#Railroad track anvil adding weight series

More on the anatomy and physiology of these tools can be had in ’s article on anvils, and her whole excellent series on blacksmithing is highly recommended. Still, any anvil is better than no anvil. We wonder if some kind of induction heating could be used to solve the latter problem, or if perhaps a hardened plate could be welded into the top to make a composite anvil. We have questions about the final result, like its lack of a hardy hole and the fact that the face isn’t hardened. But with time and skill, the anvil hidden inside the rail can be revealed and put to use.

Removing that much metal will not be a walk in the park, so patience - and a steady supply of cutting wheels and sanding discs - is surely required. Other than a file, the bulk of the work is done by angle grinders, which are used to cut off the curved crown of the rail section, cut the shape of the heel, and rough out the horn. Repurposing sections of rail into anvils is hardly a new game, but ’s build shows us just how little is needed in terms of specialized tooling to pull this off. So perhaps the beginner smith’s first build should be this railroad rail to anvil conversion. Sure, one can buy an ASO - anvil-shaped object - at Harbor Freight, but a real anvil is much harder to come by. And that means tackling the unenviable task of finding a decent anvil. Pieces of an engine block or most other heavy pieces of machined metal with a flat surface would do the job adequately.One of the biggest challenges facing the aspiring blacksmith is procuring the tools of the trade. It wouldn’t be a true anvil but it would be more than close enough for most things. I don’t see why we can’t just use something like a steel frame + steel plating.īoth could be torn off a car in cata fairly easily and made without any of the metalsmithing stuff aside from a welder. However as we’re trying to make simpler (and finding cement will probably be a PITA).

#Railroad track anvil adding weight plus

Honestly as it’s been said we don’t have large rocks at the moment I’d go with something like the current well construction- say 20 rocks + Cement, plus some steel plating just for the surface. Many hobby blacksmiths simply use an anvil-like object, such as a section of metal railway track or a steel I-beam- it’s good enough for most tasks although admittedly you’ll probably have problems with some detailed stuff due to the lack of a horn or specific holes. While I could implement and PR it as easily as I could simply changing the recipe for making regular anvils, I figured asking for feedback would be helpful here.Īs per your post in the what’s happening thread–įor bootstrapping a metal industry many people today don’t actually use a traditional anvil like you’d see or think of in a blacksmithing shop- even as you see in the video you’ve posted, they’re just smelting a simple bloom of iron, a method you’d see in the middle ages or so and then sticking it on a rock.

#Railroad track anvil adding weight mod

Either way, would it be acceptable as a mainline addition, or should I perhaps dump it in More Survival Tools? Adding content via mod is generally more acceptable if it would be questionable to have as vanilla content. I assume it would be constructed, possibly mid-high level requirement, but how high? What skill, construction or something else?īeyond that, it might not be logical to add it in unless we had large chunks of granite as an item, in place of just using generic rocks. However, I would like suggestions concerning implementing this. Some looking about has suggested that hard stone, granite especially, has been historically used as a striking platform in place of hard steel.įirst video I could find demonstrating this: I was pondering whether to make anvil crafting not require lumps of steel specifically, due to the fact that this makes welding goggles essential to boot-strapping metalworking unless you get lucky.īut then I pondered if a low-tech option was viable.