Still Futher Anvil Obsessing

The new anvil needs a stand. The big steel tube and plate thing that it came with simply makes too much noise on its own to serve my needs. I'm making another of my 4x4s on end anvil stands, but this time I'm only using Gorilla Glue to hold it together. Right now I have three sets of four blocks glued together per the bottle's directions, and they were brought inside prior to gluing to give the product the best possible environment to cure in. Once all five sets of four are glued I'm going to take them back out to the shop and use the anvil itself as my clamp to hold the base together while the glue sets up. I can't think of a better "clamp" than a concrete floor and a 400+ pound anvil allowed to sit over the weekend.

And that's gonna be all I do. Why? Because I want to see how strong this glue really is. Once I set the new block on end and smooth the faces* I'm going to apply a drop of glue to each corner of the anvil and glue it to the block. Whether it holds up or not, I'm going to write to the company and let them know about what I've done. I don't see why this won't work-- the stands don't take a lot of lateral force. I may even glue it to the floor to keep it from moving around.  Yes, much to my surprise I have been able to make the anvil sway on the current stand.


* Why can't we get 8" circular saws? Cutting a 4x4 with a standard circular saw (7-1/2"? then subtract the hub) is ridiculous. I shouldn't have to turn the thing 90deg three times to get the cuts to got through without binding. Nor should I have to buy a miter saw.

More Anvil Obsessing

I started this thread over at I Forge Iron: http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/20425-anvil-id-assitance/page__gopid__210151 inquiring whether any of the folks over there could identify my new shop tool. Three of three said it was most likely a Hay Budden, so that's what I'm going with. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to weigh it...

I did some measuring last night to get a better idea how bad the sway is. Using a steel ruler and a depth gage I determined that the -worst- spots are 3/64" but most of the valley is approximately 1/32". If the piece I was working on the other night hadn't been trying to conform to all of the undulations I might not care, but it was bouncing around pretty good. So I'm going to load my 3x21 belt sander with some 40 grit paper and try to get rid of that "high" spot on the far left of the anvil. I did like the sharp square shoulder that I ground into the close edge of the face, so that's not going away (yes, I knocked off the edge so it's not 100% sharp, but it's very square).

More updates soon, I'm sure. Maybe even some actual work in the near future.