Hello All,

Finally found some rail to use as my first anvil!

One of the scrap yards that is not opened on the weekend has tons of them

I picked up a 26" and 27" piece.

At .35 a lb they cost me $55 total.

I am thinking of doing one of three things

1. Prep them as is and have two smaller vertical anvils (one for me and one for my son)
2. Prep them and have them welded in a T formation 
3. Prep them and and weld them flat to flat so I can use them horizontally

Either way I now have something to bang on.

Once they are cleaned and prepped I will post a pic

Thanks,

Chris 

Go with option 1. Take a look at this thread (design discussion) and this one (finished anvil) for some good info.

Thanks for the guidance 

jhcc is always right. do what he says and you will progress quickly.  

Mainly because I'm directing people away from repeating my mistakes!

Round one is done! (Clean up)

Here are some before and after pictures.

It is amazing what a few hours of wire wheeling and a coat of cooking oil will do.

Next step is to hopefully find a a metal shop with a band saw to re-cut these pieces

Why on earth would you want to recut them?

Make yourself some kind of stand to hold them upright. You want the greatest mass under the hammer blow, and cutting them up will only reduce that mass. 

JHCC,

I don't think i have taken good pics to show how the ends look.

Of the 4 ends only one is flat enough to be a work face.

It is true that given what I will do with them I only need one but the other end of that one looked like the below pic before cleaning it.

I only want to cut about an 1" of of the ends, just enough to cut away the very ragged and have a flat surface left over.

You are absolutely correct, I want to keep as much of the mass as possible.

Thanks again for your thoughts,

Chris

Oh, OK. I see what you're saying.

Carry on. 

There's a military answer.

Which service?

thats one ugly cut.

If it were me I'd save one for later. There's lots off tooling in one of those rails. I'm actually getting ready to take my old rail anvil to work with me to use the bandsaw there to cut a couple pieces off for a couple tools including a flatter from the base and the upright.