Took me 3 hours to figure out I had my anvil too low

Picked up a 150lb anvil off Craigslist last month for $200 and thought I was set. Spent like 2 hours trying to forge a leaf and my back was killing me, kept getting mad at the steel not moving right. Finally stopped and measured everything and realized the anvil face was only like 28 inches off the ground when it shoulda been closer to my knuckle height. Raised it up on some blocks and suddenly the hammer was landing right and the metal started behaving. Has anyone else had their setup totally mess with their work and not realize it for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jennifer1mo agoTop Commenter

Wait, you really think anvil height matters that much? I used to just set mine on whatever was handy and figured the hammer would do the work. Spent a whole summer making bottle openers that all came out crooked and blamed the steel. Finally went to a workshop and the guy had me stand at his anvil and I realized I had been reaching down for months. Raised mine up by like 5 inches and my hits started landing straight. Funny how something so simple can ruin your whole workflow.

emerym361mo ago

Shoot, the anvil height thing is a huge deal and nobody talks about it enough. I had my anvil sitting on a cut down tree stump for like six months and couldn't figure out why my shoulder and elbow ached after every session. Finally went to a blacksmith meetup and this old timer just watched me hammer for a minute and said "your anvil is too low, son." Turns out my knuckle height was about 4 inches higher than the anvil face. Once I built a proper stand and got it to that height, my hammer control got way better and the fatigue just stopped being a problem. Really makes you realize how much of forging is just having your body in the right position to let the hammer weight do the work instead of fighting it.

miles_hall1mo ago

Wait, did you say you spent a whole summer on crooked bottle openers? That's rough, but at least you figured it out. @emerym36 I bet that old timer saved you a lot of shoulder pain down the road. I used to think anvil height was just some old wives' tale until I tried welding a collar onto a steel post to raise mine up right. Night and day difference, now I can actually hit the same spot more than once without feeling like I'm wrestling a cinder block.