[TheForge] Re: anvil stand

Wed Jan 7 23:15:00 2004

[email protected] wrote:

> The reason I am asking is that someone stopped by a few days ago and
> was sure that I should have something between the anvil and the base.

For years I had a 300# anvil bolted directly to the wood of a heavy
(ca. 140#) beech stump which was in turn spiked to a wooden floor
directly over a 6x6 floor beam.  I liked it.

The new shop has a concrete floor.  I couldn't spike the stump down
and it woggled too much.  So I made my first steel stand from
1-1/2x1-1/2x1/8 angle with 1x2 hollow structural legs and put the
anvil on 1/2" of rubber/fabric conveyor belt.  It's okay but it
doesn't feel quite right and it walks a bit.  I'm going to try
clamping the anvil to the stand in a way that puts the rubber under
compression.  If that doesn't make me happy, I'll replace the rubber
with 1/2" plywood.  As a last resort, I'll bolt the whole thing to the
floor but I want to avoid that.

Re Minimum startup gear: I started with a 200# anvil, a pretty nice
rivet forge with hood and flue, a fairly good machinist's swivel base
vise, one pair of tongs, oxy-acet torches and whatever was in my
mechanic's tool chest.  That included, of course, one light cross-peen
among random hammers, cold chisels and ViseGrips.  The first tool I
made was a very ugly but usable hardy from a VW rear axle.  That was
enough for me to try to put into practice the occasional pointers I
was getting from Bert Shaw [1] and get me fired up.

[1] That's "Dr. Shaw", if you don't mind.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
[email protected]                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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