Anvil like objects.

[Frosty]

Major, MAJOR job hand grinding a swage block out of a billet of steel. You'd end up spending more on grinding disks and cup stones than just buying one. If there's an iron foundry near you you could make up a wood pattern and have it cast next time they poured. In either case it'd cost you a whole lot more to have one machined from a billet. It'd sure be pretty though.

Instead of attempting that I'd start scrounging pieces of heavy wall pipe, saw them in half lengthwise and weld them to a base or piece of sq stock to fit the hardy.

For the through holes you can either use short lengths of the heavy wall pipe or roll different diameter rings from round stock and weld them to a base. Of course you can drill the through holes in a piece of plate but Silver and Demming bits much over 1" are really spendy. It'd take a good end mill to use a fly cutter. You could buy carbide hole cutters but they're REALLY expensive and again you need a pretty beefy drill press or better yet an end mill with auto-feed.

To make the square and rectangular through holes use either heavy wall sq and rec tubing or weld them up from 1/2" x 2 or 3" bar stock.

The hexes are going to be harder to come up with but I haven't used the ones on mine in 15 years or so, so I wouldn't bother improvising them. Unless of course you do have a use for hex swages.

This is my Lancaster swage block and the swages I use most are on the edge facing away, the two larger round through holes for dishing and the 1" sq through hole to hold hardy tools. The 1" x 2 and 3" rectangular through holes are handy for hardy tools as well but that's all I use them for. I use the larger sq through holes on occasion to hold anvil stakes when the vise is taken.

On occasion I use the "V" groove on the near edge to forge triangular cross sections.

Frosty

[m_brothers]

I don't what help I can be, but I use a whole bunch of RR track plates bolted down for an anvil for a while, worked alright. As long as you didn't miss and dent the track plate a little, it worked real good.

[rcs7]

Thanks Frosty.

I think I'll be using one of them as an upsetting block on the floor. Jury is still out on the other one for now.