Anvil Stand

I've been working on getting some tools and a forge together for, well, too long now. Trying to get a respectable spot in the shop set up for doing some work. Ended up buying a new anvil because the search for a used one was taking too much time...


I was thinking about welding up a rectangular box with a bottom and tamping full of sand, placing a piece of plate directly on the sand with the base of the anvil slightly below the tops of the box walls.

Has anyone used this method before, does it sound like "a worker"?

Any better suggestions?

BTW--I am on a concrete floor, so it is with difficulty that I bury the end of anything in my workspace...

henerythe8th

Henry the IIIIIIII:

Is this what you are talking about?

This is also a 260# anvil. The tray is probably 1" tall and a fairly snug fit around the anvil base. The contour of the base is welded to a flat sheet, which it bolted to the top of the stump. Under the anvil, and whatever small gap is left around the pan, is filled with sand. This anvil will ring like a church bell outside its sandbox. In this setup, it sounds like a Fisher. No ringing at all.

I made a similar pan for a smaller anvil on a lighter stand for portability. But I deliberately made the pan to be a looser fit. Don't. The anvil wanders around too much in the sand and for some reason the ringing doesn't get dampened anywhere near as well. A snug contoured fit seems to work best.

My anvil rings like a fisher without the sandbox! Guess what! It is a fisher! Well, Ed seemed to have stolen my idea(GET OUT OF MY HEAD ED!!!! ), But the way he did it is nice. Oh and by the way, Im guessing you got a Nimba anvil, right?

That looks like one of the Old world anvils. My dream anvil....... :roll:
I got to work on one of the Bulgar style anvils Old world makes and its awesome, incredible rebound and almost no ring. And this one wasn't even in a sand box, it was just strapped down on a stump, and i think the stump was buried in the ground
-Andrei

The sycamore wood I have experience is light weight when it dries, compared to oak and other woods that weigh much more when dry. Others will have to advise on the suitability of sycamore as a stump wood.

Try to locate some 4x4 or 6x6 treated timbers, stand them on end and bolt them together from both sides. Then band the top and bottom if needed. It makes a good anvil base.

My anvil stand is constructed from heavy 4x4 angle iron for both the box holding the anvil and for the legs. Place a piece of wood in the bottom of the box to cushion the anvil a bit. The anvil stand is set a bit low so the wood cushion can be changed from 1/4" plywood to 3/4" sheeting, or a 2x12 to adjust the anvil height if needed. The 4x4 angle iron offers about 3" of height adjustment while still keeping the anvil well down inside the box.

Nolano: One reason I compared the sound to a Fisher is that I also have a 500# one of those. I understand that Fisher made a double-horned anvil, but it was rare. Since I much prefer to work on a double horn, I don't use my Fisher much compared to the one in the picture which is actually a Czech anvil.

Andrei: This anvil is the same one that Old World Anvils sells, although I bought it from Euroanvils back when Steve Feinstein owned it. Since then, Steve sold the business to John Elliot in Virginia http://www.blacksmithsupply.com/, who sells this pattern as "German Style". I also have the smaller one, which I bought for demos partly because the hardy hole is the same size. That way my tools are all interchangeable. (Including between my power hammer and treadle hammer... but that's a different story. )

There are a zillion ways to reduce or eliminate the ringing. Straps across the base work quite well also.

Actually...

I am talking about something like this...

I figured that I could easily weld tool holders to the steel box, and maybe even a simple "third hand" that I have an idea for...

Yes, Nolano, I bought a Nimba they are impressive...

Henry: Why don't you ask the folks at Nimba what they prefer? I have a metal base under the Fisher, and don't care for it.

most of my anvil stands are cast iron ,i have made plate stands i make them the same shape as the cast ones with shaped sides to let you get your feet up to the anvil , then i fill them with cement and then put a thin pice of wood on the top under the anvil, the sheffield cuttlers used a block of sandstone, and the first shop i worked at all the anvils were on concrete stands ,and the cast standswere thrown out in the yard, and the shop turned out a lot of work ,not a welder, drill ,no grinder,no shear, just anvils and vices and a masive whetstone that ran in a trough and you stood over it, so they thought that was the way to set up a anvil in a shop.country shops used a oak stump i have worked on them at shoing compertitions ,but have never run home and cut down a oak tree.

I have seen several folks using the container of sand method. All of them did not use a plate on top of the sand but placed the anvil directly on the sand.

They did say that they would reposition the anvil after a considerable period of heavy use and also that they would sometimes use the sand to bed the anvil deeper if they wanted it a bit lower to use top tools on.

Thomas

Mine is on a truncated pyramid of concrete so the anvil is 250 and the block is 300 - makes for a good, solid foundation. The sand-in-a-box method is popular in Europe with big anvils (over 350 lbs) but they still settle and move around while you work. Their answer is that it's easy to lift the anvil and level the sand - but I like my concrete block. It just sits there quietly and nothing scoots around when I have a helper with a 15 lb sledge.

Seems like I remember the steel sandbox method you describe in the anvil stand plans section on anvilfire, once upon a time. I like the idea of mounting the anvil to a plat and then setting the plate on the sand. That should cut down on the anvil burying itself in the sand. Ought to be quiet, too.

Sorry about the lost image ^^^^ up there. I organized my photobucket accound and it broke the link...
Here is that image again.

I finally got a chance to work on my anvil stand last night and made pretty good progress. My anvil is just sitting on the top of it at the moment, I'll get sand today and shake it in tonight. If my calculations are correct it will take about 250# of sand to fill it up.

I'll post more photos as it progresses...

Henerythe8th

Cool! Let us know how it works out for you.

P.S.: Oooooh! A Nimba!

8)

Wow. THats a really pretty anvil. I dont know why they use black and white pictures on the Nimba site... They really dont do them justice, IMO.

Are you gonna be able to pay the lawsuits for damages from drooling over the keyboard :wink:
Beaut of an anvil if i do say so myself.

Yea thats one nice Anvil, And Stand..

Wow. THats a really pretty anvil. I dont know why they use black and white pictures on the Nimba site... They really dont do them justice, IMO.

Yah they really need a new website with color. There site doesn't do a lot for the case of their beautiful anvils.

Here is my gladiator straight from the foundry.

Another thing that sand affords you is to reposition your anvil and use its other surfaces like a swage block, but I have a swage block and I need my anvil to be backed solidly so I prefer a solid mount.

take some waste oil (not toxic kind hehe) and fill in the sand to make it a bit more solid so the anvil don't move around when you work on it dry sand and it will surely take some time to suck up the oil buts it's worth it. I have also used a sand box before but for the looks i am now I'm using stumps of Larch wood and find it very good any soft type of wood it best be course it takes away a lot of the ringing so id prefer any kind of pine/soft like wood over oak and such. but you loss some back-springing effect.

and yeah it looks like a good anvil but nimba's have never bee in my taste

DC

I use a sand mounted box which is extremely solid. I go years without adjustment. My stand is not just a simple box. About 4 inches below where I want the base of my anvil to be I have two pieces of angle iron welded on opposite sides. I fill the base with sand to 2-3 inches above the angle iron and then take a plate that fits snugly into the box and tamp the sand down. Then I take the plate out by grabbing the narrow finger slot in the center and pulling. I add a little more sand, put the plate in, add an inch or so of sand above the plate, and set the anvil in it. The compression of sand in the small space between the angle iron and the plate really helps to prevent the anvil from moving. Once you get the sand packed it doesn't compress so it is a very solid base. The inch or so of sand that the anvil sits in takes the ring out of the anvil amazingly well. My stand was made for my anvil so it fits it really tight which also helps to prevent the anvil moving as I work on it. I have the 335lb Euroanvil which has been a great anvil. The base of the anvil is large enough that I don't need a pyramid shaped box for stability; vertical sides work great and let me get quite close. I am not sure at what size a rectangular box ceases to be stable. The weight of sand in the bottom makes it quite difficult to move around. A lighter anvil might need some fastening device to prevent it from bouncing around on the base, but I have never had any trouble with that.

I am considering this type of truncated stand for my anvil as well. My concern is the dimensions of the stand relative to the base of my anvil. My O”Dwyer anvil is 209lbs and measures 10” x 9.5” at the base. How much do I add to create enough stability? And stock thickness? I looked at some A36 hot rolled plate in a

There are so many ways to make an anvil stand and most of them are right that this really comes down to preference. I've seen some really good boxes full of sand with a floating plate on top. There is one interesting advantage about this in that you can raise and lower the anvil by lifting the anvil out and tamping in more sand or taking some out.

With a wood or steel stand the same thing is accomplished by standing on something to lower the anvil or putting something under the feet to raise the anvil.

The sand does take the ring out of the metal, but in my opinion a big part of ring is how tied together the stand is to the anvil. The greater grip the stand and anvil have on each other the greater you increase your overall mass and thus help decrease that ring. There are a lot of different way to bolt, crimp, or clamp the anvil to the stand. Of course a lot of this comes down to the tools and materials you have access to.

There is also a tutorial out there I saw that walks you through taking a stump, debarking it, using 2x4's to setup a router and plane true flat surfaces top and bottom and to mount your anvil but I can't remember where it was lol

I went with a metal stand on a 2" bed and used 1" welded down square rod that bolts the anvil in place. Learned the technique here. The legs are 5x3 tubing filled with sand. The cross bracing is also filled with sand. It's a Nimba and has what most people would consider an usual ring in that it really doesn't ring much at all. But if you really start giving it the business it does give a throaty roar which is hard to explain in text here. The two together are 715lbs.

The one thing I like about tripod stands that makes me stay away from the box is the ability to stand with one foot under the anvil itself and my right footback adjacent to the heel. This allows you to get really close to the anvil. With the box I've seen people actually cut a space or have an open end in there so they can have their foot under the anvil.

Did you get a chance to weigh the Centurion and the Stand? I bet your topping 500lb of mass! Now you'll have to device some way of hoisting or jacking it up when you want to move it.

Edited July 4, 2009 by Avadon

Ed, your post of that pic is perfect. got the materials right in the yard. Think it would be a good idea to use cottonwood? Thanks