More Home Built Anvils

I have now made another anvil just to show another idea and how much simpler it could be. I was also given a small homemade anvil as well that I thought would be a good thing to show.

So here is my second home built anvil. I used the bottom of the center post that I cut off of the first anvil, some rebar, an old truck rotor and a pipe. The leg pipe had a steel flat welded to the bottom already so I left it on and used it. 

So the first thing I did was to file and grind out the center hub of the rotor so that I could press the pipe into the rotor hub. At first I was using long bar clamps and a 2"x4" piece of lumber to press the pipe through but, in the end it was much faster to use a 3 pound sledge hammer to just tap it through. I also made sure to leave the flat of steel level with the bottom of the rotor so the base will sit level on the ground. I ran a weld bead around the bottom of the exposed pipe and top of the hub. I added a steel ring left over from a bearing race on the top of the hub to give a solid surface fro the  rebar to mount on the base.

Then I spent some time getting the top of the anvil level with the base and welded it the anvil to the pipe. I ran a second weld bead to reinforce the connection to the leg pipe.

Next I measured and cut 3 pieces of rebar to again reinforce  the anvil top. Just to add a little more stability I tied a wire to the bottom and middle of the rebar to pull it in adding a slight curve to the upper section of the rebar. The rebar was welded to the bottom of the anvil, the middle of the leg and to the flat ring on the top of the hub.

The last thing I had to do was to turn the whole thing over and drill a hole in the center of the steel flat on the bottom of the leg. This was to fill the leg with sand to deaden the bell ringing of the leg when the anvil was struck. After filling the leg I took a small steel rod and tamped the sand down to add some more. Once the leg was packed full I welded the hole closed and ground it flat. No more ringing and the anvil is solid. 

This anvil like the first one I built was made entirely out of free and leftover scrap. Not to bad if you ask me. This just proves that anyone can do this if they want to put a little effort into it.

This was the anvil that was given to me. It was made out of an old railroad rail. It had been cut on and drill on the back end and was really rusty. I was able to weld up the wholes damage on the back end and use a flapper disk on a grinder to clean, smooth an polish it up. How ever the day before I took these pictures we had a sudden rain and it flash rusted the top of the anvil. This is really no big deal since it's just a little surface rust and comes right off. It turns out here are a lot of these little anvils floating around and they are pretty solid. I've even seen a couple that had a hardie hole put into them. 

So my conclusion about home built anvils is that they are very doable. When you think about it the blacksmiths of old had to make their own general and specialty anvils so this is just part of the learning curve that I would think all blacksmiths of old would have gone through. For me this is a journey of discovery of myself and the skills of the past. I am enjoying this journey so far and I hope you will too.