Cracked Anvil Forge

[Amelie Robertos]

I think it's just bragging... I am not a "real" blacksmith but crawled under probably 20,000 horses and spent all day making shoes and never heard of an anvil "overheating".... How can 150 degrees hurt an anvil?

Metallurgically speaking, it would have to be a temperature high enough to draw the temper from a tool steel face on an older wrought iron or cast iron body anvil, or an induction hardened face on a newer homogenous cast steel model.

We have all heard the stories of soft anvils that have been thru barn fires, which raised the core temp to well above 1000F, and then slow cooled in the ashes to anneal the face. Compare that to the heat input of working, by hand, small billets over the course of a day. I very much doubt than anything less than 350F would have any scientifically measurable effect, and you as the user would probably not notice any effect below 500F. Remember, 500F is the preheat to repair an anvil by welding.

As to why the anvil heats up more than the hammer: contact time. The hammer is in contact for only a fraction of a second on each stroke, like firewalking on hot coals. Plus, you are waving it in the air with each stroke. The best blacksmiths lift the metal slightly off the face between blows when working small stock to get more work done in a heat. Larger stock just lays there, transferring heat at a constant rate.

Years back there was an anvil named future, A two piece design with aluminum bottom and steel top half,.If I remember the weight was 100 lbs.The top half of the anvil was the same size as the companys larger anvil. The lighter weight made it easier for farriers to take in and oiut of truck at each stop.
The parting line had a rubber gasket, I have seen two man teams of farriers working on large draft horse shoes, get the anvil hot enough that the gasket would begin to soften and swell out of the joint. i never heard of any of these anvils soften the hardness of the working top half.

I would agree calling 150F too hot, only because at that temperature the anvil can burn ME, not because it would hurt the anvil. The anvil won't get hurt till it is showing temper colors starting at 500F.

Bigcity probably has a point about not being able to sit on the anvil at lunchtime, and how much work gets done.

Phil

black hot is over 500 degrees that is the the temp borax will melt. You will not move much metal at that temp. not until you get to the red stage you would have to have a lot of consent heat to reach that temp. I would think it unlikely good one for the mythbusters

I realy don't enjoy useing my anvil till it gets too hot to hold my hand on. Thats over 125F. Little stuff can be worked much longer when it's hot. In the winter or when I'm welding smaller stock I have a20# chunk of sleet iI heat to red and lay on the anvil to warm it up. Even with a piece of koawool over it my 270 lber won't get too hot for me to touch easily.

It's funny that I found this topic. Today I burnt my hand on the tail of my 175#er after about three hours of hard work. It surprised me that the heat had traveled so far back since I had been upsetting stock over the main body section for the last half hour or so. I have doubts that a person could over heat it simply because of the air cooling that takes place during heating.

Take a look at the suggested preheats for arc welding on an anvil. As I recall Bruce Wilcock has talked about boiling water for their lunchtime tea on an anvil after doing heavy work on it.

I admit the possibility but not in *my* little one man shop!

As for powerhammers in industrial settings drop forge dies are often cooled between strikes.

The first professional blacksmith shop that I worked in back in the early 1990's had a MINT 550# Fisher anvil. On occasion we would do jobs that required texturing larger pieces of plate, say 3/8 thick by 2 or 3 feet square. The portions of the plate that didn't fit under the power hammer would be hand textured by smith and striker with fullers and sledge on the big anvil. Between power hammer work and heating time, there was a small percentage of the time where hot work was in contact with the anvil. But the mass and surface area of the workpiece combined to transfer a huge amount of energy to the anvil. Often by lunchtime the anvil would be too hot to touch, and then we would work for hours more...

Last time I visited that shop, some 20 years later, the anvil still looked and performed great.

There is little that we as mere mortals can do to damage an anvil, not counting 30# sledges or cutting torches or bulldozers or stupidity. The working faces of good anvils are tempered steel and a tough but still fairly hard tempering temperature is 500 deg f +/-. Perhaps some of our more physics minded members could run the numbers on what it would take to over heat an anvil forging 1/2" round bar.

I used to test paint for automotive use. One of our tests was to put cars in direct sunlight in the hotest parts of the US. We routinely would hit 160F.I have seen 150F on a hood in MI. If a hood can be that temp witout damage all day long for several years, how are you going to damage an anvil? Yes, the paint fades but consider the steel under it.

Now that I am old I sleep most soundly at about 74 degrees F in the summertime here in Louisiana. Anything above that is too hot for me to have have a reliable deep sleep. Steel? Steel is not interested in its heat-forced structural change until the temperature has pased well above the maximum temperature for human life.

Anvils are the centerpiece of a blacksmith's, bladesmith's, metalworker's, and farrier's workbench. Blacksmiths Depot is the place to go when searching for where to buy a high-quality blacksmithing anvil, as we only sell forging anvils meant for a lifetime. Don't be confused by the name, that's only the process that is used to make them. Don't you wish you could bake a cake with just the right amount of dough to rise? The same wish happens every time a blacksmith-forged anvil is cast. Just the right heat, just the right mix, and 100 other things that have to be just right for a casting to come out as solid and dense as a forged blacksmith anvil. This is why we only sell one brand of cast anvils from Poland. The Eastern Europeans have been casting anvils much longer than here in North America. Don't trust your centerpiece to just any company. Pick from the best blacksmith anvils from DTX, Kanca, and Perun. shop for forging anvils and more for sale below.

FORT SILL, Okla. -- A major change in Army Basic Combat Training, or BCT, better prepares trainees for today's operational theater. The "Forge" is a grueling, 96-hour, cumulative training exercise that puts week-seven trainees in a patrol base as they encounter a multitude of combat and logistical scenarios.

It emphasizes battle drills, tactical operations, and numerous foot patrols. Forge replaces the 20-year-old Field Training Exercise 3, which had trainees working at a forward operating base, or behind the wire.

"It's essentially a crucible," said Capt. Jedidiah Schlissel, D Battery, 1st Battalion, 31st Field Artillery commander. "It increases their mental toughness because they probably never imagined how tough this would be."

Indeed -- the final event of Forge is a rite of passage ceremony where trainees put on their berets for the first time in BCT, symbolizing that they are now Soldiers, said Drill Sergeant (Staff Sgt.) Michael Davies, D Battery, 1st Battalion, 31st Field Artillery.

The 434th Field Artillery Brigade here -- along with Army BCT brigades at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Benning, Georgia -- must implement Forge into their training by Oct. 1, Schlissel said. D Battery, 1st Battalion, 31st Field Artillery was testing the second Forge here, July 9-12, with an emphasis on night training to minimize heat injuries.

In the STX, a squad of 12-15 trainees on patrol encountered indirect small arms fire. During the attack, the squad suffered casualties that had to be moved to a landing zone for an air medical evacuation, which they called in.

Another training event involved an equipment move to resupply a unit. Trainees carried various pieces of gear. That evening trainees performed a troop movement under direct fire at the night infiltration course.

"This provides them with more trigger time, more weapon manipulation to get them more comfortable with their weapon system," Schlissel said. "It's slightly more advanced than shooting at targets in a qualification course."

Later, a road march provided a warm-up to a combat obstacle course, followed by another road march to the 1-mile track for the Monti Challenge. Here, trainees were tested on warrior tasks, such as performing a weapons check on an M4 rifle, and donning a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or CBRN, and explosive mask.

Forge was the third Field Training Exercise, or FTX, that trainees experienced. The first was Hammer, a one-day, one-night FTX during week 3 of BCT, Davies said. Trainees used all the warrior tasks and battle drills they had learned up to that point during the FTX.

All the FTXs are named after blacksmith terms to emphasize that Soldiers are "forged" during them, Schlissel said. The Forge exercise follows the theme, as well as its reference to Valley Forge, one of the Continental Army's encampment sites during the Revolutionary War.

Learning from Fort Jackson, and using 434th Field Artillery Brigade resources, he and Soto came up with a tentative training plan to implement Forge week at the battery level here. Soto presented it to D Battery's executive officer. With the assistance of the operations and logistics shops, it was put in motion, Schroeder said.

"With the drill sergeants taking us through FTX 2 (Anvil) and putting us through night training, it's prepared us for Forge," said Archibald, of Olive Branch, Miss. "If we had not gone through the medical lanes before multiple times conducting many tests, we would not know how to do this."

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