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Anvil stand..


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Hey fellas,

     I'm brand spankin' new here and I figured I'd pick your collective brains.  I *finally* received my new anvil (100lb Emerson) and I'm about to put it on a stump of cedar.  I hate doing things twice so I though I'd ask for advice.  I am not from the area I'm in but I might be able to find someone with a welder if things go that route.  In all my experience I've always seen a telephone pole buried in the ground a few feet with concrete, banded with steel near the top of the post with the anvil sittin all pretty like on top and anchored.  I live in Seattle now ( something I'm not very keen on ) and I'm a bit worried I'll catch xxxx if I go ringing out the neighbors.  I'm wide open to ideas, suggestions, and/or constructive criticism.  I appreciate the help by the way and look forward to future brain pickin'.

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Welcome aboard Oberu, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many Iforge folk live within visiting distance. Just saying in one post isn't going to do much good.

Use Google or Yahoo and add Iforgeiron to the search terms. eg, "Anvil Stand" Iforgeiron. Capitalizing and or placing terms in quotes narrows the search down.

Burying a log in the ground several feet is something fostered by the "More is Better crowd" I've never noticed any benefit and it makes it ridiculously hard to arrange your work area. Think of the odds you'll guess right the first time you mount your anvil.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Anvil height is based on the stature of the individual blacksmith and the type work he is doing.

Make a temporary stand with the anvil face at the break of the wrist height. Put a piece of pine sheeting on the anvil face and hit it with a hammer. If the crescent is at 12 o'clock the anvil is too low, if at 6 o'clock the anvil is too high. if at 3 or 9, you are not holding the hammer correctly. Adjust the anvil so you get a nice round hammer face indentation in the wood. Now use the anvil at this height for a month, then adjust the height as needed. You have the anvil height to fit YOU.

This has been said and typed more times than I care to remember.

There are other suggested starting points but no one ever asks if the author is 4 foot tall or 7 feet tall. It makes a large difference in the height of HIS anvil.

 

This does not keep you from researching the different opinions of the proper anvil height, Many times the threads have much wisdom included that you need to dig out.

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Just cut it and don't bury it. I believe there is a thread titled show me your anvil stand. Also instead of searching Anvil, try Stand instead. You should come up with tons of posts.

Also search quiet, deadening, etc.. There are several ways to quiet down the ring of an anvil. 

Welcome to IFI from the sizzling desert of Southern Nevada.

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Note if you are building your stand out of dimensional lumber on the vertical you can trim the pieces to make a corral for the anvil before fastening them together.

I have several with front and rear boards a bit longer but as I swap anvils in them I didn't cut them to hold a specific anvil from side to side.

My big anvil just uses a few fence staples.

As to fastening them together I lined them up on the side of an I beam and used pipe clamps to hold them together and then drilled with an extra long electricians bit designed to go between studs and then used the bolts from guard rails and telephone poles to fasten them together---my local scrap yard gets both in on a regular basis and I can straighten bent guard rail bolts ....   I don't glue them together as I like being able to loosen them a bit and thump the stump on an uneven floor and then tighten them back up in a non-rocking configuration...  I used ugly wood; rough sawn oak boards that were the floor of a scrapped horse trailer, (scrap yard let me have the wood for free) the good boards went for shelves on the side of the shop, the ugly ones got my sawzall and cut up into lengths to make 3 stumps of differing heights---when you teach it's a good idea to go the 3 bears route...

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