s2srea

Hey everyone. Just a quick update on the anvil stand. Here's what I got so far. It aint pretty, I know. But I'm hoping it will be practical and functional to start with. Im at the station today and don't have all my tools to  finish it off with. Iwent with a style based on the post shared by JHCC (thank you and everyone for the tips). 

Also, as an aside, I'm really excited to share that I really lucked out today. A fellow firefighter I work with is a bladesmith. I shared with him what I was doing and he gave me today this drum forge, coal and some iron to start hammering away at. Super excited. 

Frosty- thanks. I hadn't thought about most of those points.

Dickb-another good point. I knew I'd never use the treated lumber for our pit, but I didn't think about the hot piece of iron falling on it.

SFC. Thanks for the tip. For now I"ll be using my garage, so I'll have a flat surface. 

Thank you, will do! 

Thanks Thomas. Yeah he told me a dollar a pound and I had no idea if that was a good deal or not I had nothing really to go on. Live and learn right? I'm just outside of Dallas.

Hey everyone. I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place. I'm new here and I have been looking in the forums for some time. I have absolutely no experience blacksmithing, but I'm very interested in it and have been doing as much reading as I can the past month or so. 

I went to a local machine shop and asked the owner if he had any spare steel scraps he would sell me. He let me look around. He had a 8 inch piece of railroad iron. I had read about using them here, but I came across this piece. It's 83 lbs and it's cold rolled steel apparently.I don't know if I overpaid, and I don't know what cold rolled steel is, but he charged me a dollar a pound.he ended up being a pretty nice man. He said he used to buy and sell anvils a long time ago. He had called an acquaintance of his while I was there but apparently still sells them and told me he would let me know if he had any he was looking to sell. His employee said his son used to blacksmith and still has a forge sitting in his garage that he might be interested in partying with. I took his number down.

My plan right now is to take four 4x4 treated lumber that I have sitting in the backyard and tie them together somehow and cut a insert between the four of them to let this sit in there. Do you think there's a better idea? Any tips is greatly appreciated thank you so much!