Anvil stand

[David R.]

Portable anvil stand. Got tired of dragging 150 pound anvils around for demos. Got this little Vulcan in a trade and decided to make a stand for it. No nails or fasteners. Gravity and the two wooden keys lock it all together. Made out of one wide poplar plank.

[gote]

Very cool design. I love it as a piece of carpentry but have you used it a lot? It seems to defy the usual thoughts about stands being very rigid. Poplar is not the hardest of woods.

[Marc1]

You can make a stand out of 3/4" plate and bolt the anvil down,  or you can make a box with 3/16" and fill it with sand. Both will work in their own peculiar way. 

That timber stand will work in keeping the anvil from rocking and the anvil will absorb the hammer blows purely with it's mass. Nothing wrong with that. 

[alex L]

wish my anvil stand was that nice. good job dave!

[JHCC]

Very nice. Thinking outside the box, you've made a new and better box!

 You could even take along a couple of sandbags to drop inside before you put the top in place, to give you some extra mass.

[ThomasPowers]

I've used a hollow stand before, actually a couple of them...used to store the tongs and hammers in the hollow when on the road.  A fun one was made from a hollow log I fitted in a top from 2x12 to.  Looked like a massive log and was a lot lighter for transport...

[Al Stephens]

Great idea, very nice stand. Sure to be a conversation starter. Thanks for sharing.

[John McPherson]

Excellent work, and would not be jarringly out of place in any historic setting. May have to have a crack at something like that for the museum.

It does remind me of one that Kim Thomas used at a demo.

[David R.]

I like that one!

[David Kailey]

This is my anvil stand I designed it about 4 years ago. I cut the entire top out of 1/2" sheet. every stand I have ever seen with welded loops and flat bar for hardy tools always look like crap, they get bent up break off....just looks sloppy. My top plate is clean, tough, lasts, doesn't bend or break, its dead sexy. Off course 3 legs no wobble and a lower basket to hold whatever. For hold downs I bent some flat bar put a center hole thru it and then drilled and tapped a hole in the top plate. Everything on my stand is clean, tough, sturdy and will hold up with no issues. I have built and sold 18 of these so far and had no complaints whatsoever. My anvil is a 240lb Rhino papa anvil. this set up is also pretty quite, no ringing......thank the lord.... it gets old after awhile.

[JHCC]

That is pretty darn sweet.

[Tubalcain2]

agreed.

[John in Oly, WA]

Nice! That top plate looks like it was cut with a CNC laser or plasma cutter.

[David R.]

Very nice stand. Mine was designed to be light and portable, storable, (I can knock it down and store flat), and fit with historic periods. I tried it out at a demo for school classes last Friday. Look what one of the other presenters brought by, things he dug up in his yard. The largest white object is a bar of lead with what appears to be the English broad arrow impressed on it. Also of note is the black English musket flint just above the hardy hole.

[ThomasPowers]

Ahhh which "historic periods"?  With blacksmithing you have such a range of them; about 3000 years worth, most of which that anvil and that stand wouldn't fit in...19th century works well though as well as much of the 18th century. It would look out of place for a Viking demo...

Moxon says of the anvil  "it is commonly fet on a wooden Block, that it may ftand very fteady and folid, and about two feet high from the floor, or fometimes higher, according to the ftature of the Perfon that is to work at it"  (I have a facsimile edition which uses "f" instead of "s" according to the usage of that day)

[JHCC]

39 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

(I have a facsimile edition which uses "f" instead of "s" according to the usage of that day)

Well, technically not an "f", but an elongated "s" (known as the "descending s" or "medial s"). It was distinguished from the lowercase "f" by not having a crossbar (although some versions do have a small nub on one side) and was used when the "s" occurred at the beginning or the middle of the word.

Interestingly, the Greek alphabet also has two different forms of the lowercase letter "s": "σ" (intervocalic sigma) for the beginning or middle of words and "ς" (terminal sigma) for the ends of words.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Moxon has the nub and so looks like an "f".  Shall we discuss the letter "Thorn" next?

[JHCC]

þat's fine with me!

[Frosty]

I'm waiting

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Moxon has the nub and so looks like an "f".  Shall we discuss the letter "Thorn" next?

 

2 hours ago, JHCC said:

þat's fine with me!

Yes. . . I'm waiting. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[gote]

13 hours ago, JHCC said:

Well, technically not an "f", but an elongated "s" (known as the "descending s" or "medial s"). It was distinguished from the lowercase "f" by not having a crossbar (although some versions do have a small nub on one side) and was used when the "s" occurred at the beginning or the middle of the word.

Interestingly, the Greek alphabet also has two different forms of the lowercase letter "s": "σ" (intervocalic sigma) for the beginning or middle of words and "ς" (terminal sigma) for the ends of words.

 

The German language has  two different s the second one called 'sharp s' (Scharfes S goggle!)and indicates that the preceding wovel is long. and alternates with double s depending upon which wowel or diftong that preceded it.

[David R.]

With the rivet forge I used it would be 19th century. I haven't gone back as far as vikings yet.

[ThomasPowers]

I thought that there were six sigmas in Greek....

David, Point but I could take a picture of my shop and not include the twin single action bellows from my Y1K set up too.

[JHCC]

8 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I thought that there were six sigmas in Greek....

Sssssso they ssssssay.