Greetings all.

I've been reading up on deadening anvils (for the sake of my neighbors) and aside from the standard chains and magnets, people seem to get the best results by adding something soft between anvil and stand. I've read positive things about a layer of cork or rubber underneath your anvil and an interesting youtube video showing a layer of builders silicone.

My question is whether that's as effective with much smaller anvils. I am a complete beginner and have a small railroad track anvil. My concern is that the weight of the anvil helps to rebound force into the strikes, and while on a large proper anvil that weight comes from the steel itself, I imagine a firm fixing to a solid stand helps a lot with the solidness of a small, relatively lightweight "anvil" and I'm worried that putting a something soft between the anvil and stand (wooden sleepers in my case) will have a negative effect on the forging.

Like I said, I'm a complete beginner, so any advice would be really appreciated.

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1 hour ago, Drunken Dwarf said:

My concern is that the weight of the anvil helps to rebound force into the strikes, and while on a large proper anvil that weight comes from the steel itself, I imagine a firm fixing to a solid stand helps a lot with the solidness of a small, relatively lightweight "anvil"

Not quite. Rebound is rebound, and you're not going to change it based on the mass of the stand or how tightly the anvil is attached to the stand. The best way to increase your rebound with a railroad track anvil is to stand it on end, so that you are putting more of the anvil's mass below the hammer.

Builder's silicone is a GREAT way to attach an anvil to a stand. Whatever minuscule amounts of energy may be lost to its softness are more than compensated for by its tenacity in holding the anvil to the stand. This may not increase the rebound, but it will help the entire anvil/stand system resist the force of your hammer blows, and thus redirect all the force of those blows into the workpiece.

DD,  I'm partial to 100% clear silicone calking.  What I did is routered out the shape of my anvil base on my anvil stand (wood stump) and then siliconed it on.  Routering helps to keep the anvil in place until the silicone dries, otherwise you need to watch the anvil to  be sure it doesn't slide right off or brace it in some way to prevent it from doing it.   Routering isn't needed, but I think it helps establish a place for the silicone to bed-up.

You will be very surprised at home much the ring is deadened.  I was.  My Trenton went from a "Ping" to a "thud-ing".  Just make sure you use enough.  A layer that is too thin will help a little but not as much as a nice bed of silicone.  Let us know how it goes.

 

23 minutes ago, MC Hammer said:

You will be very surprised at home much the ring is deadened.  I was.

This, 100%. When I switched from wedging my Mousehole (aka The Undisputed King of Anvils) into its metal stand to bedding it down on about 1/4" of silicone caulk (found a tube sitting around the place), I was shocked at how much less noise it made. While wrought iron body/steel face anvils aren't as notoriously loud as cast steel, they're still pretty loud!

JHCC was the one who suggested this to me.  After I did it he said "Told you so!" when I was amazed at how quiet it was   He knows what he's talking about so try it.  

8 minutes ago, JHCC said:

This, 100%. When I switched from wedging my Mousehole (aka The Undisputed King of Anvils) into its metal stand to bedding it down on about 1/4" of silicone caulk (found a tube sitting around the place), I was shocked at how much less noise it made. While wrought iron body/steel face anvils aren't as notoriously loud as cast steel, they're still pretty loud!

I couldn't agree more. I only used a single bead of caulk around the perimeter of the foot of my anvil and the ring is fully deadened.

6 hours ago, Billy Salyers said:

a single bead of caulk around the perimeter of the foot

Same here with our Hay Budden, it's as quiet as the Vulcan now.

Thanks for all the great advice, I'll definitely be calking up my stand when I've finished sanding it perfectly flat (the joys of getting a nice flat edge when all you have is a cheap jigsaw).

i used a piece af 6 mm rubber sheet between my anvil and its stand and then attached it with 2 strips of steel and 12inch screw in the wooden base and works like a champ noise was more than halved. and i have a 4inch magnet stuck to the anvil as well and that seemd to help a bit ( i got that one from jonh from blackbear forege on youtube)

Clamping the rubber on top of the feet tightly will do a lot to quiet it; even with leaving the hard to hard junction from the base to the stand.

Well I do agree silicone caulk will help; but not for the reasons you think. Silicone caulk fixes the anvil in place, but keeps the anvil as a single object with a resonance.  The harder it is fixed to a stump, the more it will become "one" object, and "one" object made from different resonanting materials cancel the sound out. I'd bet that if you use hard epoxy instead of silicone caulk, it'll even become less noisy.  I tried it already on two identical (loud) cast very hard tool steel anvils, and I posted it here on the forums (glueing anvils down ). 

So I'd say try and make your anvil into a as homogenous and heavy as possible object, and don't consider a bolt or a strap enough to make it "one" object.

on my mobile anvil, which I refuse to fix to my stand, I use a polyurethane rubben 3 mm sheeth; but it's nowhere near as efficient to deafen an anvil as glueing it down to a wooden block.