.

Too much of what the cat licked its arse with.

It seems it would be possible to just remove and add a 1" thick steal plate on top of the base, if this didn't work. Then it would be perfect. Also wouldn't laying it in sand be better then water, to let it cool slowly?

Love your scientific approach but I'm pretty sure anyone forging horseshoes or a multiple sets of tongs will create a face temperature that will blow your theory out of the water. Metal doesn't de - temper quite that easily. If it hasn't started to glow at least a little..... your safe. Can't wait for the reaction to this comment.

You'll spend more money in grinding and sanding than you will at a machinist, plus it's impossible to get square and flat by hand. I'm a cheapskate too, but sometimes it's better all around to have a pro do something.

Not intending to try to tell you how to do the job... I enjoy watching you do things your own way. But I think I would have surfaced the entire thing, then welded on another piece of steel. My gut tells me though, that I would simply be trading one set of problems for a different set of problems...

You have ruined it you big dummy!! You might as well pack it up and ship it to me!!!