Forge welding that would be a very difficult and tedious task that may come out disappointing. I would highly recommend doing a full penetration weld. Basically place about a 1/4 square bar down the center of the anvil and lay the plate on top. Then just fill in the gaps on both sides of the square bar with weld. It is quite a long process but its completely worth it in the end, provides great rebound especially with a good hard face.
Giving away my secret here . I have a cast iron anvil 110lb it's a soft face with duvets and the edges are soft but I'm planning on putting a steel face I'm gonna cut out the hardy hole and pritchel mounting to the anvil is the tricky part but my plan is to weld studs to the plate like autobody guys do with a stud gun and drilling a few holes in the anvil to connect the two and have the steel face
Im not a smith, but my background in the sciences implies you wouldnt want a working face any harder than the low HRC 50's. Any softer and itll dent and wear prematurely and increase maintenance/repair, and any harder and the working edges will become chip prone, perhaps dangerously so. Beyond that, it seems like a matter of finding the highest toughness rating you can afford that can be hardened into that range. If youre on a tight budget, there seem to be a lot of well made striking anvils out there ... no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel messing with welding a face onto a chunk of railroad track (except as a learning experience), and if youre not on a budget, then just mail order a brand new top of the line refflinghaus and skip ahead to the good stuff in the hobby. If it wasnt for a torn rotator cuff, id go with the latter if i was dabbling in this, but thats just me.
Being a retired Tool & Die maker I have made many dies from A2. First when heat treating A2 it is wrapped in a stainless steel bag & sealed to keep air out. It is put in a heat treat oven for about 2 hours at 1800 degrees. when cooled it is taken from the bag air cooled with compressed are. It is over 62 RW hardness. That means it can be brittle. I do not think it is weldable . Good luck!
Don't drill and plug weld it to the anvil. If you do the filler metal will be way softer causing soft spots on the face. The absence best way is to put a 30 to 45% bevel all the around the W2. Then preheat the anvil and the w2 and weld it all the way around it, until the complete bevel is filled with weld. I also see some use hardfacing filler metal and completely weld the top of the railroad steel. Then took it to a surface grinder to make it 100% flat. That made a hell of a good anvil.
your Rail is actually closer to 1075 with a high manganese content... the best face would have been a chunk of the bottom of the rail, inverted, and fill welded from the sides... after quenching in water, it would have been plenty hard, and the residual heat in the remainder of the anvil would have tempered it
I was going to say the same as Wyatt Kindler below. Space it and full penetration weld. Check out some RU-vid videos on making an anvil. There are a lot of them out there and I have seen a lot more successful stack and weld the gap videos than forge welding the face. in fact, I wish I could remember the only forge welding the face video, because it did not go well, and he basically ruined his project. You would need a serious blast furnace and a great flatter and monster striker, or a hydrolic press that could press the entire face evenly in one shot to get the best forge weld. Filling it one strip at a time with a stick would actually be the easier way to get good adhesion across the entire surface.
Luke, I totally agree with Wyatt Kindler and Thomas Russel. Also before you weld any two bits of different steels (that are not mild steel) make a small research on how these steels react to arc welding and to different types of rods. Probably you will have to make some tests in some sample of steel and see if the steel cracks upon welding. Use a magnifier glass (10 X) to check for cracks on the edges of the weld. Try to talk with the welding supplier and figure what rod fits best for your steels. Probably you will have to warm up the steel before welding it to avoid cracking. You also need to be careful with the lead you cast. You do not want to warm up the anvil too much and have a mess with lead spilling all over. I built 4 anvils by now all of them with full weld penetration and come out ok, except one that I took a leaf spring and tried to weld carelessly to the top of the anvil, the welds cracked and half of the plate detached from the surface. There is good information on how to build anvils on the net (not just youtube) check it to get better results. Good luck
Have you considered the A500 steel used in steel rifle targets? Should be pretty hard and cheaper than tool steel. Could pick up a 1/2” by 1’ square target for around $50
hey mate good on you for trying to make your own anvil but if you want to get more energy transfer to your workpiece I would be filling in the gap between the rail tracks. nothing transfers more energy than mass and effectively you have a big hollow under the workpiece. if you weld the toolsteel it will be better but if you fill the gap it will be much better. good luck
Honestly S7 is cheap and you can get a solid 2 inch block of it for $150 bucks. I made a qwazy multi-face anvil out of mine and it rocks. You have to preheat the oil and then you don't crack.
Thank you for the info. I am an absolute beginner to the world of welding, etc. I got an anvil that's over 100lbs. for super cheap...$15. But, it is missing about 10 or 20% of it's top. I wonder if I can add metal with welding rods, then cap it. Just like you are talking about in this video. I have a couple pictures if you want to see it. Maybe you could give me some advise on how to fix it. Plus, it's cool to see what a $15 anvil looks like.
I think you over complicated this. You could just hard face the anvil top like we do with heavy equipment bucket teeth. You can build it up as thick as you want. Recommend E7018-1 rod. It's a low hydrogen rod so hydrogen embrittlement is not a problem. The -1 on the end means it stays tough down to minus 50 F
Watch a video called: MAKING REAL ANVILS The Modern Way - No Forging or Casting required! On a channel called The Iron Kiwi where he shows how he welded the face to the anvil using a really good method
You put a tool steel face on it yet used it upside down like that? I'd kill for that kind of rail, I'd be pumping out novice anvils for all my friends. But boy oh boy I wouldn't be having it with all it's greatest mass wasted pointing down.
Hey bashpr0mpt, I had a friend give me a 10ft. long piece of railroad rail. Willing to share. I would hate to pay the cost of mailing it. I'm in the north florida area.
I've found an old Peter wright anvil that weighs 388lbs and the one side has some significant damage so I was thinking about welding a plate of tool steel on to give it a clean face to work on. Obviously I'd need to heat treat the new surface but would doing this run a risk of further damaging the anvil?
Poo why not, why do you say not to touch it? Either way the face needs resurfaced to remove any Pitts and such but on the one side as mentioned before has some pretty good damage. I don't know if it was dropped or what but there are chunks about an deep in size missing from it cutting into the face and they run at least a third of the way down the edge so the one edge is nearly unusable.
well sounds like its pretty stuffed anyway, peter wrights are just such a gorgeous anvil :( from memory they are a welded hardened plate on top, and a cast base, cast iron is a bitch to weld to and it will be very hard to get it right, it would be better in original condition, but by the sounds of it shes broken :(
Josh Redmond do not weld on the anvil with a GMAW ”Mig” welder. There are stick electrodes that are Ni-Cad. Very expensive, but one of the best filler metals to weld cast iron. You also MUST preheat and post-heat the anvil or it will fail. With that brand of the anvil, you should have it welded by a professional who welds on cast iron daily.
Just leave it the way it is I make railway track anvils and sell them I just leave the face as is it might dent but it doesn't really effect the use in my opinion just leave it as is
