Home Made Anvil

[RossA]

I saw this video on youtube where this young guy is making a knife out of a wrench. Interesting, but I also thought his home made anvil was pretty interesting as well. Not a lot of depth to the steel, but it apparently is doing an OK job for a beginner. I am hoping for something better, but it works for him. Anvil appears about 3:20 into the video.

 

 

[Frosty]

That's a RR track plate and while decent lowish medium carbon steel it's pretty poor for an anvil. Pay close attention to who put this video up on youtube so you'll know who NOT to copy. Some of the mistakes are fundamental and dangerous. Heating chrome in a forge releases hexavalent chrome as a vapor and it is carcinogenic in the extreme besides being a bit more than just toxic.

Find an old broken axle and stand it on end flange up for a sweet field expedient anvil. A little cleaning up with a disk grinder and they make excellent anvils.

Thinking about it it might be a good idea to run Youtube videos past the gang here to help sort the wheat fro the poison ivy chaff.

Frosty The Lucky.

[EJRailRoadTrack]

after remaking this anvil the best I could I tested it against my RR track. I thought the sqaure  edges on the plates was nice to have BUT it had NO WHERE NEAR the rebound of my track. The plate was also very loud, which made it hard to want to work, so I quickly moved back to the track. Now my Dad built me an awesome stand for the track and it has about 20-30% rebound, not as good as an anvil but it does work well enough

 -EJ

[ThomasPowers]

I have a 100+ year old book on blacksmithing that makes fun of anyone that still thinks a sharp edge on an anvil is a good thing.  (Practical Blacksmithing by Richardson) Why do you think so?

 I'm also wary of anyone bragging about "razor sharp" as A.G.Russel once sharpened an aluminium beer can till he could shave with it....