ANVILS

[bazmak]

Hi everybody. No Myfords to do at the moment so looking around for small projects.I have taken an interest in anvils and watched numerous refurb/make projects
Learned a lot about what i always thought were just lumps of steel.I learned that the older original anvils are superior and worth thousands of dollars
Imagine my surprise when on Utube i learned they can be found buried in soil in the woods and dumps.and refurbished
Now i have no room or requirements for an anvil but what i do need is a small riviting block or small anvil for general punching/metalwork
All i have is a small piece of railway iron/dolly that i have had many years and a small vice for flattening metal etc.Model engineer blacksmith
I hunted thru my scrap bin and found offcuts of heavy wall RHS and flat bar that could be welded together and cleaned up.The only piece i needed
to buy was the top plate 100x25mm flat x 300 long for $15. Making was simple but labour intensive. I think it will get plenty of use and minor mods
can be made for different applications.Photos show the end result and i am very pleased with it. PS if i find an old anvil at the dump i wont knock it back

 

[RM-MN]

For light duty your anvil will be OK but for heavier work the anvil depends on its mass to absorb the shock of the hammering which is why some of the old anvils are so expensive and heavy. Now that you have made that one, set it on a wooden platform instead of on concrete as the shock of hammering will eat up the concrete. You may also discover that the top surface needs to be hardened. Your piece of railway iron is probably work hardened on the surface and will make a better anvil. Without hardening you are likely to find the surface dimpled in a short amount of time.

 

[ozzyjoe]

if i find an old anvil at the dump i wont knock it back
[/QUOTE]
Ah-ah-ah.....
definitely you and me have the some hobbies .
Look what i found in the dump years ago ....

 

[RM-MN]

if i find an old anvil at the dump i wont knock it back

Ah-ah-ah.....
definitely you and me have the some hobbies .
Look what i found in the dump years ago ....
[/QUOTE]

You have a higher quality dump than I. All I find is rusty cans.

 

[davidyat]

Bazmak, when using a fly cutter with that kind of diameter, what speed is recommended and how much is the max depth? Still learning from you masters.
Grasshopper

 

[GrahamJTaylor49]

I've been looking for an anvil for about 20 years and I expect to pay at least 50p per lb.
I will get one eventually.

 

[L98fiero]

You have a higher quality dump than I. All I find is rusty cans.

You are fortunate to have a dump where you can recycle others scrap/junk, here in Ontario they will charge you with theft for removing anything, they'd rather recycle at a loss than allow you to make some use of it and as for scrap yards, I've been told by a friend that most won't allow you to scrounge on your own nor will they find anything for you, probably all that comes from the lawyers. Other places I've heard of people finding $50, 10hp, 3 phase motors for phase converters, that will NOT happen at any yards I know, it doesn't seem to matter how old they are.

 

[ozzyjoe]

You have a higher quality dump than I. All I find is rusty cans.
[/QUOTE]
I love old anvils.
I did fall in love with the one on the photo below, from an old copper smith shop. Some lucky guy got to take her home. He over bid me at the last second of the auction.

 

[Wizard69]

Nice work bazmak. Improvised anvils is all I've ever worked with and yes they are a big compromise.

Hi everybody. No Myfords to do at the moment so looking around for small projects.I have taken an interest in anvils and watched numerous refurb/make projects
Learned a lot about what i always thought were just lumps of steel.I learned that the older original anvils are superior and worth thousands of dollars

Actually it isn't so much the age, it is just act a quality new anvil costs so much that used anvils are often the more cost effective. It isn't uncommon to pay $5+ dollars a pound for anvils around here. That means a 150 pound anvil can cost you easily $750. I've been to enough auctions to know that this is not unusual at all and is wy I don't have an anvil at the moment.

Imagine my surprise when on Utube i learned they can be found buried in soil in the woods and dumps.and refurbished
Now i have no room or requirements for an anvil but what i do need is a small riviting block or small anvil for general punching/metalwork
All i have is a small piece of railway iron/dolly that i have had many years and a small vice for flattening metal etc.Model engineer blacksmith

Railway rail is a fairly common anvil improvisation. If you can pick up square bar stock it can also make for good anvil or staking tools. Ive even hammered some metal against granite stone in a desperate situation.

I hunted thru my scrap bin and found offcuts of heavy wall RHS and flat bar that could be welded together and cleaned up.The only piece i needed
to buy was the top plate 100x25mm flat x 300 long for $15. Making was simple but labour intensive. I think it will get plenty of use and minor mods
can be made for different applications.Photos show the end result and i am very pleased with it. PS if i find an old anvil at the dump i wont knock it back

By the way one important aspect of an anvil is mass. Filling your anvil with lead of concrete might help its performance a bit. Of course that impacts portability.

Speaking of portability, I can remember my father having a small anvil that literally could be hand held. Maybe 15 pounds if that, probably bigger than a 10 pound hammer. It was shaped just like an English pattern anvil and was of very high quality, apparently being made well before I was born 60 years ago. I wish I knew where that iron went. I've seriously have considered trying to carve something like this out of a block of tool steel. I guess it is fond memories of watching him as a kid use that anvil for all sorts of little projects in the garage, your post brought back memories!!!!!

 

[cl350rr]

my father had a 4' piece of railroad iron under his workbench, it was on rollers right under the bench top and you could pull out as much as you needed to pound on and roll it back out of the way when not used. I have a small railroad iron anvil I bought years ago, it is shaped and fairly useful for what I need

 

[packrat]

Rail For Anvil

$50.00 Rail For Anvil for sale in Salt Lake City, UT on KSL Classifieds. View a wide selection of Shop Tools and other great items on KSL Classifieds.

classifieds.ksl.com

 

[bazmak]

My small anvil works well for what i need. I have bonded some 3mm hard rubber to the underside and may put a round hole in
to hold a few collets for forming or pushing out pressed in items.When working as a sheetmetalworker we had a 4m length
of railway iron for closing off cleat joints etc down the length of ductwork.We were allowed to cut off 6" or so for a dolly
as per photo. Must say it did get shorter. With regards to the question on the flycutter.I normally have it set about 50mm dia and use it all the time.Max cut about 20 thou and a beautiful finish. For this job i had to set it at the max ,about 100mm dia which is not ideal
Max cut was about 10 thou and i did get a 2 thou dip across the 100mm width. Although not necessary i did scrape it flat
using blue and a surface plate. All in all a good filler job mainly from scrap and it will be put to good use

 

[kquiggle]

I picked up this steel slab at an estate sale for a whopping $5 - I'd guess it weighs in at about 70 pounds (~32kg). I mounted it on with some scrap wood on a tree stump from a tree that fell in my yard so I have about $10 invested in it. It's pretty crude, but still very useful when I need to pound on something. It would be nice if the shape was blockier, but for $5 I'm not complaining.

I'd love to have a real anvil but in the meanwhile this is very useful in the shop. My point is - if you come across a decent chunk of steel or iron at a good price you might want to consider this type of use.

 

[packrat]

I like your big hunk of steel for a anvil, what brand of milling machine is that in the back ground.?

 

[kquiggle]

I can see why you might think it's a milling machine, but it's actually a Gorton pantograph; more details here if you're interested :

Academy of Lagado - My Pantograph (Gorton 3-Z)

[September 2018] [Feb. 2019 - in the shop photo] [Feb. 2020 - small update] Below is the pantograph - finally installed in my shop.

sites.google.com

 

[packrat]

Thanks, we had a smaller one at work {a large corporation} to make signs and employee name tags. I had the opportunity to use it some..

 

[Wizard69]

I've been looking for an anvil for about 20 years and I expect to pay at least 50p per lb.
I will get one eventually.

It is more like $5 a pound for a good quality anvil. And yes they are very hard to find these days. I've been out bid at most aucitons I've gone to recently.