Jump to content
I Forge Iron

Show me your anvil stands


Recommended Posts

The shelf will be covered up with hardy tools and punches, so I would get poked in a different place many times.:lol:

5 minutes ago, JHCC said:

If you turn the anvil 180°, you can sit down on the step for a breather without worrying about the horn poking you in the back of the head.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.1k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • 3 weeks later...

A couple of month ago decided to make a stand for my smaller PW. Want to do some larger work outside the shop and need it as quiet as possible. 

My neighbour gifted me a bunch of lengths of RHS 5"x2.5"x1/4 that were laying in his backyard for the last 10 years unused. We had to drag them one by one with my 4WD across a couple of backyards (we have no fence) and into mine. This stuff weights a ton. 

Ideal for this sort of work, done a vice stand with it, now is the turn of the anvil.

Two issues to decide, hight and leg spread. 

For the legs angle I settled for 12.5 degree. Shady Grove, the chap that sells Reffies in your side of the pond, makes stands with 15 degree angle. They look a bit too spread out to me, and seen some other with 8 degree that seem they need a prop to avoid pushing them over, so, I thought half way should be just right :)

As far as hight, I never use knuckle hight. This will be halfway up my palm. I am not very toll yet have gorilla arms and can scratch my knees without bending, so my stand plus anvil is exactly 790mm or 31" 1/8 in old money. 

Base plate is 1"

 

22195997_10155032196193424_5714140469780

When my neighbour gave me this stuff he confessed to try to dispose of it by cutting it into short pieces and put them in the rubbish bin once a week. He said that after grinding away for 1.5 hours just for one cut he gave up. He was using a 1/4" thick grinding wheel and a 4" Ozito grinder :)

For the cuts I used a cold saw. My 200 teeth blade struggle a bit with this thick material. Should have used a 140 or 160 tooth blade but don't have one and at $200 wasn't going to buy one just for this job. Just a bit slower but it did it with no issues. 

 

22886100_10155081634958424_7107301478628

 

Isn't it a lousy habit this testing the chisel's temper against the anvil side?

 

 

 

 

22539788_10155064293618424_2762225631605

 

22539837_10155064293153424_2441357612276

22528142_10155064292423424_5855849898123

 

This rigger slings turned up in my workshop some time ago and I don't know who forgot them here. They are very handy and so is having a 12" universal beam

overhead to hang a chain block from. 

 

22730203_10155079168683424_3497297186052

In order to make the anvil real quiet, I decided to fill the legs with sand and oil. 

A couple of bags of river sand and a gallon of motor oil. Did not like the idea of messing around with stinky sump oil and for $12 it wasn't worth it. 

Had the stand upside down and pushed sand in with a rod, added some oil and more sand and more oil until it was 2" from the edge.

Sand and oil make a funny sort of paste. Then packed dry sand real tight, tack welded flat bar upside down then turned the stand around and finished welding. I had no oil leak doing it this way and the steel mass was a good heat sink, welded a bit at the time on each leg and they kept warm at the touch. The last bit of welding I waited till it was completely cool. Welded shut with no issues. 

It is amazing how this stand absorbs hammer blows delivered sideways on the legs. It sounds like it is made of hardwood. 

 

22814108_10155079168448424_7450607324558

 

 

Now for the anchoring. 

I first needed the anvil to sit flat on the plate. Even with one inch thickness and a small surface the plate managed to buckle that little bit, enough to make the anvil rock. Peter Wright base is a flat lump of steel, so I had to do a lot of grinding on the anvil base to make it sit flat on the stand ....

Ha ha, sucked in, no ... I did not such thing, I had to grind the base plate over and over until the anvil sat flat and steady. Blue die was real handy for this sort of fitting.

Resisted the thought of just welding rods to the plate and decided to drill 4 holes with my trusty magnetic base drill. Drilling thick plate with this sort of drills and an annular cutter is just pure fun.

4,  5/8 holes for 4, 5/8 bolts, two 12mm plates a bit of heat and Bob is your uncle. :)

 

22814468_10155081635053424_3198164920126

 

22780647_10155081635133424_7135360021976

23130752_10155094141118424_4784374294564

 

Had enough of work now, do not disturb ... :)

13151615_10153623683943424_1045343950695

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 30/11/2017 at 7:14 PM, slimpickins said:

...No haven’t filled yet Marc, only painted it today. Going to see if she rings at all before I add sand/oil. It’s heavy as xxxx.

How are you going to add sand and oil now?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you JHCC, it was fun to make and the anvil now sounds like it's made of concrete. 

Anchoring with big bots nice an tight makes a difference. Before it was sitting on a stand made of angle and a chain wrapped around it. It would move and made a sound you could hear a mile away. 

Working on an "outdoor" welding table now :) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some like the BK Sydney have bolt holes but most don't. I could have used the groves that PW has for (I assume) anchoring purposes, but that would have needed double the number of holes or a bar across that would have taken away the area of the plate I want to use for upsetting. 

Funny story with the bolts. Bought 5/8" x 4" 1/2" and realised when I got home 2hours drive later, that the store had given me high tensile grade 8.8 ... I was planing to clamp the bolt in place cold, screw the nut on, heat it with the oxy acetylene and bend it. Being high tensile I wasn't sure they would be too happy of such treatment and decided to heat them up in the forge and let them cool down in a bucket of dry sand overnight. Since my interest in knifes and heat treatment is only equal to my enthusiasm for classical Vietnamese opera, I hoped (guessed) that they would lose the factory heat treatment and allow for an easy bend. 

The bolts soften up OK and I could bend them hot and have a couple of goes to get the angle right, but what I did not realise is that by having the bolts red hot in sand I completely fouled the thread and when I tried to tighten the nuts, two of them galled irreparably and had to be cut. Wire brush and anti galling paste took care of that. :wub:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/6/2017 at 11:32 AM, Scratch said:

Here's my 151 pound Peter Wright on a stand I made a while ago.  I can store my hardy tools underneath.

I missed this post from a while back and just now saw it. To say I love it is an understatement. I like the overall style, and it reminds me of mine. The best part for me is the design of the bottom rack with the square cut outs for hardie tools. I like how you terminated the angle on the outside of the legs too...much better idea than making them meet at a point in the middle of the leg like I did. Interesting idea to set the anvil on a wood base in an angle frame. How thick is your bottom plate? I can see how well thought out your design is. Sweet anvil too!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Finially got a permenant stand built for my anvil.   Slot was a bit tight so I flipped the anvil over and drove the stand on to the anvil. Then tipped it back right side up.   I was worried about its stability being so top heavy but it is very sturdy. While lifting it back up as I got to the balance point where the weight was shifting to away from me it got away from me and came to a sudden stop at upright which surprised me with the speed it took off out of my hands!   Winter gloves can be clumsy.  

Plan on adding a hardy rack at some point. As well as bolting the anvil to the stand.  I had planned on put more dies on the anvil but with the hardy that's not needed.

I like the foot print so far. I can get in on the anvil from all sides. 

image.jpeg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...

There are some seriously nice stands in this thread. Mine is pretty basic. A few pieces of 6x6 held together with some 2x4.

I did rout out a recess about 3/8 of an inch deep for the anvil to set in. Then I lag bolted it to a 3x3 foot piece of plate that is buried in the dirt floor of my "shop".

DSC_0343.thumb.JPG.acb1a7e0c91609f1a00dc8e373b3eb15.JPG

DSC_0346.thumb.JPG.9e483c8b014d93d82fb8405a16795aea.JPGDSC_0348.thumb.JPG.0831e7b6492e14cc13cf0464dd652ed3.JPG

 

Here it is after adding some chain to keep it down tight and a few months use, and some repair to the anvil face.

 

DSC_0571.thumb.JPG.0dabbd1630b84071c9f8d929b315456f.JPG

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Vertical orientation of the wood!

Is that a good thing? My thought was that it would be strongest and most resistant to flexing that way. Not that you are really going to "flex" that short of a 6x6, but it would resist the shock from hammering more than laying it on it's side.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is a very good thing indeed!  Each interface wastes energy as they are not "perfectly engaged"  Using the wood vertically means you have 2 interfaces: anvil to beam and beam to ground. Stacking them crisscross sideways means you have a LOT of interfaces, I counted 11 on one build I saw!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gotcha. My thought was just trying to get it as solid as I could. It didn't make sense to me to move from a rail anvil to a real anvil and not have a good base under it. Kind of defeated the purpose. That's also why I put the plate under it. Being on dirt, I wanted to spread out the impact area as much as possible to make it more solid. At least it works that way in my head haha.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately there are a number of examples of the crisscross method shown on youtube built by folks who don't know any better and so leading others astray.  Many people mistake high quality production values for knowledge in a totally different field. Also many people will extol their own work without know enough to make a value judgement on it!  (Or worse, extol the work of others not knowing enough to be able to judge it properly!)   Caveat Emptor is a guiding rule on the net!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Here's my stand. Nothing fancy or original, just 4"x4" held together by 3/8" threaded rods, but it will do the job. I will add a coat or two of oil-based wood stain when the temperature come up enough for it to cure.

The center pieces were purposefully cut an inch shorter than the corners, for more stability. The center also has a cavity that I filled with scraps of iron to increase the weight. I'd say the stand weights about 40 pounds, while the anvil is a small 86 pounds.

5a8df2c143092_Enclume86.thumb.jpg.c7d3da78bf87cdd313d466a6da0f6a3c.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...