Welding Tips and Tricks

I am trying to build up a damaged wrought iron anvil with a high carbon steel face. Everything I read says wrought iron is very hard to stick weld. Some books suggest oxy-acetylene welding is the way to go, since it can help to melt the silicon/slag portion, using a mild steel rod. I have stick welded layers with 7018 and stainless, but can still easily remove with chisel. Are there any great tips out there? Thanks.

Just spitballing but using a cast iron rod and preheating maybe?

Charon6.6 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:23 pm I am trying to build up a damaged wrought iron anvil with a high carbon steel face. Everything I read says wrought iron is very hard to stick weld. Some books suggest oxy-acetylene welding is the way to go, since it can help to melt the silicon/slag portion, using a mild steel rod. I have stick welded layers with 7018 and stainless, but can still easily remove with chisel. Are there any great tips out there? Thanks.

I'm an anvil guy and over the years have seen all sorts of repairs attempted...most don't work too well. There is really only one method that seems to work reliably, and it's called the "Gunter Method". They specify Stoody brand rods that are available, but not cheap. The last time I bought ten pound boxes of each kind they were around $100 per box. They do list "or equivalent" but I haven't seen anybody cite more readily available equivalent rods.

One local friend took the Stoody specs and asked the folks at Crown Alloys (here in Michigan) for equivalents, and they had some, but I never found out what rods they suggested.

Commonly available rods like 7018, etc won't work as you've learned. I do have one friend who has repaired quite a few anvils that had missing sections of the tool steel face using Frog Mang (Lincoln's name for it) which is a hard facing rod. That seemed to adhere to the wrought iron pretty well, but I think you may be limited in how many passes you can stack vertically, so it's something to consider/check.

Here's a link to the Gunter Method...it's not a long article.

https://www.anvilmag.com/smith/anvilres.htm