Anvil base question

M

mad bodhi

Joined
Nov 7, 2004
Messages
86
I have a good size anvil that is welded to a stand made up of 1/2" plate.Very sturdy,perfect height... but it's loud I mean really loud.Not in the nice "TING" way either.Another problem is leveling it.Iv'e considered cutting it free and making a wooden base.Ive also thought of putting car sound deadening mat in the base.Iv'e tried attaching large magnets to it but no joy there.So,opinions or options? Ideas on a sturdy method of adjustable leveling?A method of making it more mobile would be awesome as I have a rather small shop and alot of tool intensive hobbies.
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I've tried all the fixes to cut down on the ring and the best thing I came up with 5 years ago is using construction adhesive to anchor the anvil to a wood base. That's all that holds my demo anvil to the base.
 
Yikes, that sounds like an anvil mounted to a 1/2" plate megaphone. I can imagine it being loud. You'd have to have some pretty serious sound deadening to stop that from being noisy. Maybe rubber straps around the entire stand. Another thought if you really don't want to scrap it would be to drill a hole near the top of the stand and fill it with some sort of construction foam. Don't know if that would work, but it may help some.

If you do decide to tear it apart, it's not hard to make a stand from wood, and the wood stand coupled with something like Ray's idea works really well.

Here's the stand I built for my anvil:

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It's just some lumber that I cut to length and glued together with construction adhesive. Then I drill holes and ran the all thread through to compress the stack. The chain is anchored with turnbuckles to 10" lag bolts on either side. The chain and wood do a lot to dampen things, but combine that with a bed of silicone underneath the anvil and a good magnet, and it's darn near quiet.

--nathan
 
I have mine chained to an Oak log and doesn't move or ring hardly at all. Very similar to the picture above. If you tear it down, that's the route I would go. As far as being mobile, my log will roll on it's edge, but with the square one above, I suppose you could mount some wheels on the bottom side and tip/roll to move
 
Yeah, if you want it mobile, you might want to think about a sturdy caster setup that only contacts when you tip it. For my setup, I'd leave the base plate off and mount the casters to the back of the stand so that they just touch the ground when it's resting flat. Then I would just have to tip it back a little bit to get it to roll.

I didn't build my stand with mobility in mind as the last thing I want is for my anvil to move when I'm using it ;).

--nathan
 
you've made a muffled bell! Way to go! :thumbup: :D
I'd fill it full of Expanding Foam insulation in a can, 2 of em should do it! or you could weld baffles in there that would direct the sound back and cancel it out... like a turbo muffler on a car.

Jason
 
I didn't make the base,bought the anvil this way.I'm leaning towards cutting it free and making a tried and true wood base rather than spending the time and money trying various fixes on the steel base with no way of knowing if it will work.
 
Have you tried expanding foam insulation? If that base is hollow Id fill it with the stuff, no way to resonate if it's full of that stuff.
DOH Jason Beat me to it. sorry for the repost
 
If you cut some 2X4s and drove them into the tapered base, and then sealed it with polyurethane expanding foam it would deaded the sound.
 
I currently have a wooden base made of four pieces of 6X6. It is Ok, but ...
I often forge pieces with the sledgehammer and the base simply jumps with the anvil on it. I plan to cast a reinforced concrete base and cast nice 1/2" bolts(threaded rods) in it to tie the anvil. You can try to fill your base with concrete as well. It will be hardly movable though... :)
 
I can't even imagine the weight if I filled it with concrete :eek:.Me and a buddy are pretty big guys and lifting this thing into the back of a truck took a fair bit of grunt.Expanding foam is not terribly expensive so maybe i'll give that a shot.
 
I didn't read all the posts so I'm sorry if this is repeated. If you get a 1/4 to a half in thick sheat of lead and put it between your anvil and the stand that it is on the ring will be significantly reduced.
 
I'm with Jason. If you are going to keep that setup, fill it with Great foam and it should attenuate the sound a lot.

The best solution would be to make a wooden stand.

I make them out of 17.5" long sections of 2X4, five per layer ( each layer takes one 8" 2X4. You will need about 10-15 layers, depending on the anvil and your height.).
Lay down five, squirt on five nice lines of glue, and lay on five more at 90 degrees from the first layer. Use a 3.5" deck screw at every cross spot - all 25 of them ( you will need a five pound box of screws). Keep screwing and gluing up the layers until you get to about 2" shy of the height needed ( every layer is 90 degrees from the last). Lay the last layer with the second and fourth boards about 4 feet long. These make great places to lay hammers and tongs , as well as hot blades. They also provide great handles to allow two people to carry the base ( including anvil if not too heavy). If needed, add another layer of the 17.5" boards. The last layer and the long boards can be oak for looks, but the cheap 2X4s work just as well.
Set the anvil on the top and if all is good, draw around the base. When all is right ,apply a good layer of liquid nails where the anvil sits, and set the anvil on. Leave it all as is for a week.

Your best bet for moving anvils and bases around is a good industrial hand truck. Adding wheels to an anvil base is inviting an accident.
 
That must be the resonator model of Anvil. You could also fill it with sand and leave a plug hole on the bottom then if you did need to move it, you could just knock the plug out. Or you could cut a few interesting holes into the stand and try to tune it.
 
Has anyone tried rubber ? I was thinking of a piece of horse stall matting.
 
I've mentioned this before, but what I have done with mine is : Weld a steel plate, tacks will do, to the bottom of your anvil,then get an old oil drum, twenty litres should be big enough, and fill it with sand. Then sit the anvil ontop of the sand. It is very steady without having to bolt it down as it settles into the sand a little and the sand cuts down on the ringing. It is also easy to ajust the hight by removing or adding more sand. It is also quite portable as you can just take the anvil off the base and move the base to wherever you want and then put the anvil back on, simple.
 
I've read about making an anvil by casting the concrete slab with some steel hunk in it.
Does anybody have any experience with concrete in the base? May be I am wrong with my plan? May be concrete will break off the rebar?
My plan was to use Quickreet with some glass fibers. Supposedly it makes the concrete stronger. And I thought to weld rebar cage strond enough so it can support the anvil on its own. The concrete was suppose to add more dead weight to the base to keep it from jumping.
By the way, the reason it jumps - it is siting on the garage concrete floor, and i suspect the floor has a void beneath. May be i compressed the underlaying soil by hammering?
 
another vote for spray foam inside the bell.
for leveling, weld some 3/4" (or larger) nuts to the bottom of the stand - maybe as many as 8, one on either side of the corners about 1" or so from the corner - and use bolts as your levellers. Head on the ground and a piece of stall mat glued to the head to help dampen vibration. use a nut and lock washer to lock the bolt in place once you have everything set the way you want it.
 
Just going to, ahem, "ring" in on this. The problem with that steel base isn't just noise; it's going to be hell on your wrists and elbows.

My anvil was handed down from my great-grandfather and was mounted with angle-iron clips on a base made of heavy-wall 11" well casing and 1/4" plate. When I cut the anvil loose I found traces underneath that looked like it was originally mounted with a piece of tire-tread under it. That was completely gone except for a few layers of canvas and some rubber crumbs at the edges. The clips had been just hammered down to fit as the tread deteriorated.

That thing was not only loud, but it had way too much of the wrong kind of bounce to it. Once I built a wood stand of cedar 6x8, it became a hell of a lot more pleasant to use. It still has a good ring and rebound, but not so much shock to it.
 
drdoc said:
That thing was not only loud, but it had way too much of the wrong kind of bounce to it. Once I built a wood stand of cedar 6x8, it became a hell of a lot more pleasant to use. It still has a good ring and rebound, but not so much shock to it.
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When you wrote "It still has a good ring and rebound, but not so much shock to it" I was a little confused. I associate shock with a lack of rebound and/or improper hammer use. You also mention..."the wrong type of bounce". Is this just bad rebound or is there a type of bounce you have experienced that is perhaps sloppy or out of phase so the arm feels the vibration (as with a bad tennis racquet)?
 
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