Since I've been doing a lot of forging, I needed an upgrade to my 15 pound Harbor freight cast iron anvil. The 15 pound anvil was really wobbly and with no rebound, so hopefully this new anvil will not only make forging more efficient, but also make videos a little more stable as well.
I've been searching for a steel anvil, but when I saw this 105 pound chunk of steel at a local steel yard I figured I'd see if it would work as an anvil. This style of anvil is based on some sketches of vertical rail anvils on Anvilfire.com. At 27.5 inches long, it's a good height for me at 30 inches with the base.
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Hey fellow backyard boyers, Nick here. Now I've been having some problems with my 15 pound cast
iron anvil. As you can see it's really wobbly and not that stable. So today I'm going to show you
how I built my first steel anvil. It's made from mild steel with a lumber base. I found this piece
of scrap steel at the local steel yard and at 27 and a half inches long and 105 pounds it'll make
a good vertical anvil. I cut this piece of wood to the same dimensions as the bottom of the piece
of steel so I can use it for laying out the stand. Now the bottom of the steel is really rough cut so
I'm using a piece of horse stall matting so that it sits in the stand nicely. The base of the stand
is made of four two by fours that are nine inches long. I mark the dimensions of the piece of steel
and then apply glue to the surface of the boards. I glue one of the 13 inch side pieces on and once
it's set I drill a pilot hole and then screw it to the base with a three inch deck screw.
After the two inch end pieces are secured I put on the next layer consisting of two nine inch
end pieces and six inch side pieces. Once those are together I put on the next layer
and the rest of the stand will just be composed of the same layers repeating.
Once I have three layers I place the rubber bottom into the stand and then lower the piece
of steel in. It takes a little bit of moving it around to get it in but once it drops in
the steel is nice and solid so you can see not much movement even with only three pieces.
Then I continue stacking up the different layers making sure to alternate each layer.
I ended up with 13 layers including the base for a total height of 19 and a half inches.
Now that the main body of the stand is built I take a 19 and a half inch piece of two by four
and glue it onto the side. I nail it in just to set it and then screw it into place with three
inch deck screws. I repeat this until I have 10 legs. The spaces also make a nifty place to put
my hammers. I attach a two by six and a one by three to each side of the bottom of the stand
so that I have a nice and stable square base. Some one by threes complete my tool rack.
Now that the stand is completed I use a four inch angle grinder to grind the surface of the
steel flat. I'm trying to make sure that I have a nice flat even surface so the first thing I do
is just take out all the deep gouges and make a nice smooth surface. I use a piece of sandpaper
on a sanding blot to help show where the high spots are that way I can go back and grind them
down. I repeat this a few times until I'm happy with how level the surface is. Once I'm happy with
how flat the surface of the anvil is I start roughing in a radius onto one of the ends of
the anvil. Now I'll be using this kind of like the horn of the anvil for doing simple curves
and straightening things up. Once that's finished I take it up through the grits
using sandpaper and then polishing wheels finishing off at about a 600 grit. This leaves
an almost mirror polish. I then use a wire brush to clean off some of the rust on the side of the
anvil and then lightly wipe it down with oil just to protect it. And here's the anvil all finished
up. I hope you enjoyed building this anvil along with me today and if you have any suggestions for
other things you'd like to see me build please leave a comment below. If you like this video I
have others like it on my channel and I've also written several books on different topics
and you can check those out in the description below. So as always thanks for watching, be safe,
and I'll see you guys next time. Bye!
