Interweb Downtime

Hey faithful followers. In the next few weeks I will be shutting down alchemyforge.net and .com in preparation for a comeplete site revision. I'm working on the overall layout but I should have new info, pictures, embedded videos, etc. It will have a more bloggy feeling and should have a uniform appearance from page to page (working on that CSS stuff).

Thanks for being patient!

Still Futher Anvil Obsessing

The new anvil needs a stand. The big steel tube and plate thing that it came with simply makes too much noise on its own to serve my needs. I'm making another of my 4x4s on end anvil stands, but this time I'm only using Gorilla Glue to hold it together. Right now I have three sets of four blocks glued together per the bottle's directions, and they were brought inside prior to gluing to give the product the best possible environment to cure in. Once all five sets of four are glued I'm going to take them back out to the shop and use the anvil itself as my clamp to hold the base together while the glue sets up. I can't think of a better "clamp" than a concrete floor and a 400+ pound anvil allowed to sit over the weekend.

And that's gonna be all I do. Why? Because I want to see how strong this glue really is. Once I set the new block on end and smooth the faces* I'm going to apply a drop of glue to each corner of the anvil and glue it to the block. Whether it holds up or not, I'm going to write to the company and let them know about what I've done. I don't see why this won't work-- the stands don't take a lot of lateral force. I may even glue it to the floor to keep it from moving around.  Yes, much to my surprise I have been able to make the anvil sway on the current stand.


* Why can't we get 8" circular saws? Cutting a 4x4 with a standard circular saw (7-1/2"? then subtract the hub) is ridiculous. I shouldn't have to turn the thing 90deg three times to get the cuts to got through without binding. Nor should I have to buy a miter saw.

More Anvil Obsessing

I started this thread over at I Forge Iron: http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/20425-anvil-id-assitance/page__gopid__210151 inquiring whether any of the folks over there could identify my new shop tool. Three of three said it was most likely a Hay Budden, so that's what I'm going with. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to weigh it...

I did some measuring last night to get a better idea how bad the sway is. Using a steel ruler and a depth gage I determined that the -worst- spots are 3/64" but most of the valley is approximately 1/32". If the piece I was working on the other night hadn't been trying to conform to all of the undulations I might not care, but it was bouncing around pretty good. So I'm going to load my 3x21 belt sander with some 40 grit paper and try to get rid of that "high" spot on the far left of the anvil. I did like the sharp square shoulder that I ground into the close edge of the face, so that's not going away (yes, I knocked off the edge so it's not 100% sharp, but it's very square).

More updates soon, I'm sure. Maybe even some actual work in the near future.

Website

I don't know if I've mentioned that Yahoo Sitebuilder is the tool I've been using to build and maintain my website. At any rate, the program has yet to be updated for compatibility with Win7, and it's not looking like it will be. So thank goodness for Blogger, because this is where all of my updates will be until I can get a replacement program. I may try a wordpress blog template. Stay tuned here for updates.

Anvil update

Here's a picture heavy entry about my new anvil. My -guess- is that it's an Arm & Hammer, possibly a Trenton. This is based entirely on the rough finished heel, as there are no maker's marks on it. I did find a 5 or 6 digit serial # and there is a 6 or 9 stamped under the heel. I believe it is a 9 because I saw another anvil with a 4 stamped on it, but the 4 was upside down if you look at the anvil as it would be mounted for use. This anvil has been in use for a while and has several weld marks on the face. Too bad the welds weren't very good and have gaps. She was a "painted lady" at one time-- while I wouldn't characterize her as a prostitute (to use the terminology) she's no stranger to working hard.
I spent nearly two hours with a hard disk trying to remove chisel and punch marks from the face, and trying to make a couple of relatively flat spots. I don't honestly think I could have made things worse, and I need to post one of the photos that shows the face before I started. In the side-by-side picture all of the pink chalk on the face represents either a chisel/punch mark or roughness from exposure. I was fairly successful-- using a steel ruler to gage flatness, the gap is now about 1/16" and there are only a few deep pits remaining. The last picture in this series shows the face after a quick wipe with ferric chloride (used to bring out the areas of different hardness, as with welded layered/patterned steels). I've inquired about having the face welded and/or machined but will see if it does what I need before I go messing about with it.