Stands for Anvils, Swage Blocks, etc

I was looking about and seeing how people set up their anvil, and there are several threads, but not a whole lot of different setups pictured. I thought a thread for showing some pics would help everybody and give a chance to show off ideas. I decided to use a stump for my "new" 1912 Trenton anvil. It's 168#. The first time I used it I set it on the stump for my old anvil, which was all wrong and did not support this anvil well. It rang like a church bell! I used Locktite exterior sub-floor adhesive under the anvil and fastened with brackets made from 1x1/4 A36, drilled and hot bent. I should have made the brackets about an inch longer so I could get 2 lags into the s…

DO NOT build the stand until you find out the height of the anvil face that you can use comfortably. Any arrangement of materials such as cinder blocks, bricks, boards, pallets, etc so you can raise or lower the anvil can be used for testing. You will want to start with the face of the anvil about knuckle height when standing erect with a closed fist. From there raise or lower the anvil until you do not have to bend over and allows you to feel comfortable when swinging the hammer. My suggestion is to NOW place a piece of 3/4 inch thick wooden sheeting on the anvil face. Hit it 3 times with the hammer with the same swing and impact you would use while forging. Notice t…

Made this stand for Rigid #9 anvil. Has 3" cast steel wheels and handle. The legs are sand packed and welded. Weighs in at 96lbs.

Put together a little over built stand and tie down for my 112lb Trenton (ACME) anvil. I put a piece of horse trailer rubber mat under the anvil and the cross straps to see if it would affect ringing.

I made a new anvil stand this weekend. Filled it with sand & oil. The ring is already deadened considerably but I'll eventually add silicone to further help with it. I'll also eventually be adding attachments for a tray swing, rings for hammers/tongs, cups for punches, etc. The stick welder is downhill from the anvil location and my little flux core welder probably won't be able to penetrate the 1/2" thick plate so anything I add will have to be on the column or somehow drilled/bolted. The base is currently anchored with RR spikes but I need to draw them out longer. Another task in the 'eventually' column, lol Anyway, I'm pleased with it.

So I recently have acquired a log of seasoned poplar weighing about 1000 pounds from what I can remember from the last time I looked at it it was approximately 2.5’ in diameter and around 4’ in length i plan on buying a larger chainsaw bar in order to be able to cut this in half so that I can use it as an anvil stand once I get a proper anvil I was thinking about possibly making a carve out on the bottom for a toe jack to lift it if necessary but my question is is it even worth it to make this cut out or should I just leave it flat

In his shop in New York’s Hudson Valley, Jonathan Nedbor has all his anvils mounted on stands welded up from 1/2” plate. Here’s a representative example: The mounting system is straightforward and effective: two tabs welded one on either side of the base anchor a pair of double-ended bolts, which in turn secure a pair of heavy bars that hold the anvil firmly. (Note the locking nuts to keep the system from loosening up in use.) The height can be adjusted by adding and removing boards between the anvil and the base, and tool holders can be added and repositioned simply by pinching them between the boards and the base. One little modificati…

With apologies for the low resolution (it’s cropped from a screen grab on my phone), here’s an interesting anvil stand from China: Apparently, the answer to the question “Wooden block or steel tripod?” is “Both!”

What are most using for mounts to their leg vises? I have a 26" tall x 19" diameter pine stump but most leg vises need 30"+.

I have a wrought iron anvil with a welded steel face, so it's naturally very loud. Fortunately, I have taken most of the ring out of it with chains wrapped around, a magnet each end, bolting the feet to a large wooden stand, and a 10mm rubber matting between the anvil and the stand. A meter outside my workshop, you can really hear very little, unless a do some more robust hammering. You can't hear the higher frequency ringing, but the deeper thud, transferring into the concrete slab itself. Has anyone experimented with rubber under the anvil stand itself? Or even industrial rubber feet underneath? My wooden stand is very wide/ set out, so there is no risk of it …

So I have a small anvil that I made at my trade school from which I go for welding out of a piece of railroad track it has a horn a pritchel hole and a step I have easy access to lots of lumber for the base I was just going to mount it to a big log my stepbrother works for a tree felling company so I can get it relatively easily so my question is what type of wood should I use? I was at first thinking cedar because of its rot and weather resistant but I will not be able to get cedar so what is my next best bet? I live in north western Pennsylvania just for context of tree types I also have a post vice I picked up for 50 dollars that is currently mounted on an oak 4x4 that…

I own an anvil weighing about 180 pounds, good rebound of 80% to 90 %, when I use a bearing-ball for check. But: It's ringing very bright and is annoying loud. Fact is, I don't want to disturb the neighbors living around the shop more than absolutely necessary. I want to keep the actual harmony intact and so I decided to use the stand I had to build for the anvil as a possibility to dampen the sound as far as possible. As a first step I made a tripod out of heavy 6-inch tubes, about 1/2-inch strong, on top I welded a 1-inch iron-plate as a rest for the anvil, bottom side iron-plates as feet for stability on the floor. I filled the tubes with quartz-sand before wel…

I recently inherited a huge, fresh cut pine stump that I'd love to use as an anvil stand because the height is perfect, but I know soft wood is... Well... Soft. Anything I can do to make it take a beating?

So, I've had this idea swimming around in my head for a few years now and this week I finally had the push to try it out and get something done for a club work day we were having, hosted by a very tall club member whose anvil is way too tall for me, lol My first anvil when I started out blacksmithing was a railroad rail. After reading advice on this forum for standing it on end to get more mass, and making modifications to get the most out of it, I mounted it in an old wooden trash bin filled with sand and a metal plate. That's what I used until I bought the Peter Wright from TwistedWillow. I kept it though - and used it again when we moved to that tiny house for a f…

I will recover piece of machinery to realize an incudine of fortune save in campaign ho trovato a piece of an old industrial machine only that you dovrei throw it via a pit without attrezzature di sollevamento type scavatrici muletti or grub manually .qualche suggestion thanks If there is a 500 kg caten stop available that works on a bar to use it as a cam, I must travel 30 meters and manually test it in the vehicle case, thank you for your suggestion.

Is there a formula for the leg angles when making a 3 legged anvil stand?

Here's a clip from one of Kim Thomas's livestreams, showing the tool rack on the back of his anvil stand. This holds his three favorite hammers, a pair of scrolling tongs, and his wire brush. Click on the video for Kim describing a few of its fine points and design considerations.

I saw this on FB today!

Attached are pictures of the base I made for the mini swage block. It was assembled from 4"x4" treated pine sections bolted together with 1/2" threaded rod. 1"x1" angle is attached with wood screws at the top to keep the swage block in place. It fits snug in the base notch in the verticle position. I think this will work well. I may brace it to my work bench with a bar clamp if needed.

I'm using a cut off log that I fished out of the woods near my home at the moment. It was already close to the right size I just had to level with a chainsaw before I loaded it up. It's a bit punky and rotten in places but it keeps the anvil off the deck for the moment. On a side note, when I put it next to my forge it sank a little bit in the dirt after a couple of days and leans towards me which I didn't notice at first but as I used it the tilt got more pronounced. I actually like it that way now. Anyway, I'm running through ideas in my head of what kind of stand I want to make and it occurred to me that with the clay soil we have here, I could probably build a frame a…

Hey guys and gals, This is the mock up of my anvil stand, as i have never tried blacksmithing yet, i was wondering if you all see anything in this mock up that would cause a problem. i want to make any changes before final sanding/grinding of stand. i will work on tool holders once i know this is all ok. let me know what ya think. The angle iron that i used is small this i know but it is what i had on hand, once i see that i will be continuing with this trade/hobby i will be swapping out any metal for a heavier guage. Thanks in advance,

Hi All, I finished making an anvil stand that I tried my best to duplicate from a Jason Knight video on YouTube, but he didn't show if he added a hold down. Below is the finished stand. I haven't used it yet, but I did beat it with a 2x4 a few times to see if it would tilt/move the anvil... Nada. I can lean on one end and it will lift a little... that makes me uneasy. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Just looking for opinions and insights on turning this thing into an anvil stand. It's about 100lbs and the anvil is 130lbs. The hydrant is 20x11.25. The anvil is 9.25x6.5 at the base and 8" tall. It sits on top without overhanging. It sits about 2" too short for me as it is but nothing some blocks under it wouldn't fix. Long story short, I have a couple different ideas and a couple different directions I was thinking about going on making this a functional stand but I wanted to see if anybody had any ideas or opinions on it. Or any better ideas to use it for, other than a fountain/yard ornament. Thanks in advance. Also I read an article here somewhere that th…

I'm guessing this is antique track? I've seen varying dimensions of rail track online and know nothing about it. I was able to take this piece from the school I work at. It's been sitting in the shop forever. It weighs about 12 lbs. I'm sure this is far from ideal, but my wife will kill me for spending more money on a hobby if I go buy a chunk of steel at the moment. Given that this is what I have to work with, how should I mount it? Is surface mounting on a heavy piece of wood enough? I thought about cutting a "T" shaped keyway into a log with a chainsaw and driving it into place so the the underside of the top rail would make contact with the log. Make sense? …

I'm just getting into blacksmithing, but I've been in machining and fabrication for 30 some years. Which means I know almost nothing, but you can't convince me I don't know it all... So my first question is about anvil stands. It seems 95% of anvils are mounted to either tree trunks or fabricated tripods. The wood mounts seem as though they could add mass, but wood is naturally spongey (compared to metal) so it seems to me that these mounts would absorb some energy from each hammer blow. That's bad, right? The metal ones are usually pretty spindley at the legs, so I can't help but think the mount is adding a spring constant of its own to the assembly, and they don't …