I am new to black smithing and I would like to make a striking anvil.  I work with several machine shops in the oil and gas industry and have access to steel plate in a variety of alloys and thickness.   What characteristics make an ideal striking surface?     Grade/yield and hardness, etc.      Recently did a project with 110ksi T-1 plate.   Not sure if that is going to be prone to chipping.  

You want something hard (resists deformation) AND tough (resists cracking); you definitely don't want something very brittle. I don't have strong familiarity with oil field steels. If you can post those that you have available to you that you know to be at least hard OR tough, then we can help you down-select.

Are you planning / able to / willing to heat treat, or do you need to use them in the HT condition you get them? This may sway the choice considerably. 

The thick end of fork lift fork seems perfect

Most striking anvils are made from mild steel to prevent chips flying off from missed strikes or the hammer rebounding and hitting the striker. Brian Brazeal uses 10 L X 4WX3Thick with 3 legs 

HEAVY and TOUGH! (And cheap!)  whatever you got that meets those criteria.  Perhaps a chunk of drill sub if you have access to machining?

Scott, I’ve worked a lot with T1 it is very tough and never had any trouble with chipping   It’s what I always used to rebuild dozer KG blades and backhoe buckets to prevent them from breaking again. If I could get a piece 2-3 inch thick I would use it. 

On 12/2/2019 at 6:54 AM, Chris Williams said:

You want something hard (resists deformation) AND tough (resists cracking); you definitely don't want something very brittle. 

A correction: my wording earlier wasn't just unclear, but wrong. Toughness is mandatory, whereas hardness is nice to have only after the toughness requirement is met. You don't want something at all brittle. 

On 12/2/2019 at 12:12 AM, S. Louque said:

What characteristics make an ideal striking surface?

Once you have an alloy that won't chip, then the best characteristics are mass, mass, and mass.  A 5" thick cast iron swage block is a better striking anvil than a 2" thick slab of steel be it mild or exotic alloy because of MASS!  Watch the videos carefully and you will see that the modern generic striking anvil jumps around no matter who built it or who is hitting it.  Anvil movement is serious inefficiency.  I suspect that us professional smiths could tell if we had a heavy well fastened anvil or a light loose one under the hammer with our eyes closed.  

Mine is 1.5” mild steel I believe.   It’s set on a stump since you don’t need to get in close on a striking anvil.  It’s not as efficient as my anvil but I sure wouldn’t want to swing the 12lb’er at my anvil