smoothing railroad track anvil surface by hand

Here is the rear view, the top of the stand was sealed with some natural oil to protect it from moisture. The larger and flatter steel block will be helpful for some straightening of knife blades. From the many designs available online, I chose this one because the vertical rail is more efficient for forging steel providing more mass under the hammer strikes. On the night of the 8th day, my anvil was born. The screws are long and the screwing process took a while. I initially didn't plan to paint the stand but it was such an eye sore that I had to do something.Īfter some more coats of black paint and a clear top coat for protection (I should add more coats.), I started screwing the crane rail onto its stand. My son came down again to help me with the painting. I then removed the braces and started painting. It's quite small so I might need something else in the future if I work on larger projects.īack to the anvil stand, I braced the base to strengthen it and make sure the glued square sections won't move away from one another. I did the horn in three sessions over a couple of days and I'm quite happy with the result. It took me a couple of hours especially when I realised two of the holes I drilled were at the wrong location and I had to drill two more. In the end I learned that less is more and taking my time drilling gently was more efficient. It's also my first time drilling into steel and I went through many drill bits because I was forcing on them too much. I now have to drill some holes in the base of the rail so I can screw it agains the stand. This is why I wanted this mild steel plate welded as a foot.Īll right, I'm a crappy welder but this is my first time but the plate is now attached to the bottom of the rail track so the welding is successful as far as I am concerned 😝. I spent hours cutting one end to a useable flat surface using a 4.5' angle grinder but the other end is also very messy and when installed on the wooden stand only one spot of the rail was touching the stand which is not great. The person who cut this rail has probably used a plasma torch which is fast but does not make a clean and straight cut. Because it's cold now in Australia, the glue takes more time to dry so there was a lot of waiting in between layers. These will be used to build the stand for my DIY anvil.Īfter a lot of sawing and sanding, I glued some pieces together and clamped them. I saw an ad from someone who just took down their wooden fence and were giving away the hardwood, so I went and took some back and cut them with a circular saw to get the desired length. That piece alone cost A$45 but I think it will be worth it. I discovered a machine shop not too far from me and went there to buy a mild steel plate to weld as a foot for the rail but discovered that they were also selling steel off-cuts and bought this rectangular chunk of tool steel that is supposed to be very hard after heat treatment, it should cope very well with hammering. I started with this piece of crane rail I found at a garage sale and got it for 5 Australian dollars along with some fishing gears and other stuffs. The hardy hole is one part that I'm unsure about, I hope it will be strong enough, else I will have to cover it with a steel plate with a square hole on it to strengthen it more. Between the rail and the chunk of steel is a square hole called a hardy hole used for attaching removable tools. The rail track has a small rectangular shaped area (the head of the rail) that will be my striking area, the web (part that links the head to the base) was rounded down and will be used as a fuller (to make dents and shoulders), one side of the base was sharpened and will be used as a hot cut when the other side was rounded into a horn/bickern used for curling bars or making rings for example. The anvil would be my main anvil for shaping the work piece while the longer chunk of steel would be used to flatten it if needed. It is composed of two main parts, the rail anvil itself and a rectangle chunk of tool steel.

About a week later, I started building my anvil from a piece of crane rail track (smaller than a railroad track), it took me 8 days to complete it.

Two weeks ago I was talking about my project of setting up a blacksmith shop at home.

Smoothing railroad track anvil surface by hand