Living Room Anvil

[Shainarue]

Ha!  Right?!

But seriously. I want a living room anvil to work techniques with the clay & hammer. I want to work on these inside, ideally in the living room vicinity so I can still hang out with Ashley - who apparently misses my company! I've tried a few (admittedly ill-thought out) options but they're not working. First attempt was just the dining room table because it was fortuitously the exact height of the top of my outside anvil and I truly didn't think the clay was that hard. The table practically jumped off the floor when I barely brought the hammer down onto the clay. Second attempt was on a side table with a yoga block stacked on top and then a plastic clipboard to set the clay on. My hope was that the dense foam of the yoga block would absorb the shock but alas - the floor shakes whenever I land a hammer down on the clay bar - and I'm not even using a full arc!

Maybe the trick is to have an actual metal surface under the clay? Maybe I need a foam floor square under the legs of the table I'm using? Does it need to be heavy to absorb the impact? (Surely not as heavy as metal-on-metal impact though?) Ya'll are usually excellent for thinking outside the box so I'm hoping you can help me come up with something. If money was not a consideration, I'd just get a jewelers anvil or a smaller piece of railroad rail but there are many other blacksmithing related things I want to spend money on before a mini-anvil for clay work. So free - that's the ideal here.

Surfaces which already exist in the living room vicinity: side table, wooden folding table (tv tray style), dining room table, wooden chairs, cat trees, credenza, cedar chest. I don't want it to be permanent (or rather - Ashley doesn't want it to be permanent, lol). The thickest steel I have is 1/4" tread plate. Other than that, I have a bunch of foam floor squares, a bunch of pallet wood lumber, and (sacrilege as it may sound) large thick books. My favorite setup would be one that isn't noticeable as a striking surface until it IS a striking surface. 

Maybe I just need to play around with all these possibilities until something works. I was really hoping someone else had already gone through this though and had a solution so I could pass GO and collect my $200.

[Glenn]

Do NOT to overthink simple.  You have answered your own question  in a couple of different ways.  

Modeling clay at room temperature is not so stiff that it takes a lot of impact to form or deform the clay.  Instead of hitting, try using the hammer and tools and simply push the clay.

Look for, or make, a lap anvil that fits across the legs and the actual anvil is between the legs and in the lap.  Another option would be a cobbler's cast iron shoe last anvil that fits across the legs and the actual anvil is then in the lap. 

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning Shain,

What is wrong with a saw horse or a piece of 2x6 , 12" long, on your lap. Modeling Clay softens up with manipulation (in your hands), otherwise use Play-Doh.

Neil

[George N. M.]

If the floor is shaking when you whack something on the dining room table anything else you whack that hard will make the floor shake too from the transmitted energy unless there is something soft in between.  I think the idea of a lap anvil is excellent..  It can even be a piece of plywood or a board across your lap.  If your clay is to stiff work it in your hands like kneading dough for awhile and it will soften up.  Also, warming it in hot water or a BRIEF period (10-15 seconds) in the mircowave can make it more pliable.

Also, you could entice Ashley to be your striker/minion.  If you help her with her fiber projects (L remember holding a LOT of yarn between my hands as Martha wound up a ball) she should extend the same help to you.  I occasionally asked Martha to be a striker when I ran out of hands and she was OK at it but I didn't need her often.

Happy New Year.  May the only thing negative for you in 2023 be your covid tests.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

The idea behind using modeling clay to practice on is to learn how the metal will move under the hammer to gain the kind of hammer control that lets you strike where you need reflexively so all you do consciously is direct the metal. This does not require heavy blows just the feedback between strike and effect, your subconscious will do the rest.

A light wooden mallet on a wooden anvil works a treat. You need both to be smooth preferably painted so there isn't more friction than necessary, dry wood will cause the clay to stick and mess up the simulation. 

The easiest outside the box solution for rattling the floor is step outside the box of your apartment. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

Okay, I guess I should have specified the techniques I wanted to practice. One of the things I want to work on is hammer grip / swing / strike. Get comfortable with the paper style grip and see in the clay when I'm not landing square. So I want to stand as I would at the anvil. And I want to use the hammer weight that I would use at the anvil. And the strike force as well. 

Warming the clay: for hammer technique I totally could do that - and will. I could even use Play-doh for that. 

I also will use the clay to try out techniques before applying to metal - but yeah, that can happen with a platform on my legs. This is when I'll want the clay to not be so soft - because I'll want to see it reacting as similarly to the hot metal as possible - and I'm told that is best achieved with cold plasticine clay. I tried with Play-doh and it doesn't hold its shape when pliable and when cold it just cracks. 

For now, I'm just gripping/swinging the hammer in the air once in awhile. I keep a hammer on the dining room table and whenever I notice it while walking by, I grab it and give it a few tries. It's getting a bit more comfortable but I have no idea if I'd be hitting square by swinging in the air, lol

So here's what I'm going to do: I'll set a lap anvil on top of the the tv tray next to the recliner. (And by "lap anvil" I mean my existing lap desk, lol. It's what I was using when I was playing with playdoh but I had it in my head that I needed to use the hammer and just went way off course trying to reinvent the wheel. Glenn was right - DON'T overthink simple!) Keep the hammer & clay on it and floor foam under legs. Anytime I go to or leave the recliner, do a few hammer practice hits using the 24oz hammer and standard swing. When I want to practice with seeing how different techniques move metal, I'll just move the lap desk to my lap and work away. 

George - Ashley has never needed me to hold yarn. She has a swift & a ball winder so she doesn't need my extra hands. Come Spring, she can hang in the hammock and knit and be right across the patio from me. I do the occasional body measurement and that's about it.

Thanks everyone for the input. I was just making it harder than it needed to be, lol

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning Shain,

Forget about striking as hard as on your Anvil!!

If you want to practice striking hard, get a stump and hammer Nails into it. Don't get a wimpy stump, get a hard wood or green wood stump (green means not dry).

Neil

[Frosty]

Please don't do that, air swinging puts undue stress on joints and muscles you NEVER use smithing! It doesn't help your swing or grip, what you want to practice is best done at the anvil on a thin-ish piece of wood where you can practice grip swing and power in a healthy useful way. Even so the best way to program yourself is by beating HOT steel. 

Practicing on modeling clay is entirely different and best done with light hammers on cool or cold modeling clay. Hot steel is plastic and moves very much like cool modeling clay so when you practice moving it with a hammer the cause and effect is similar enough to develop good muscle memory. While clay memory may be different it's so close your subconscious will adjust almost immediately. Do use a good grip on the hammer it's important to good technique.

You can use different colors of modeling clay to model pattern welds and develop various patterns.

So, in short. Air hammering is B A D, STOP iT! Putty Patting with modeling clay is GOOD!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

Okay okay! No more air hammering! To be fully clear though, I was letting it follow through and not stopping it midway as if there was something there. I really was just trying to get a feel for the paper style grip because it felt so odd. I tried that grip when hitting hot steel and kept seeing hammer marks so I knew I wasn't keeping the hammer straight all the way down - and that's why I wanted to practice on the clay - but inside because I don't want to use forging time to practice that or I'll never get these danged tongs done. 

Why would hammering clay on a solid surface inside be different than hammering hot metal or even wood on the anvil outside? Specifically only for the purpose of developing a better hammer swing. Swing - hit - see mark. Rotate for new surface, repeat. Keep repeating until I am consistent. I'll start doing it outside after I've closed up for the evening and just spend 5 minutes or so on it - but I'm just curious as to why it's different than inside.

[Frosty]

Driving nails is a good exercise for developing hammer skills.

Hammering clay isn't an exercise in hammering, it is an exercise in cause and effect manipulating a plastic medium. You can learn as much without a hammer by pushing it with a flat object or even your fingers. Using your fingers is more abstract though and much more useful for experimenting with pattern weld pattern development.

Do you remember pre-school hammers? Plastic, an ounce or two, maybe Play-School, I don't recall. Those are perfect, smooth face and very light you can roll a little gob of modeling clay into a snake or roll it flat like bar stock and it will move just like hot steel under the hammer. 

That is ALL working modeling clay does, it shows you how it moves under the hammer. For this proper hammer technique isn't important, your brain processes millions of microscopic muscle movements per second walking. It WILL learn what angle and position a hammer face does what quickly. Once you start swinging a hammer at the anvil your brain knows what it needs to have the effect you want from the steel all it needs to do then is adjust your swing. 

Seriously, breaking a learning curve into bitesize pieces and learning them separately speeds things up.

Air swinging a hammer does ZERO for your skills and even letting it swing to your knees it's stressing the wrong muscles for no good reason. Were I showing you face to face I'd switch you to slab handles and as an exercise tape two pens to the hammer face on the edge you're favoring, have you close your eyes and write your name over and over on an anvil height surface. 

This again is programing your brain to know where the anvil is and where the muscles need to be for the desired effect. Sure you can feel the pens contacting the paper but that's okay, it just gives your brain more data. 

It sounds weird but you CAN deliberately teach your brain things you want. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

"Seriously, breaking a learning curve into bitesize pieces and learning them separately speeds things up."

Works for dog training - dunno why it wouldn't work for human training too!

This is all good info, Frosty. Thank you.

I did do a little wood-on-anvil practice last night. I posted in the other topic thread about that. 

[Frosty]