anvil improvement

[cwhittington]

I just got a new russian anvil thats good for the price but the face is soft. Heat treatment is an option but alot of work- would it be a bad idea to weld a tempered plate of 5160 or D2 to the face? Would it lose rebound (and thus efficiency)?
Thanks

 

[L6steel]

CW, couldn't you just dig a small pit in the ground and get a good fire going and work it down to coals and then pile in a couple bags of charcol briquettes and then lay the anvil on top face down and cover it with something to keep the heat in. Might even want to rig some type of bellows to increase the heat. Have some 5 gallon buckets of water handy and once the anvil is hot enough start dousing it. After this treatment check the anvil face for hardness. If it doesn't get hard enough then think about adding to it.

 

[cwhittington]

Alright! That's exactly what I wanted to do in the first place but I let others talk me out of it. Don't know why but your the first who didn't think it was too big a challenge to try. I like the buckets of water idea alot better than the one I got from a book on hardening RR rail which was to pick it up by an attached wire handle and immerse in a 55 gal drum of water and move it up and down until cool.
In fact, I've got more home-made charcoal than I know what to do with and a hair blower blowing through a buried pipe to the bottom of the fire pit could probably melt an anvil if you had enough charcoal.
Thanks!