Making an anvil(eventually)

[Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin)]

You are right, need to just start and if I get to a point where I need a heavier anvil the I should scrounge for scrap or save for a well made heavy one. And by that point I should know what I would really want and how to go about it. 

Thanks for all the replies.  I am more than willing to be put in my place. Thanks for doing that all of you who put up with my lack of knowledge. Seems to me like I've been a toddler, exploring an option that wouldn't be feasible for a while and may never be something I could reasonable do. Having said this, I have learned quite a bit just from this discussion and would like to thank everyone again for that as well.

[Steve Sells]

ok Since you do seem to have a bit of an open mind, a 100#  to 150# anvil range will do most everytihing a lone smith needs to do.   Many good ones in that range can be found for under $400 which is just a little bit less than the 300#  crubicle would have cost  you.

[Chinobi]

Keep that mentality, it is very rewarding to make your own tools, and even more so to use them to make other things :) but don't forget to be practical about it. If you want to 'make' your own anvil, find yourself a big chunk of steel at a scrapyard and mount it up on a tripod base, voilla you just made your own anvil from something totally unrelated!

Steve read my mind too, how can you state with any certainty what your needs will be in the future if you have yet to swing your first hammer? You might end up going the opposite direction and find yourself more drawn to small scale work or jewelry and sculpture, which is small anvil territory, rather than 300lb anvil territory.

Find yourself a blacksmithing intro course and et your feet wet, then after you have started to get a feel for what you are doing you can start forming opinions about what you actually need, rather than what you think you want. I believe there are some good associations in your state that would be excellent starting grounds for you.

(excuse the inevitable swapped words and autocorrections, I blame the phone >.>)

[the iron dwarf]

you can have a heavy anvil now if you want at little cost, I could go to my local scrapyard and get any one of at least 6 pieces of metal about a foot round or square and about 4 foot long ( many more bigger or longer or shorter to choose from too ) and dig a hole in the floor to set it in to the right height, I will let others work out the weight of that.

As is it would make a perfectly good anvil.

 

a piece of rail track would do the same.

the working part of an anvil is mostly about the size of the face of your hammer.

try the TPAAAT and buy a normal anvil when one comes your way if you must have a modern normal anvil.

[ThomasPowers]

Take a look at the katana forging sequence in National Geographics "Living Treasures of Japan"  they are using a rectangular solid for an anvil but are doing great work.  Take a look at the norse anvils used for pattern welding swords---small dinky things along with a few large rocks.  They did great things with them.  Give a thought about how much your expectations have been coloured by fantasy books, video games and Hollywood  and how badly "off" they tend to be.  (I worked with a game designer who wanted to get the making of a sword *right*  with the smith starting with ore and ending with a full made blade---I tried telling him that nowhere in the world in history *until* modern times was it ever done that way and finally gave up when he said it should only take 6 hours of time---took longer than that to dig the clay and build the scandanavian short stack bloomery, took longer than that to do a run and produce a bloom, took longer than that to work the bloom produced into usable form, etc.

 

As was previously mentioned get started first and *then* decide what your dream anvil will look like.  As for the make it from the ground up; may I commend to your attention "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" Alexander Weygers  (abebooks.com has a copy for about US$11)  that has a lot of building your own tools and blacksmithing equipment.  (and on the cheap too! though I once built a complete beginner's kit: forge, blower, anvil and basic tools for under $25 with the fanciest tool used a 1/4" electric drill---no welder!  Not a bad forge either I used it for welding billets for several years...)

[the iron dwarf]

anyone got the link to the guys making kukri blades in nepal using sledge hammer heads, 

[Graham Gates(Ionic Muffin)]

an Anvil is a lump of heavy stuff we lay hot metal on so we can beat on it with a smaller lump and change its shape. 

Well, I knew this was true, but in my head I didn't believe it like i should have. After watching Secrets of the Viking Sword I was astounded to see the smiting using essentially nothing more than the equivalent of a 20 lb sledge head embedded in a log and he and his apprentice worked the steel on that anvil, although it did take them 11 hrs to move the steel out from a chunk to a sword. 

[arftist]

If you feel you will need a 320 pound anvil eventually,(and I agree, you should really have a 320 pound anvil eventually) and you want to make it yourself (which I totally understand, I make all my own tools and machines myself, unless I can buy them for cheaper than I can make them) then fabricating an anvil is a very good idea. Casting an anvil is only a good idea if you work at a tool steel foundry, know or become a great patternmaker, pay off the moldmaker crew and the night foreman, and still pay the owner for his alloy (h-13) is expensive). 

 

I would cut an anvil blank out of six inch plate. Cut the entire waist and the bottom half of the horn from the six inch plate. Have the radiograph operator chamfer both of the top edges to about 60 degrees meeting at a point along the centerline.  Then get a fork lift tine 6" wide by 3 or 4 inches thick. Leave 5 or 6 ''hanging off the back to make a heel from and run it a few inches past the lover half of your horn so you can make a good section of the end of the horn out of tool steel. This is an area of an anvil which is usually soft but would be a lot more useful if it was hard and tough for the first few inches. 

 

I would weld the two pieces together with 1/16" inner-outersheild with about a 500 amp power supply. Dam off the ends of the vees with thick copper or bronze bars and squirt ti full of weld. Should take less than 2 spools. You could weld it with smaller wire/equipment, but you are going to really up the timeframe if you do and unless you are really careful at following proper procedure, you will have a better product with the big spray transfer setup. 

Don't forget to start with a good size gap between the two parts. 

 

Then go after the horn and heel with a cutting torch.  You can cut the hardy holes with the torch too. Just cut them a little small cut as close as you can, and then file them out with a good sharp course file. You can shape it to look almost like your favorite London pattern or German or whatever. 

Personally I would go for a 100 year old German pattern. They seem the most useful design overall and modern American made and high quality imports are mostly based on this style. 

 

While you have the big welder out, I would weld on some BIG feet too. I would want mine to have about a 12" wide base.