Stake holder

[beammeupscotty]

Hello all.  I am new here though I have been forging iron since about 1992... sometimes professionally and sometimes just for fun, these days mostly the latter.  I have never had any decent stakes, just a couple of bick type stakes I made myself, rather poorly done and of limited utility.  A few  years back I came across a large mushroom head stake at an estate sale, literally across the street.  I have used it from time to time held in my leg vise, but it mounts too high to be of much use that way so mostly it has been collecting rust for ten years or so.  Quite recently however, I came across someone locally who was selling a very nice bick type stake, similar to a Roper Whitney, Pexto #927, except with a longer bick, and selling it for a very low price so I bought it.   I don't own a stake plate or a swage block, both items being more money than I want to spend so I set my mind to figuring out a cheap way to mount these stakes in a way that they were actually usable.  Below are pics of what i did and it seems to work very well, for my purposes anyway.

 

 

 

I happened to have a few pieces of 8" x 8" 1/4" wall square steel tubing lying around, left over from my last failed attempt to fit into the corporate world 14 years ago.  Yes, I have been hanging on to them all that time.  One piece became a new anvil base for my smaller, 110 lb. anvil.  Anyway, a little testing revealed that it's 31" length would be just about perfect for what I wanted to do with it.  

 

These two stake had somewhat different sized bases so I needed to accommodate both sizes.  I happened to have also lying around, some 1/4" wall square tubing with an inside dimension close to the smallest part of the mushroom stake taper and some 1/8" wall tubing matching the smallest part of the bick stake taper.  I cut a piece of each of these and fired up the coal forge.  I then heated up each piece of tubing and drove it onto the taper of it's matching stake, to force it to conform to the taper perfectly. I guess I used about 4 or 5 inches of tubing for each stake.  Once that was finished, I marked the larger end of each piece of tubing on an 8" x 8" x 1/4" piece of steel plate, then burned the a hole to match each piece of tubing .  When the holes were in, I used my little 110 VAC MIG welder to weld the tubing into the plate on both top and bottom.  Then I simply filled the 8x8 tube with concrete (it took the better part of 2 80 lb. bags).  I filled it all the way to the top, then pressed my plate into the concrete, matching the edges up with the large concrete filled tube.  I used a long spoon I made at one time to apply borax with to dig out any concrete that pressed up through the holes.  Once the concrete set I welded the 1/4" plate to the end of the 8x8 tube.  

 

This thing seems to hold the stakes very securely and it's  200 lb. finished weight keeps it pretty darn stable in use.  The only major drawback to it is that it will only accommodate the two size stake shafts that I built it for and adding another size would be pretty near impossible.  I am not too worried about that however, considering that it has taken me over 20 years to amass a collection of two stakes.  It is likely I will never need to fit another size.  If I do, I still have another couple pieces of 8x8 tubing.

 

 

[tantofolder]

Very cool beammeupscotty!! I bought a very small stake plate a few years back,but as you mentioned the angles seem to vary considerably among bought stakes.I have taken to shimming mine when needed,but it is never as stable as what you have. If I had thought of your plate method(heating tubing to fit) I would likely have tried it....maybe still will.Not sure what types of stakes you need,but often I make my own.Since generally I use mine for sheet metal, mild steel is sufficient.One of my better stakes though I made from a section of pinch bar and just welded to square stock.Here is a photo:

Welcome to the forum.

[Bentiron1946]

That is a nice looking stake holder. I made mine out of a stump from a locust tree and drilled some holes and then put a small steel plate in the bottom of the hole. Seems to work OK but yours sure seems to be the best solution I have ever seen.

[beammeupscotty]

That is a nice looking stake holder. I made mine out of a stump from a locust tree and drilled some holes and then put a small steel plate in the bottom of the hole. Seems to work OK but yours sure seems to be the best solution I have ever seen.

Thanks very much.  The best part of it was that I had pretty much everything on hand except the concrete and that was purchased for a total of about eight bucks.  Now I just need to figure out something to use it for!