MikeL

Haha no we can't listen in on cell phones. I remember when that Malaysian airline went missing there were people saying that an AWACS took control of it which is also untrue. We can't effect other aircraft. We are basically air traffic control in the sky. Nothing special really.

Haha unfortunately I'mnot on anything cool. I'm a crew member on the AWACS. I work on the computers in the jet so I get to fly but it's nothing glamorous.

I head back to Oklahoma on the 14th. I'm up here for Red Flag so I'm flying just about every other day. It is amazing up, I'm not sure if I've ever seen a place this beautiful.

I'm at Elmendorf AFB for an exercise.

Haha it stormed today so I moved it inside. I'm not sure how my wife would feel about me hammering metal in the house. I can't wait to get back from Alaska so I can try it out.

For anyone one who remembers I was going to use an I-beam for an anvil but then found a giant pin from some sort of heavy machinery. I have finally finished making the stand and I wanted to show it off because I worked hard on it and it took me a while to drill out the hole for it.

Nice, I've considered going to the local high school shop class and have them make me a stand in exchange for some donated metal.

That's actually perfect. I don't have a welder so anything metal would be difficult to attach to the anvil. Thank you very much.

It's 5" across and 13" long. I'm still trying to decide what kind of stand I want to do because I don't have a lot of tools at my disposal. Actually they gave me a refund on the I-beam. I don't have a lot of tools to work with so cutting that thing up would have been more than difficult.

Haha next time I'm at the scrap yard I'll see if I can find you one, but I don't think I'll find anything better for under $25 so I'll probably stick with it for a while.

Oh yeah it's sold. There is a small hole in the bottom that looks like a bolt went through it but other than that it's a sold piece of 73 pound metal.

So I went back to the scrap yard and came out with this for an anvil.

Yeah I'll probably cut it in half and use it as a forge and anvil stand.

I suppose, I'll just go back to the scrap yard. They had a circular piece that I thought about, it didn't have much surface area but it was solid.

I'm sure I did, it's about 220 lbs and probably about 3-4 feet long

Well I got a lot more than I need so I was going to use the extra to fill in the gaps along with some foam for noise reduction but thinkingabout it now that just sounds like a lot of work.

So I got a piece of I beam to use as an anvil without really looking into it first, I guess out of excitement. If I filled the gap between the top and bottom to add support and mass would it work as an anvil? Or would it be better to cut my loses and get something else?