Anvils

An anvil is probably the most recognisable symbol of the Blacksmith, and one of the most expensive too. To find an affordable one that I could learn on, I turned to eBay and found a 250kg beast (Big Boy). Amazingly, delivery was free.

Big Boy, being almost impossible to move alone is a handful and yours needn't be as big. Check the surface of the anvil before you buy as and deep scoring or hammer marks will transfer themselves to your blade which will then have to be removed as you move toward the finished product.
If there is small pitting or dents, most can be removed with a sander but be careful not to get the face too warm.

The small DIY anvil is made from a piece of 18" railway track. I found a rail maintenance company in the phone book and the guy gave it to me for free.

• Shaping - the shape was ground out using a 115mm angle grinder but in future I'd do it with a cutting torch or 9" grinder to speed things up. I used around 6 cutting and 4 grinding discs.
• Heat treating - Bonfire night provided me with a useful opportunity to heat treat it, being such a large piece of steel. I used a large kitchen dustbin (50 litres?) which turned out to be a bit small as the water heated up a bit more than I would have liked. Still, the job is done and it is proving to be a good surface to work on. Temper in the kitchen oven for a couple of hours.