Forging a Stake Anvil

[Grant]

The cost of material F's it up. Perfect thing to be making if you're producing something and have drops. When I was making big demolition bits, I had tons of drops anywhere from 2-1/2 to 6 inch diameter. You can make these any size and weight and sell by the pound. Wish I'd thought of it back then.

[JNewman]

I just got back from Caniron VIII in Fergus Ontario, where I put the anvil in the auction. Looks like I will be making another, as another thing I put in the auction was 4 hrs of coming to my shop and forging the recipients choice of project(s) on the Massey with me. The guy that won the bidding wants to make another one of these anvils.
Drops would be nice. The one job that I do that uses any sort of heavy bar that I bought a full bar for is only 2.75" and the slugs are only 3.5" long, so I don't really have drops but at least the cost per pound is much less buying a full bar . I should try and find a machine shop or somebody that has 4340 drops both for the anvils and for the chisel job that I do.

[Larry L]

The guys I sharpen the paving breakers for deal with Ramco which is an outfit that makes the big breaker points..... They told me they could get me some 4340 drops in the 4-6" range and 4-12" long.... I got two, told them I wanted more.... Shipping would suck but its better than paying for the material....


I also got some pretty big chunks of plate that where torch cut of 4340... I think they are 3.5" X 5" by about 20" long.... I gave some to Grant and he made some dies that both cracked during heat treat... He thinks that there was a cold spot in the center of the plate that failed during quench... might not matter even if it was bad if you where forging them first.... Those chunks are right at 100lbs each and I think I have 6-7 left...

[JNewman]

Thanks Larry, if they start coming through for you consistently and you have more than you need we can check out shipping prices. I have a potential contact for 4" and under 4340 from a manufacturer of threaded rod. I am waiting to hear from a guy I know who is friends with the potential supply. I will have to bug him about it. If I could start using drops for the job that comes in every couple of months I could save what I have left of the full length bar for jobs that require certs. on the material.

[Phil]

The guys I sharpen the paving breakers for deal with Ramco which is an outfit that makes the big breaker points..... They told me they could get me some 4340 drops in the 4-6" range and 4-12" long.... I got two, told them I wanted more.... Shipping would suck but its better than paying for the material....


I also got some pretty big chunks of plate that where torch cut of 4340... I think they are 3.5" X 5" by about 20" long.... I gave some to Grant and he made some dies that both cracked during heat treat... He thinks that there was a cold spot in the center of the plate that failed during quench... might not matter even if it was bad if you where forging them first.... Those chunks are right at 100lbs each and I think I have 6-7 left...

We have a sometimes customer, (who is more of a PITA) who keeps on wanting us to forge high performance conrods from 4340, only I keep on asking him to make me a dummy blank so as we can stamp a set of tools so as we can get the consistancy of size that he requests. Only when he has to make a dummy it all gets too hard for him, and he goes back to his present method of manufacture, which is cutting the conrod blanks from plate 4340. The reason he wants to forge is he has about a 75% success rate with heat treat as the rods have a tendancy to split down the centre axis after HT. As just noted otherwise it seems to be a problem with 4340 plate, that is not just isolated to my customer. Interesting.

[Grant]

Actually, I didn't think it was cold in the center, I thought it might have gotten cold on the outer part. At any rate I think things were moving differently and there is some sort of flaw in the center. I've never seen material split like that, especially when there are better candidates, like the inside corners of the dovetails. Yet both dies split dang near dead center. Seen sheet separate in the middle, so I know there are rolling mechanisms involved that can cause such a flaw.

[Phil]

Actually, I didn't think it was cold in the center, I thought it might have gotten cold on the outer part. At any rate I think things were moving differently and there is some sort of flaw in the center. I've never seen material split like that, especially when there are better candidates, like the inside corners of the dovetails. Yet both dies split dang near dead center. Seen sheet separate in the middle, so I know there are rolling mechanisms involved that can cause such a flaw.

These conrods that I was talking about also split straight down the centre, I reckon it may have to do something with the grain in the plate, along with a lack of grain refinement in the due to plate rolling. Maybe when they are rolling plate they are not getting the same reduction that occurs when bar is rolled? possible.
It can be similar to the way that you can split flat bar by folding it along the axis, the split just runs along the grain. We used to have a job when I was an apprentice that was 100 x 8 flat about 1000mm long that had to be sheared to lenght, then folded to 90 deg along its length, the bars that we split until the boss worked it out was in the 100's. (we had to have both shear rags facing the same way and make sure the rag was on the inside of the bend, with the smoother edge out, no splits then) but it did require the bar the be flipped over after each cut.

But for Johns application I feel that forging the offcuts of plate should remedy the splitting problem, especially if he when forging his stakes can forge with the grain, if he knows which way the offcuts ran in relation to the long axis of the plate.

Phil

[JNewman]

For the auction at Caniron this summer I donated 4 hours of forging on the Massey on the purchasers project. So today Henk Boon and Dave Kritz came over and we forged another of these anvils. I had bought 2 billets of the 4340 so Henk bought the second one from me and we used it to make the anvil. This time we upset it before forging the shank which worked a lot better. I need to make some bigger side sets both spring and top this would have let us get a much cleaner shoulder than using a spring fuller and then 2 pieces of 1" round as fullers. We then used a bolster to clean up the bottom but ran into a little choking the hammer. If I had the right set tools we might not have had to use the bolster.
To harden it we just set the face on a big piece of 1 1/4 plate. After it cooled for half an hour or so we cooled it in water so it didn't melt through Henk's bed liner on his truck. When we put it in the truck I tested the face with a file and it seemed to be pretty hard. After grinding the face he is going to temper it to at least a brown. I think it will be pretty tough as that was not that aggressive a quench.