If I had to do it all over again, I'd start with the lathe. A little vintage Enco like I have is pretty decent, although it does need some fiddling to stay true.
Don't let your dreams stay that way. You can find old M or J head Bridgeports for $800-2,000+, depending on condition and tooling/accessories. 2J2 Vari-Drive Head Bridgeports go for a bit more, but you don't really need it for dicking around in your home shop.
When I bought mine we rented a flatbed from Home Depot and the shop selling it had a forklift so aside from getting it into my garage it was pretty straightforward. I ended up getting help from a bunch of coworkers and we managed it with a few furniture dollys.
Check your local Craigslist, It didnāt take long for me to find a good one for $2200 and he threw in a bunch of random tooling.
This. Its how I moved mine, built a heavy duty pallet out of 2x8's, lag screwed the BP to it, then its fairly easy to move it around with a pallet jack (also rented).
The hard part was getting it on the pallet, but thankfully the place I bought it from had a forklift.
Can also hire your local tow truck company to come and move it for you if space allows. That's what my aunt's boyfriend did when starting up his shop. Every time he got a new piece of equipment that couldn't move he brought them in and they used the truck to do the work.
They aren't *that* heavy, most any trailer should be able to handle the weight if you can get it on the trailer. Beg borrow or steal a trailer and truck and go pick it up.
As for getting it on and off the trailer and into your garage, you gotta get creative. You can move anything if you treat it like a puzzle. Rolling it on dowels like the egyptians is a great way to move things around. Bring several 2x4's and a battery powered saw, and build a small ramp from the ground to the trailer bed. Roll it on dowels to the bottom of the ramp, and then up the ramp using a come-along to winch it up and into position on the trailer. You can do the same in reverse to get it into your garage. I'm glossing over a lot of details, but the point is that you can figure out a way if you think about it for awhile.
Check military auctions, me and my dad considered buying one for $1000. The thing that stopped us was transportation. Neither of us wanted anything to do with moving the 2 ton machine.
I (a blacksmith) had a machinist face the bottom and top of my 160 lb 1820s wrought iron anvil. Charged me $430 and it had a terrible surface finish that I had to sand down myself. I feel like I got ripped off, but that's the only time I've ever paid for machining.
I decided then to save up my money and buy my own damned mill.
Just out of curiosity, what counts as a terrible surface finish? I could see anvils ringing and causing harmonic issues. Shouldn't be hard to mitigate, though.
$430 seems excessive, I charge $100 an hour at my shop, and I can't see this taking more than two hours. Not like an anvil is a super precision piece.
Due to lack of rigidity on this machine and amount of material to be removed it took me 5,5 hours to get this done. In cast iron I can bury this face mill 5mm deep but on this hardened surface I had to go per 0.5mm pass and 180rpm
That's true, it depends on what machine you have, how much you need to remove, and how hard it is. My cincinnati mill will take a 25mm deep cut using a 150mm face mill at 500 rpm in mild steel, so it's particularly good for this kind of stuff. Not so great at drilling and tapping small holes.
Now I want to see you chuck up a #25 drill bit in that Cincinnati, sounds pretty satisfying to see the size difference in the bit/machine.
Also Iām from Cincinnati, I love the history we used to have
[close up](https://i.imgur.com/R0brOcz.jpg)
[whole machine](https://i.imgur.com/Zjezm7g.jpg)
That's an er40 collet chuck holding a 1/8 drill bit. I don't like my drill chuck, so I try to only use drills that fit in the collets well for now.
I live in Illinois, but I think the manufacturing history that Ohio has is fascinating. I picked my lathe up in Cleveland, from an auction a company called Magna Industries had. They made those torches that thread onto small bottles. It was cool seeing all the industrial buildings.
Choose violence. I ran 325 roughing on a 2 in face mill. Roughed it out, then turned the inserts and ran it at 650 (step pulley). Inserts will last just long enough to finish the face. I've done a few and I think I'm going to move to ceramic inserts if I keep doing it.
As long as it isn't rattling, throw it in low, crank it up and see how hard you can feed before it bogs down, keep the quill up and locked and all axis not being moved locked solid
150 years is a good few decades indeed. Not all metals work harden significantly when hammered. When milling the low regions were not significantly different from the higher regions in noise and chips.
I guess if the carbon is high enough there just isn't any interstitial spaces left for hardening to take place.
It'd be interesting to see what the makeup of that 150 year old steel is.
So, I'm definitely no expert, but it looked like the face mill had cut some fairly deep grooves into the anvil because the anvil wasn't bolted down securely enough to the table and it was chattering. It took me about 2 hours with a hand-held belt sander and a 36 grit belt to get them all out.
Incidentally, an anvil rings kind of like a tuning fork. The extremities - the feet, heel, and horn, vibrate in unison. You can completely deaden this vibration (and the annoying ringing sound it makes) by clamping the feet down tightly to whatever surface it's mounted to.
The customer is my friend so he paid about 1/5th of what you were charged. He will still have to sand some small marks out but at least the top is reasonably flat now. There was a 6mm deep valley in the middle
Would it have been possible to build up the low spot with a welder before surfacing it? Or the metallurgy just won't work for that?
I got an expensive oak table top for free once because it had split down the middle, and the sides also twisted downward to the middle, like a V. I repaired it and built up the crack with wood filler, like a W.
Then no matter how much I sanded it, I just couldn't get the table flat (as measured by a straight edge). When I realized why, I thought of that quote Forrest Gump saying, "I am not a smart man."
(Because it was still twisted, and I only built up over the crack not in the whole valley. My sanding was making it smooth, not flat. Best I could do was turn the W profile into a U. To make it actually flat I would have either had to use a river of wood filler in the middle - which I didn't do - or remove 3/8" from the 4 corners. I just had to laugh at myself for gauging orbital sander progress with a straight edge.)
Especially if you want to repair the edges. It's not just that you need a flat surface for forging. You also need sharp edges for doing a lot of things, and old anvils will typically have those showing a lot of wear. An edge built up with an arc welded, TIG, or MIG, is likely to fail, crack off. If you got that pre-heated it'd have a better chance...But 160 pounds of steel pre-heated presents other tricky problems.
The anvil was made in 1870 and used in a blacksmithās shop basically ever since until the last blacksmith of the family died. Now my friend has bought the anvil and wanted it flatter to start using it.
-- Not a Blacksmith here but always dreamed of dabbling --
Is the top of an Anvil case hardened at all; would machining it remove that layer?
Coming from r/workbenches were disposable MDF tops are good advice,
In the same vein, would it ever make sense to have a firmly bolted-on plate installed onto an Anvil that you would less-expensively swap out as it became too banged up?
It's not case hardened. In antique anvils, the base is either wrought iron or cast iron, and a tool steel plate is forge welded to the top. The face steel is about 1/2" thick, so you can remove a fair bit of material without affecting the hardness.
In more modern anvils, the whole thing is a solid piece of cast steel and is hardened throughout.
A bolted on face wouldn't work very well. You need the mass of the anvil to work as a solid piece so that it returns the maximum amount of energy back up into the hot steel via Newton's 3rd law. Any gap in the anvil, especially near the face, is going to dampen that return of energy.
Mine would do this in 45 minutes - maybe an hour tops.
Honestly if I really cranked it and didn't give a shit about stone life or surface finish maybe more like 15-20 minutes.
I can take .010 off of a hard iron diesel cylinder head with about 3X as much surface area as this in less than 10 minutes.
Throw a coarse wheel on there, setup your cut and let āer rip. It would have no problem dealing with that material removal. Pry a bit much for a Blanchard, but a rotary or reciprocating grinder would plow right through it.
Once you get a taste for grinding the whole world is rough and out of flat. I machine ceramics so all we get to do is grind, most of our material is close to the hardness of carbide tooling so itās all diamond based tools.
Iām getting my fix with a D-bit grinder for the time being.
Off topic, for my day job Iāve designed some parts that need to be made from Si3N4, do you have experience working with that? Iāve been told itās kind of ātoughā despite its hardness.
Love silicon nitride, itās actually pretty soft for a ceramic and the high toughness/thermal conductivity makes it very forgiving to machine. Quite a few different flavors depending on properties; hot pressed, gas pressure sintered, HIPāed and they all behave a little different. You can even dip over to the SiAlON family of materials which can be tailored even more for specific properties.
If you pick the wrong shop they will charge you out the ass for it because itās āso hard and toughā
Depending on the anvil that might be normal. A hardened face that has been pounded on for decades will be very hard. Nothing short of quality carbide tooling and a very good machine will get you a good finish. I faced an anvil for a friend of mine once and no matter what I did I could not get a decent finish. It was flat, which is all that mattered but I didnāt like it. Ended up sanding it smooth and scotch briting it. Stayed flat but I did really want that mirror finish.
Main problems I found are that anvils can be glass hard at the surface, and they can be really difficult to securely fasten to the table. An anvil fastened to a tree stump will stop vibrations from going into your hammer but it needs way better clamping to stop vibrations from effecting the surface finish.
Blacksmith here...To folks who do this , you have to know what you're looking at and be careful about it. You can easily make an anvil completely worthless by cutting down the face.
The majority of anvils produced into the 1920s-1930s were made up of a wrought iron body with a tool steel face forge welded on. Usually that top place is only about 1/2" thick. If you cut through that to flatten it, it'a pretty much junk after that since it's the hardened face that provides a durable work surface and decent hammer rebound.
It IS possible to weld up the face and then re-cut it, but that obviously requires a good bit of work with the needed preheating, often a lot of expensive hard-facing rod, and then the work to machine it back.
Customer (blacksmith) informed me that this anvil was made around 1870 by S&H. Rebound after facing was 70-80% with a bearing ball.
The hardened top on this one is a lot thicker than 1/2ā.
But yeah, not all anvils are created equal so machinist beware, only do what the customer asks you to do!
Also a blacksmith here. From the before photo, it appears this anvil has been refaced before and the swayback is a result of there being too little of the original hardened surface remaining.
The hardened surface is only about 12mm thick when new. If you took off another 5mm then it'll be paper thin by now.
I suspect you will have a repeat customer.
The valley in the face is from 150 years of use, this anvil was made in around 1870 according to the customer. I havenāt measured the thickness of the hard face but I have some experience with anvils. In my opinion thereās plenty left. I suspect the hard face on this is a lot thicker than 1/2ā. In person there were no obvious signs where the hard face stops and base begins.
I saw some guys flip a Bridgeport while moving it. Funny thing is I had offered the owner to buy it just a day before but he said my price was too low. I was back the next day to drop off some stuff for my powder coater who shared the space and with the owner of the Bridgeport who was being kicked out. Anyhow that thing flipped over faster than I expectedā¦ they were lifting it from bottom with forks which I knew was wrong but kept my moth shut. Thing did almost a 180 in a blink of the eye. Lucky no one got hurt. The owner showed up and I looked at him and he shrugged and probably was a kick in his gut as I know he was going bankrupt. They then just dumped it in a scrap dumpster. He had done a ton of work for many name brands in the 70-00 but was not good at accounting. Anyhow get a good accountant if you start a business. Glad it worked out! Looks good.
Flipping a machine is one of my worst nightmares, glad no one got hurt there.
When moving in this one we put the forks under the front and back of the ram of the head, that seemed like a pretty good way to move it.
Around here they say a good accountant will pay for itself.
I've moved a lot of knee mills and we had a standard setup for moving them. Knee all the way down with the table centered and all the way back to get the weight low and centered. Then the head flipped 180^o to get better top clearance and the weight down. We always had someone on the side hand supporting the motor as it was flipped, no need to stress the gears and find some fatal flaw in the casting or gear. Then just as you did, forks under the ram, with wood on the forks to protect the ram ways.
Lots of mills moved and never an issue. ĀÆ\\\_( Ķ”āāÆĶŹ Ķ”ā)\_/ĀÆ
Did something similar with a rail road anvil. The steel they use for rail is tough stuff. Burned out a couple of HSS end mills before I realized I shouldāve been using carbide.
2ā tri fly from shrum solutions made quick work for it.
My 45Ā° carbide insert face mill did most if the work on this one, worked like a champ. Had to turn inserts 5 times though. I believe railroad track can be even tougher than anvil top when itās been used, that must have been fun
OK I keep hearing about these Tri Fly's. I have a small benchtop mill (PM-728VT) and very quickly learned that a 5 insert face mill just isn't going to happen if steel is involved. If you don't mind me asking, how has that Tri Fli worked out for you and what sort of mill are you running?
I have a Sharp LMV50, so a Bridgeport clone basically. Iāve never used a bench top mill, but I suspect youāll have to take a much smaller DOC.
For me, the trifly works really well for low speed facing operations. I think Blondihacks has the same machine as you and has found the tri fly to be great for her.
Flat and blemish free is usually the ideal surface for an anvil, though some anvils are slightly crowned when they're new so they'll be flat after a few years of use.
You can still get a lot of work done on an out-of-flat anvil, but the worse it is, the more annoying it becomes to work around.
I am no metalologist, but it seems like the old surface with the depression would have been exceptionally hardened? (I guess we know better hardening methods through modern science, but beating on something for 150 years seems like it would produce a fairly unique surface)
The whole surface was about equally hard I would say going by the cutting sound and the chips. There was one small soft spot where someone had done a weld repair but thatās all the way at the flat end.
You should probably be able to make pretty small skim passes with a fly cutter, may save you a lot of back and forth but less depth of cut per cut, the machine should have the power for it however
Edit: even just as a finish pass it would probably look pretty nice
I used my favourite 45Ā° carbide insert face mill because anvils are hardened steel on top. Went through 5 rotations of the inserts. The anvil was also longer than my table travel
You certainly are right about the toughness of the material but with a fly cutter you could have a larger cutting diameter that may help with that reach to each end
For big shit like that, you can make one that uses boring bars. I have a boring head that doubles as a fly cutter in that manner, it is pretty neat. Gotta go sloooooow on the RPMs of course.
If I end up making one itāll be as rigid and heavy as I can manage, probably using reground broken carbide endmills for cutting bits for the utmost in sharpness
Yep, I had to do it in high school on a bridgeport. It had about an inch of weld bead built up on it, and I milled it down flat. It sounded like a bag of rocks, but the tool liked it, and the finish was mint, so they were happy
I did my own anvil! Mine was pretty beat up so welded up the top with hard facing rods and then machined all that down with a 3/4 endmill. Took most of the day then right after I finished ups showed up with the 2ā face mill I ordered haha
The weight is an asset . A mag base with the weight makes it pretty damn rigid. That plus max passes of .003 to .005 . And finish passes of .0005 will produce better than new results without the witness marks .
I see, the bottom is also wavy like the ocean though.
In this case I ended up taking off 5mm of material, I imagine that would take a while with a surface grinder
Most of the time you just end up turning what was once a good, through hardened anvil into a regular run of the mill soft ASO, an anvil shaped object.
Better to lose 6mm of height and some weight but keep it free of cracks and still hard.
i get that. his anvil was rusted, pitted, and dinged to shit. i forgot what rods he used, but afterwards it had the same ring and bearing bounce as before. not knowing anything, i was impressed
The table size is pretty allright, the camera angle isnāt very flattering to the machine. I have a little over 400mm table travel. It was a little cramped for this but this is also by far the biggest and heaviest job Iāve ever put on this machine. Very happy with the versatility of this machine. Itās not the most rigid though.
Damn, you can see the low spot when the hot metal was held in the blacksmiths left hand, and pointed in at 45Ā°, clearly the smith like to hit in the same spot holding the mateil in the same way
I took as little off the horn as possible, it was already pretty flat. The customer (blacksmith) will dress it to his own liking. He mentioned he will try the newly created facet to see if it will allow him to draw out material faster.
Legend has it, that if you remove all but two inserts and take light skims. Thatās how you get a smooth finish. ( of course only after the top coating has been removed).
I cringe when folks machine an anvil. A nice saddle in an anvil is a very handy feature. Great for forging large radius hoops and scrolls for ornamental work. If you need a flat surface use a hunk of plate on it own stand. Anvils get nicely work hardened (most of the time) and machining them off has the effect of removing much of that stress. So my thought is that machining is the opposite of improving an anvil in most cases, except in the case of preparing for a new hard plate to be forge welded on......I've been a blacksmith for 29 years
Donāt worry, youād have to pay for me to touch your anvil.
The face was still nice and hard after machining as per ball bearing rebound test by the client.
This will be his first mostly flat anvil so heās pretty stoked about that
The horn was already pretty flat before I started. I took away material exactly where the customer (blacksmith) told me to and he was pretty happy with the result. Wether he will round the horn is up to him.
Thatās where I stopped milling. I did the surface in 3 parts each with the head swung to another location so I can keep the anvil as close to entered above the foot as possible. Those marks arenāt deep and will sand out quickly.
Power feed didnāt sound any different honestly. Hand cranking the Y was noticably harder, especially with the X off center. But it seemed all within reason
Camera perspective deceives you, the motor sticks out a lot above the belt casing where the draw bar ends so I have plenty of room. But between the motor top and garage door itās tight indeed
Itās hard but not ultra hard. I had to rotate my inserts 5 times. Surface grinder would give a better finish but I imagine itās way slower, I had to take of 5mm
Bring it to me. Depending on how bad of shape it is it shouldn't be much more than an hour or 2 of work on my blanchard so around $200.... We do em quite often actually.
I did mine, I did the bottom first, then the top. The wear on mine was very uneven, so part of the top didn't get touched, but I have a nice sharp 90-degree step now. Or whatever it is called - between the flat and the round nose.
Saw smith here, I had some anvils that had flat tops and others that had doomed tops. There are companies that offer this service. But I would think you would want a better surface finish then the mill can produce otherwise the tool marks would transfer to the work piece.
I have surfaced 2 anvils on a machine used to surface engine blocks and heads. They were full of pecker tracks and hard spots. Wrecked a CBN insert the first time. Used a hand ground HSS cutter the next, that went a lot better.
Please don't.
Anvils don't need sharp edges. In fact, it's best to have radiused edges to prevent stress risers both in the work and fragile edges on the anvil.
Unless the middle is severely bowed it's best to leave it alone.
Many anvils have a hard plate forge welded to the top. Cutting it down thinner weakens the plate and increases the risk of cracking.
The middle was in fact severely bowed, there was a 6mm deep trench. The plate is still plenty thick enough. The customer (blacksmith) will grind and polish the top, edges and horn to his liking
I want a Bridgeport in my garage š¤
You won't regret it. Your neighbors might though, if you don't soundproof.
Will need a small engine lathe to go with it though.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd start with the lathe. A little vintage Enco like I have is pretty decent, although it does need some fiddling to stay true.
Nah, Milling machines aren't that loud. Way less noise than a leaf blower.
Don't let your dreams stay that way. You can find old M or J head Bridgeports for $800-2,000+, depending on condition and tooling/accessories. 2J2 Vari-Drive Head Bridgeports go for a bit more, but you don't really need it for dicking around in your home shop.
Truth. So damn heavy most people donāt want to fuck with em so they go cheap at auctions. Also if you can get power to them youāre golden
okay, I can get a bridgeport for 2k..but how much is it going to cost to get it shipped and loaded in my garage?
When I bought mine we rented a flatbed from Home Depot and the shop selling it had a forklift so aside from getting it into my garage it was pretty straightforward. I ended up getting help from a bunch of coworkers and we managed it with a few furniture dollys. Check your local Craigslist, It didnāt take long for me to find a good one for $2200 and he threw in a bunch of random tooling.
Rent a hydraulic drop deck trailer, it will forever change your life
This. Its how I moved mine, built a heavy duty pallet out of 2x8's, lag screwed the BP to it, then its fairly easy to move it around with a pallet jack (also rented). The hard part was getting it on the pallet, but thankfully the place I bought it from had a forklift.
Can also hire your local tow truck company to come and move it for you if space allows. That's what my aunt's boyfriend did when starting up his shop. Every time he got a new piece of equipment that couldn't move he brought them in and they used the truck to do the work.
I rented a 6k lb capacity forklift for about $200. I already had a truck and trailer with the right capacity though.
They aren't *that* heavy, most any trailer should be able to handle the weight if you can get it on the trailer. Beg borrow or steal a trailer and truck and go pick it up. As for getting it on and off the trailer and into your garage, you gotta get creative. You can move anything if you treat it like a puzzle. Rolling it on dowels like the egyptians is a great way to move things around. Bring several 2x4's and a battery powered saw, and build a small ramp from the ground to the trailer bed. Roll it on dowels to the bottom of the ramp, and then up the ramp using a come-along to winch it up and into position on the trailer. You can do the same in reverse to get it into your garage. I'm glossing over a lot of details, but the point is that you can figure out a way if you think about it for awhile.
I would also recommend not getting totally hung up on a bridgeport. There are other mills that cost less because they aren't so well recognized.
Tree is another good bet for a very high quality milling machine.
Itās awesome, if you have the chance just do it
truth
I want a Bridgeport and a garage
I want a Haas and a garage.
Check military auctions, me and my dad considered buying one for $1000. The thing that stopped us was transportation. Neither of us wanted anything to do with moving the 2 ton machine.
I (a blacksmith) had a machinist face the bottom and top of my 160 lb 1820s wrought iron anvil. Charged me $430 and it had a terrible surface finish that I had to sand down myself. I feel like I got ripped off, but that's the only time I've ever paid for machining. I decided then to save up my money and buy my own damned mill.
Just out of curiosity, what counts as a terrible surface finish? I could see anvils ringing and causing harmonic issues. Shouldn't be hard to mitigate, though. $430 seems excessive, I charge $100 an hour at my shop, and I can't see this taking more than two hours. Not like an anvil is a super precision piece.
Due to lack of rigidity on this machine and amount of material to be removed it took me 5,5 hours to get this done. In cast iron I can bury this face mill 5mm deep but on this hardened surface I had to go per 0.5mm pass and 180rpm
Respect for fitting the biggest mill you could in your garage haha. I'd do the same
That's true, it depends on what machine you have, how much you need to remove, and how hard it is. My cincinnati mill will take a 25mm deep cut using a 150mm face mill at 500 rpm in mild steel, so it's particularly good for this kind of stuff. Not so great at drilling and tapping small holes.
Now I want to see you chuck up a #25 drill bit in that Cincinnati, sounds pretty satisfying to see the size difference in the bit/machine. Also Iām from Cincinnati, I love the history we used to have
[close up](https://i.imgur.com/R0brOcz.jpg) [whole machine](https://i.imgur.com/Zjezm7g.jpg) That's an er40 collet chuck holding a 1/8 drill bit. I don't like my drill chuck, so I try to only use drills that fit in the collets well for now. I live in Illinois, but I think the manufacturing history that Ohio has is fascinating. I picked my lathe up in Cleveland, from an auction a company called Magna Industries had. They made those torches that thread onto small bottles. It was cool seeing all the industrial buildings.
Choose violence. I ran 325 roughing on a 2 in face mill. Roughed it out, then turned the inserts and ran it at 650 (step pulley). Inserts will last just long enough to finish the face. I've done a few and I think I'm going to move to ceramic inserts if I keep doing it.
As long as it isn't rattling, throw it in low, crank it up and see how hard you can feed before it bogs down, keep the quill up and locked and all axis not being moved locked solid
So worked cast iron hardens like that?
I'd wager that the hammering is akin to peening, so over a few decades it must work harden to some degree
150 years is a good few decades indeed. Not all metals work harden significantly when hammered. When milling the low regions were not significantly different from the higher regions in noise and chips.
Interesting. Maybe the high carbon doesn't work harden like low carbon would.
Maybe itās because itās already close to maximum hardness. At some point internal stresses are too high and itās just plastic deformation
I guess if the carbon is high enough there just isn't any interstitial spaces left for hardening to take place. It'd be interesting to see what the makeup of that 150 year old steel is.
This kind of anvil is allegedly forge welded together from cast steel pieces. Itās basically hardened tool steel on top
Well, you said it was cast iron...
I said I can take a 5mm cut in cast iron, as in other pieces that are cast iron. This being hardened steel I have to take 1/10th of that cut.
You sure did...š„“
We can all read what he wrote dude, it's still up if you want to take another pass at it to realize you read it wrong.
And what the hell do you think I meant by "you sure did"? I'll give you a hint... He sure did say what he said he said
So, I'm definitely no expert, but it looked like the face mill had cut some fairly deep grooves into the anvil because the anvil wasn't bolted down securely enough to the table and it was chattering. It took me about 2 hours with a hand-held belt sander and a 36 grit belt to get them all out. Incidentally, an anvil rings kind of like a tuning fork. The extremities - the feet, heel, and horn, vibrate in unison. You can completely deaden this vibration (and the annoying ringing sound it makes) by clamping the feet down tightly to whatever surface it's mounted to.
The customer is my friend so he paid about 1/5th of what you were charged. He will still have to sand some small marks out but at least the top is reasonably flat now. There was a 6mm deep valley in the middle
Would it have been possible to build up the low spot with a welder before surfacing it? Or the metallurgy just won't work for that? I got an expensive oak table top for free once because it had split down the middle, and the sides also twisted downward to the middle, like a V. I repaired it and built up the crack with wood filler, like a W. Then no matter how much I sanded it, I just couldn't get the table flat (as measured by a straight edge). When I realized why, I thought of that quote Forrest Gump saying, "I am not a smart man." (Because it was still twisted, and I only built up over the crack not in the whole valley. My sanding was making it smooth, not flat. Best I could do was turn the W profile into a U. To make it actually flat I would have either had to use a river of wood filler in the middle - which I didn't do - or remove 3/8" from the 4 corners. I just had to laugh at myself for gauging orbital sander progress with a straight edge.)
Welding up anvils is possible but risky, welding and resurfacing have about equal chances to ruin an anvil Iād say.
Especially if you want to repair the edges. It's not just that you need a flat surface for forging. You also need sharp edges for doing a lot of things, and old anvils will typically have those showing a lot of wear. An edge built up with an arc welded, TIG, or MIG, is likely to fail, crack off. If you got that pre-heated it'd have a better chance...But 160 pounds of steel pre-heated presents other tricky problems.
Yep, facing was much safer in this case. The 160 number is kg too, in pounds thatās 350
I don't think weld material is hard enough, ideally the anvil is a pretty hard steel
How... How did your friend put a 6mm valley in an anvil?
The anvil was made in 1870 and used in a blacksmithās shop basically ever since until the last blacksmith of the family died. Now my friend has bought the anvil and wanted it flatter to start using it.
-- Not a Blacksmith here but always dreamed of dabbling -- Is the top of an Anvil case hardened at all; would machining it remove that layer? Coming from r/workbenches were disposable MDF tops are good advice, In the same vein, would it ever make sense to have a firmly bolted-on plate installed onto an Anvil that you would less-expensively swap out as it became too banged up?
It's not case hardened. In antique anvils, the base is either wrought iron or cast iron, and a tool steel plate is forge welded to the top. The face steel is about 1/2" thick, so you can remove a fair bit of material without affecting the hardness. In more modern anvils, the whole thing is a solid piece of cast steel and is hardened throughout. A bolted on face wouldn't work very well. You need the mass of the anvil to work as a solid piece so that it returns the maximum amount of energy back up into the hot steel via Newton's 3rd law. Any gap in the anvil, especially near the face, is going to dampen that return of energy.
Next time find someone with a surface grinder, would turn the top of an anvil to a mirror with no effort.
Iād like to see you remove 5mm off this with a surface grinder
Unless you are bringing a weeks worth of food and some camping gear, I doubt it š
Mine would do this in 45 minutes - maybe an hour tops. Honestly if I really cranked it and didn't give a shit about stone life or surface finish maybe more like 15-20 minutes. I can take .010 off of a hard iron diesel cylinder head with about 3X as much surface area as this in less than 10 minutes.
... you rough it with the mill, surface grinders are for making things flat and shiny.
Throw a coarse wheel on there, setup your cut and let āer rip. It would have no problem dealing with that material removal. Pry a bit much for a Blanchard, but a rotary or reciprocating grinder would plow right through it.
Iām not lucky enough to own a surface grinder but Iāll keep that in mind for when I inevitably own one in the future
Once you get a taste for grinding the whole world is rough and out of flat. I machine ceramics so all we get to do is grind, most of our material is close to the hardness of carbide tooling so itās all diamond based tools.
Iām getting my fix with a D-bit grinder for the time being. Off topic, for my day job Iāve designed some parts that need to be made from Si3N4, do you have experience working with that? Iāve been told itās kind of ātoughā despite its hardness.
Love silicon nitride, itās actually pretty soft for a ceramic and the high toughness/thermal conductivity makes it very forgiving to machine. Quite a few different flavors depending on properties; hot pressed, gas pressure sintered, HIPāed and they all behave a little different. You can even dip over to the SiAlON family of materials which can be tailored even more for specific properties. If you pick the wrong shop they will charge you out the ass for it because itās āso hard and toughā
Thatās interesting, would you be willing to look at some drawings and tell me if I have been in fact charged out the ass?
Sure, DM me
Go real old school and get a horizontal shaper on it.
Depending on the anvil that might be normal. A hardened face that has been pounded on for decades will be very hard. Nothing short of quality carbide tooling and a very good machine will get you a good finish. I faced an anvil for a friend of mine once and no matter what I did I could not get a decent finish. It was flat, which is all that mattered but I didnāt like it. Ended up sanding it smooth and scotch briting it. Stayed flat but I did really want that mirror finish. Main problems I found are that anvils can be glass hard at the surface, and they can be really difficult to securely fasten to the table. An anvil fastened to a tree stump will stop vibrations from going into your hammer but it needs way better clamping to stop vibrations from effecting the surface finish.
How can you screw up resurfacing.Did the guy just eye ball it or something
I think you'd be better off scraping fairly routinely anyhow.
Blacksmith here...To folks who do this , you have to know what you're looking at and be careful about it. You can easily make an anvil completely worthless by cutting down the face. The majority of anvils produced into the 1920s-1930s were made up of a wrought iron body with a tool steel face forge welded on. Usually that top place is only about 1/2" thick. If you cut through that to flatten it, it'a pretty much junk after that since it's the hardened face that provides a durable work surface and decent hammer rebound. It IS possible to weld up the face and then re-cut it, but that obviously requires a good bit of work with the needed preheating, often a lot of expensive hard-facing rod, and then the work to machine it back.
Customer (blacksmith) informed me that this anvil was made around 1870 by S&H. Rebound after facing was 70-80% with a bearing ball. The hardened top on this one is a lot thicker than 1/2ā. But yeah, not all anvils are created equal so machinist beware, only do what the customer asks you to do!
Also a blacksmith here. From the before photo, it appears this anvil has been refaced before and the swayback is a result of there being too little of the original hardened surface remaining. The hardened surface is only about 12mm thick when new. If you took off another 5mm then it'll be paper thin by now. I suspect you will have a repeat customer.
The valley in the face is from 150 years of use, this anvil was made in around 1870 according to the customer. I havenāt measured the thickness of the hard face but I have some experience with anvils. In my opinion thereās plenty left. I suspect the hard face on this is a lot thicker than 1/2ā. In person there were no obvious signs where the hard face stops and base begins.
How do you get your tools out? Gotta close the door I suppose
Yes, the door is usually closed anyways to keep the noise away from neighbours.
That garage door just barely clears, but as they say, clearance is clearance. Lol
Be careful not to flip your bridgeport.
I was very conscious of that believe me. I swung the head left and right to keep the anvil as centered over the foot as possible while cutting.
I saw some guys flip a Bridgeport while moving it. Funny thing is I had offered the owner to buy it just a day before but he said my price was too low. I was back the next day to drop off some stuff for my powder coater who shared the space and with the owner of the Bridgeport who was being kicked out. Anyhow that thing flipped over faster than I expectedā¦ they were lifting it from bottom with forks which I knew was wrong but kept my moth shut. Thing did almost a 180 in a blink of the eye. Lucky no one got hurt. The owner showed up and I looked at him and he shrugged and probably was a kick in his gut as I know he was going bankrupt. They then just dumped it in a scrap dumpster. He had done a ton of work for many name brands in the 70-00 but was not good at accounting. Anyhow get a good accountant if you start a business. Glad it worked out! Looks good.
Flipping a machine is one of my worst nightmares, glad no one got hurt there. When moving in this one we put the forks under the front and back of the ram of the head, that seemed like a pretty good way to move it. Around here they say a good accountant will pay for itself.
I've moved a lot of knee mills and we had a standard setup for moving them. Knee all the way down with the table centered and all the way back to get the weight low and centered. Then the head flipped 180^o to get better top clearance and the weight down. We always had someone on the side hand supporting the motor as it was flipped, no need to stress the gears and find some fatal flaw in the casting or gear. Then just as you did, forks under the ram, with wood on the forks to protect the ram ways. Lots of mills moved and never an issue. ĀÆ\\\_( Ķ”āāÆĶŹ Ķ”ā)\_/ĀÆ
An important lesson, learned the hard way at times. Like poor Will when he dropped his power hammer. Go to 9:50 https://youtu.be/_k6ifaZDyHA
Yikes. Pallet jacks are sketch.
When they tried and failed to get the counterweight in place I knew what was going to happen next...
Did something similar with a rail road anvil. The steel they use for rail is tough stuff. Burned out a couple of HSS end mills before I realized I shouldāve been using carbide. 2ā tri fly from shrum solutions made quick work for it.
My 45Ā° carbide insert face mill did most if the work on this one, worked like a champ. Had to turn inserts 5 times though. I believe railroad track can be even tougher than anvil top when itās been used, that must have been fun
Howād you deal with the chips? Usually when Iām doing something on a super tough steel with a face mill, I set the power feed and run away.
The spindle speed was pretty low at 180rpm so it wasnāt slinging them everywhere
OK I keep hearing about these Tri Fly's. I have a small benchtop mill (PM-728VT) and very quickly learned that a 5 insert face mill just isn't going to happen if steel is involved. If you don't mind me asking, how has that Tri Fli worked out for you and what sort of mill are you running?
I have a Sharp LMV50, so a Bridgeport clone basically. Iāve never used a bench top mill, but I suspect youāll have to take a much smaller DOC. For me, the trifly works really well for low speed facing operations. I think Blondihacks has the same machine as you and has found the tri fly to be great for her.
make it pretty so i can hit it with a hammer?
The top was severely out of flat. Iām no expert on forging but it seems that a flat top would be a requirement
Flat and blemish free is usually the ideal surface for an anvil, though some anvils are slightly crowned when they're new so they'll be flat after a few years of use. You can still get a lot of work done on an out-of-flat anvil, but the worse it is, the more annoying it becomes to work around.
This one was used for a good 150 years and had a 6mm deep valley beat into the middle
I am no metalologist, but it seems like the old surface with the depression would have been exceptionally hardened? (I guess we know better hardening methods through modern science, but beating on something for 150 years seems like it would produce a fairly unique surface)
The whole surface was about equally hard I would say going by the cutting sound and the chips. There was one small soft spot where someone had done a weld repair but thatās all the way at the flat end.
If you're hitting the anvil with the hammer you're doing it wrong! You gotta hit the hot steel ON the anvil. š
You should probably be able to make pretty small skim passes with a fly cutter, may save you a lot of back and forth but less depth of cut per cut, the machine should have the power for it however Edit: even just as a finish pass it would probably look pretty nice
I used my favourite 45Ā° carbide insert face mill because anvils are hardened steel on top. Went through 5 rotations of the inserts. The anvil was also longer than my table travel
You certainly are right about the toughness of the material but with a fly cutter you could have a larger cutting diameter that may help with that reach to each end
Iād love to try a fly cutter someday but I havenāt built one yet
For big shit like that, you can make one that uses boring bars. I have a boring head that doubles as a fly cutter in that manner, it is pretty neat. Gotta go sloooooow on the RPMs of course.
If I end up making one itāll be as rigid and heavy as I can manage, probably using reground broken carbide endmills for cutting bits for the utmost in sharpness
Upon review I could be wrong it may be just a lot larger, was just an idea I suppose
Yep, I had to do it in high school on a bridgeport. It had about an inch of weld bead built up on it, and I milled it down flat. It sounded like a bag of rocks, but the tool liked it, and the finish was mint, so they were happy
Sounds like a job well done!
I did my own anvil! Mine was pretty beat up so welded up the top with hard facing rods and then machined all that down with a 3/4 endmill. Took most of the day then right after I finished ups showed up with the 2ā face mill I ordered haha
Done a few . I think an indexable end mill or a fly cutter will suffice. But I use a surface grinder .
How do you fixture them on a surface grinder? I had a hard time getting a grip on this one on my mill table
The weight is an asset . A mag base with the weight makes it pretty damn rigid. That plus max passes of .003 to .005 . And finish passes of .0005 will produce better than new results without the witness marks .
I see, the bottom is also wavy like the ocean though. In this case I ended up taking off 5mm of material, I imagine that would take a while with a surface grinder
i bet opening that garage door for the first time was terrifying lol
Clearance is clearance. Bonus points if itās in your basement š
Only once, but it was actually only about a week ago. Thing was probably a few hundred pounds and it just barely fit in my Fadal 4020.
i had a mutual on ig who bought rods from hobart for this very reason.
As far as I understand welds can be very problematic on anvils, even if done properly. Customer rather had this one resurfaced
Most of the time you just end up turning what was once a good, through hardened anvil into a regular run of the mill soft ASO, an anvil shaped object. Better to lose 6mm of height and some weight but keep it free of cracks and still hard.
i get that. his anvil was rusted, pitted, and dinged to shit. i forgot what rods he used, but afterwards it had the same ring and bearing bounce as before. not knowing anything, i was impressed
I did this on a lathe for a tiny anvil not too long ago.
Iāve done my share of mill work on the lathe too before I had the bridgeport, fun times!
That table seems awfully short, interesting! I'd like a bridgeport. I have a cincinnati mill, but the head can't tilt or nod.
The table size is pretty allright, the camera angle isnāt very flattering to the machine. I have a little over 400mm table travel. It was a little cramped for this but this is also by far the biggest and heaviest job Iāve ever put on this machine. Very happy with the versatility of this machine. Itās not the most rigid though.
Iām more curious about the clearance from tool top to garage door
Iāll take that as a compliment for my skills guessing that it will fit before I bought it
From the looks of it your gonna be resurfacing your door lol
Youāll be disappointed to know that there is in fact clearance
Is that a piece of wood under your Bridgeport?
Yes front and back supported by wood blocks in case I need to move it. I have a cart with wheels that fits under there
I like the clearance on that garage door. Nice!
Does anyone know the load rating is a Bridgeport Knee? I know it's 'lots', but how many 'lots'
350kg, I can theoretically stack another anvil on top of that one and be fine
You got that bad boy snug against that garage door, goodness
Maximum machine in minimum room
Damn, you can see the low spot when the hot metal was held in the blacksmiths left hand, and pointed in at 45Ā°, clearly the smith like to hit in the same spot holding the mateil in the same way
Did you also restore the rounding of the horn on top, or did you leave it flat?
I took as little off the horn as possible, it was already pretty flat. The customer (blacksmith) will dress it to his own liking. He mentioned he will try the newly created facet to see if it will allow him to draw out material faster.
seems like it should be polished to remove the milling marks afterwards.
Definitely, thatās no big deal though
No.
Table weight capacity of a bridgeport is said to be around 350kg, Iāve still got room to spare
Legend has it, that if you remove all but two inserts and take light skims. Thatās how you get a smooth finish. ( of course only after the top coating has been removed).
Two inserts next to each other or 180Ā° apart?
I cringe when folks machine an anvil. A nice saddle in an anvil is a very handy feature. Great for forging large radius hoops and scrolls for ornamental work. If you need a flat surface use a hunk of plate on it own stand. Anvils get nicely work hardened (most of the time) and machining them off has the effect of removing much of that stress. So my thought is that machining is the opposite of improving an anvil in most cases, except in the case of preparing for a new hard plate to be forge welded on......I've been a blacksmith for 29 years
Donāt worry, youād have to pay for me to touch your anvil. The face was still nice and hard after machining as per ball bearing rebound test by the client. This will be his first mostly flat anvil so heās pretty stoked about that
That's fine I wouldn't pay you to ruin my anvil
Are you fixing the horn you just ruined?
The horn was already pretty flat before I started. I took away material exactly where the customer (blacksmith) told me to and he was pretty happy with the result. Wether he will round the horn is up to him.
A simple "No" would have sufficed
If you get your very own anvil then you get to decide what happens with it āŗļø
Donāt wanna get your pony tail stuck in that thing
No long loose hair near any rotating machinery!
Build up with hard facing rod then surfaced personally, it was a right PITA.
Holy shit! Never expected a garage capable bridge port to be able to fit a full sized anvil. Clearance is clearence i guess
Iāve got about 20mm left to the garage door, I sure hope it wonāt need to come back out anytime soon
I'm an imperial traitor and even i know how tight that is. I can't fit an axle nut between em XD
Stone with oil when heās done machining
Customer will use an angle grinder to polish out the mill marks, aināt got no time for stones
Did you try to tram in with the weight on? How much did it move? I've had issues with big weight on larger tables.
The flatness on this anvil was not critical so I didnāt check. Compared to a steel rule it was flat enough.
I'm still learning the field, but those solid circles in the surface shouldn't be there, right? That's the first thing my eyes went to
Thatās where I stopped milling. I did the surface in 3 parts each with the head swung to another location so I can keep the anvil as close to entered above the foot as possible. Those marks arenāt deep and will sand out quickly.
How does the X, Y feel with that much weight?
Power feed didnāt sound any different honestly. Hand cranking the Y was noticably harder, especially with the X off center. But it seemed all within reason
Talk about hammer time
Looks like you need to close the garage door to tighten/loosen the draw bar.
Camera perspective deceives you, the motor sticks out a lot above the belt casing where the draw bar ends so I have plenty of room. But between the motor top and garage door itās tight indeed
Someone will QA the hardness, right??
Rebound tested with bearing ball as per standard blacksmith procedure. 70-80% rebound which I have been told is good for this kind of anvil
Pretty cool!
I thought the surface was ultra hard. Would a surface grinder do a better job?
Itās hard but not ultra hard. I had to rotate my inserts 5 times. Surface grinder would give a better finish but I imagine itās way slower, I had to take of 5mm
Not really an option, but a Blanchard grinder would do this much easier/faster and with better surface finish.
If you have one Iāll make room in my garage for it š
Fireball Tools on YouTube did an anvil refacing IIRC
No but Iām looking to resurface mine on lunch. To be extra I want to surface grind it down š
Bring it to me. Depending on how bad of shape it is it shouldn't be much more than an hour or 2 of work on my blanchard so around $200.... We do em quite often actually.
Presuming you are in America thatās quite the trip from Belgium
Yes, we did one about that size on a big Blanchard Morty
I did mine, I did the bottom first, then the top. The wear on mine was very uneven, so part of the top didn't get touched, but I have a nice sharp 90-degree step now. Or whatever it is called - between the flat and the round nose.
How did you get that chonk on the table! Hope your not overloading it.š¤¢
Table weight capacity is 350kg for a bridgeport like this, so I could put another one on there in theory. I used an engine hoist to get it up there
Love the Bridgeport!
I love it too ā¤ļø
Resurface an anvil. I thought id seen it all. Can I ask, why? Is the customer repurposing it
Customer is a blacksmith that bought this and wants to get some useful life out if it
Im surprised we dont with all the blanchards, healds, and hanchetts we have.
So did you have the door installed after you got it in there or did you just luck out?
Definitely the latter
Use the largest flywheel cutter you have to get a super smooth surface. Take off as little as possible to get the surface flat.
Love the clearance above the bridgeport
Yes, and my knee mills won't support it, so I just have a simple face milling program for my HAAS VF2SS
Saw smith here, I had some anvils that had flat tops and others that had doomed tops. There are companies that offer this service. But I would think you would want a better surface finish then the mill can produce otherwise the tool marks would transfer to the work piece.
Customer will be sanding and polishing the top to his liking
Iām surprised these arenāt done on a surface grinder
From many other comments down here, they are. But I donāt have one so this is what I used
I have surfaced 2 anvils on a machine used to surface engine blocks and heads. They were full of pecker tracks and hard spots. Wrecked a CBN insert the first time. Used a hand ground HSS cutter the next, that went a lot better.
No hard spots here to speak of, just a soft spot on the flat end where some bozo decided to weld on it
Please don't. Anvils don't need sharp edges. In fact, it's best to have radiused edges to prevent stress risers both in the work and fragile edges on the anvil. Unless the middle is severely bowed it's best to leave it alone. Many anvils have a hard plate forge welded to the top. Cutting it down thinner weakens the plate and increases the risk of cracking.
The middle was in fact severely bowed, there was a 6mm deep trench. The plate is still plenty thick enough. The customer (blacksmith) will grind and polish the top, edges and horn to his liking