Some disrespectful bustard beat the snot out of that anvil. He should be strapped to a stump and a hammer & chisel used on him.
I'd have no hesitation running E 70 S6 solid wire with Co2 to build the face back up. Might cheat a little with some carbon weld out blocks on the edges to make life easier. You'll want to pay attention to preheat and possibly want to bury it in vermiculite to cool.
You do have the bottom of the horn to learn on.
I wouldn't mess with metalcore wire unless you have experience. The problem will be where your build is shallow at the ends of the wallow.
Haha, well, it was in service in a fabrication shop for almost a century... Everything wears out eventually... The cutting torch on the horn seems unnecessary though >_>
So.... you'd recommend building up the dishing? I have a friend with a mill, I was just going to get it decked ^^; Having it decked would let me keep that nice, now ultra-dense steel where the anvil deformed. But, welding it would let me keep the mass...
I just looked it up, and a 10lb spool of S-6 is only $30... that's not bad at all! :D S-6 is air-hardening steel, right? If that would work for building up the edges as well, I'd be tickled pink! I wouldn't mind spending a day or two just sitting and welding on the thing... The problem would come with pre-heating it... a 300 lb anvil won't fit in my oven, or my forge :P I read a weed burner is an effective way to do it, and I can probably manage to borrow one of those.
That would be a lot of vermiculite o.o I mean, I can get it, but wow... I realize it wouldn't slow the cooling as much, but would wrapping it with fiberglass insulation slow it down enough to be safe? 400 degrees should be under ignition point.
please note the iron is supposed to be hot when forming!
yours is rougher than mine was, some nasty stuff done to that poor anvil!
Yours looks to be cast steel, the difference between a 70xx series mig wire and a 70xx arc rod (think the metal, not the flux) is very little. The real difference is in the thermal shock, the mig is going to be less plus more consistent. The arc rods do vary a little as they burn down, but in the long run it is the preheat and slow cool down that does the most good.
Now do you need a perfect anvil? you might be best just cleaning it up some with a grinder, using it, let the next guy worry about it.
If you are going hard face the surface, built up the low spots with a common rod, then add an even hard surfacing layer!
Good info, thanks :) I'm much better with a MIG welder than an Arc welder anyway, so that would be ideal.
A perfect anvil? No, not at all. But I want it to be as good as it can be. I do NEED to clean up the edge that is all chipped away though. That's the edge I'm going to be doing a lot of work on (And presumably the edge the previous owners did a lot of work on :P) So it needs to be addressed one way or another. I could live with the dishing... but, as I said above, I have a friend with a mill, so I don't have to live with it :P
Anywho... here's how the horn restoration went! It's not 100% done, but it's certainly good enough for my purposes. The few hash marks you still see on top of the anvil are barely able to be felt when running a finger over them. I tried to remove as little metal as possible. But, all that ugly cutting torch work has been made lovely and usable. I didn't like that the top of the horn was flat near the base, so I rounded it over. I've never seen an anvil with a flat there, so I'm assuming that was wear. I don't care about the cutting ledge. It can stay how it is for now. I might dress it up a little bit in the corner. (Note: it rained overnight, the odd splotches are just water :P I oiled it down before I went to bed to prevent rust.)
