How To Train (on) Your Anvil.

My wife and I are staying at her aunt’s house while we are looking for a home. Her aunt has very generously offered to let me use her shop for my activities temporarily, so long as I cleaned it up first and sorted out about 5 years worth of debris for a yard sale.

My first project after landing in The Silver Valley was to prepare an anvil out of a piece of railroad track. Given my typical enthusiam I treated it with my usual amount of overkill.

I started out with good intentions. I quickly found out that my 220 grit Dremel sanding barrel got rid of most of the rust. This revealed an extensive network of pits and lines in the top surface. I expended my current inventory of Ace tool grinding stones to remove these, a process taking roughly 6 hours. The orange grinding stones were good to use first, followed by the gray stones, and then the pink ones.

I then wasted a series of Silicon Softies weels (100, 200, 600 and 1200 grit) trying to polish the surface, only to find that I was not able to remove much of the stoning marks that way, even though the surface between the stoning marks become nice and shiny.

At that point I should have probably left well enough alone. At this point I had a usable anvil that would not introduce marks in my work. But I had seen accounts of bladesmiths insisting that thier anvils take a mirror polish, and I wanted to see how much effort it would take to get those kinds of results.

I was also curious. I was having problems acheiving a polish on my fine silver and I wanted to understand more about the polishing process. I felt that the anvil would be an excellent way to train myself in the fundamentals of polishing. The results, as you can see, are incomplete… but at least adequate for anvils.

Finally, I tried a 60 grid Dremel sanding barrel, that finally decimated the stoning marks but instead introduce worm tracks from the barrel vibrations.

Then my Dremel quit, probably because the carbon brushes had worn out from constant use.

Following that, I experimented with a series of sand papers applied manually. I made certain to clean the surfaces with water between applications of 80, 100, 150, 220, 400, 600, 800, 1500, and 2000 grid sandpapers. This entire polishing phase required another 4 hours, which reduced the worm tracks but did not eliminate them.

I finally applied polishing cream to the surface with paper towel, and then washed and tried the finished surfaces.

The difference is literally night (after) and day (before)!

My 1 foot piece of steel railroad track, before and after polishing.

Here are reader responses to my request for suggestions on how to improve my finish:

Kerri said:

3 things may help you achieve the mirror type finish you seek…
1- did you do each round of sanding at 45 degrees to the other? (or 90- it doesnt matter but I use 45)… if you sand with progressively finer grits and are not perpendicular or oblique to the previous sanding lines then you only reinforce the deeper grooves as well as introduce risers via fine grit undercutting the previous grit. I have a 6″ belt sander from harbour Freight that makes a good uni-directional sander. vibratory or drums typically leave the marks you describe. You will know you are done with the finer grit the moment you cannot see any of the previous grits marks on the surface- that tells you you have passed that previous grits groove depth and are making finer strikes into the metal. Shift 45 degrees left or right, and start with a finer grit after cleaning the surface. Sanding in one direction only and no back-sanding or orbital motions. It would not hurt to clean the surface as well as possible potentially with acetone or a stripper of some sort to remove any oils as well. Water gets a majorityof the grit residue- but you may find it does not remove the adhesive or any of the resin from the paper backing that has oxidized onto the rail (look for dim or grey patches or where the water beads or does not run smoothly)
2- this looks to have been a used railpiece- if it was actual functioning track then the upper rail surface is compacted and very tough to begin with- if you care to anneal it- try that. As long as you are working non-ferrous it will still be plenty hard- if you are movingto the ferrous realm then I would suggest leaving it in the hardened state.(This means more time for results versus the annealed- but it retains residual hardness and rebound)
3- Once you get to a point where the 1200+ or finer grits are used- try switching to a chamois with tripoli- this takes FOREVER it would seem- but it works- back the chamois with a piece of 2×4 and repeat just like the sanding- then rouge or zam- whatever your preference… I have done 2 anvils like this (step one and 2) and like them- I have never goneto the rouge state, but have used the tripoli step once I get past 2000 grit.

Bentiron said:

I finished my section of RR rail with a cheap 4″ grinder from Harbor Freight, one of the cheaper ones they have for around $10 on sale, and used some good quality flap wheels. Yes, I know it sounds strange to buy a cheap grinder and good quality flap wheels but if you can’t afford to buy both at good or higher quality you buy what you can and the grinder was much faster than a Dremel in getting the polishing done. After using flap wheels down to 400 grit I then switched to 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper that I purchased at my local Ace Hardware and then to 800, then 1200 for a final. Lots of work but gives a nice finish to the silver when doing hammer work. If you’re going to be forging steel you will do better standing that piece of RR track on end and using the end as an anvil, more mass under the hammer blow equal better results in moving hot steel.

I think I’ll follow those when it comes time to repolish the strike marks out of this polished anvil after using it for a while. And I think Kerri’s advice is something I can definitely apply to my next efforts in silver!