How heavy should an anvil be?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “anvil size for knife making“
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How heavy should an anvil be?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “anvil size for knife making“
About Raelynn
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Anvil weight and size depend on your material.
Silversmiths and goldsmiths work with tiny anvils due to the softness of the material.
Blacksmiths work with steel of different dimensions and chemical contents.
* Working with higher carbon steels generally requires a sturdier anvil with more mass.
* Lower carbon steels react more easily to hammer and anvil work so a lighter anvil can be used.
For years, I’ve relied on two 70 pound anvils* that are rated to 48 HRC (Rockwell Hardness) for my classes and the hardware I make.
This is on the lighter side of the anvil spectrum, but perfectly good for working mild steel (1018) through higher carbon steels (1084, 4140).
The thickest, material we’ve worked effectively on those anvils were 15 billets of 1.25 inch thick 4140. These were used to make 1.5 pound hand axes.
4140 has quite a bit of carbon in it and requires additional heat to make it “pliable” enough to compress and sha…
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The stock answer in general blacksmithing is “as heavy as you can afford.” Actually, an anvil about 10 times the weight of what you are forging will work. In much of the world, a sledgehammer head, set in a stump, is the most common anvil. In the US, a common size is about 100 lbs.
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Heavy enough to do the job without bouncing around, and not too large that using it to form the smallest sizes of curves etc. becomes a problem. Most shops that do a variety of hammer work have several different sizes on site.
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The weight of an anvil depends on what you need to use it for. For instance, I forge blades, and I have a 125lb anvil, which is about as small as I would want. Not that I would turn down a heavier anvil if one crossed my path.
What must also be considered is the material the anvil is made out of. Crappy anvils from hardware stores are made from cast iron, which is a misnomer, because they have so much carbon in them to the point of being brittle. An anvil also needs to have some spring to it. Also keep in mind that your anvil gets attached to a stump or something and when they are bolted together, the mass of the two are combined.
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