Post vise and striking anvil stand combo

[Dan Dubeau]

Figured I'm a good ways into building this now, so I better start a thread to keep me focused lol

A couple months ago I picked up some forklift forks with the intention of making a striking anvil stand for a post vise I bought about 6-7 years ago. I also wanted to make some swage blocks and other forming aids, more to come on those later.

Last weekend I started cutting them up. While that was cutting, I cut up an old trailer leaf spring to replace the missing spring on the vise.



The swage blocks will be 12" long, so I zipped off three of them with the remaining length

I was rolling around some ideas all week on how to do this, and had some shop time this morning to do some milling. I first had to cut one of the mounts off. I tried cutting the welds with a angle grinder, but couldn't reach them all, so switched to the porta band and just zipped through the whole thing.


Then it was on to the mill. Rotated the turret, and setup an angle plate to mill a groove for the vise to nest into.


Not the most rigid of setups, but plunge roughing ruled here. For a primarily CNC boy these days this took what seemed like forever.....


Double check all my measurements before tearing down the setup, and then check the fit.


perfect. Then I reset the mill, and tossed it back on there to clean up the mount area I cut off.



Then just because I was in the mood, I flipped it over to clean up the saw cut that wandered. That blade is long overdue to be changed, but it keeps cutting so.....It doesn't really wander on tubing, but this fork was really bad. I half expected it to snap, but it kept chugging. The swage blocks I cut flat ways and there was no wander, but they took a while.....






Next I threw it all on the floor with a square for scale, so I can do some sketching tonight to connect the dots (la la la la).


Should be able to finish it off tomorrow, or a good chunk at least. The spring needs some forging to make it fit so I'm looking forward to that part.

This was the first time I've used that APKT 1" insert cutter, and it was awesome. I turned the shank down, and pressed on a collar to turn it into a Tormach TTS tool, but it also works great in a 3/4" collet on the Excello. I also have a 2" face mill that takes the same inserts, but I need to machine an arbor for it.

I just noticed how far that collet is hanging out the spindle nose while posting these pics. Seems excessive no? I'm going to investigate later. I have a lot of TTS tooling, so I can see me robbing them quite a bit to use like this. Less collet changes. Will also be handy when I build a power drawbar.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Now, I have a question from those that have more experience blacksmithing.

I initially planned on having the turned down end pointing down. That would give my a nice are to draw out, and a nice big radius for forming. While playing around with it though, I thought about mill that internal corner square, and turning it UP. It's a tough toss up to decide which way would be more versatile for future uses......

Any opinions? I can see both being handy in certain situations.

 

[140mower]

Figured I'm a good ways into building this now, so I better start a thread to keep me focused lol

A couple months ago I picked up some forklift forks with the intention of making a striking anvil stand for a post vise I bought about 6-7 years ago. I also wanted to make some swage blocks and other forming aids, more to come on those later.

Last weekend I started cutting them up. While that was cutting, I cut up an old trailer leaf spring to replace the missing spring on the vise.
View attachment 40165
View attachment 40167
View attachment 40169
The swage blocks will be 12" long, so I zipped off three of them with the remaining length

I was rolling around some ideas all week on how to do this, and had some shop time this morning to do some milling. I first had to cut one of the mounts off. I tried cutting the welds with a angle grinder, but couldn't reach them all, so switched to the porta band and just zipped through the whole thing.
View attachment 40158

Then it was on to the mill. Rotated the turret, and setup an angle plate to mill a groove for the vise to nest into.
View attachment 40163

Not the most rigid of setups, but plunge roughing ruled here. For a primarily CNC boy these days this took what seemed like forever.....
View attachment 40160

Double check all my measurements before tearing down the setup, and then check the fit.
View attachment 40162View attachment 40164

perfect. Then I reset the mill, and tossed it back on there to clean up the mount area I cut off.
View attachment 40161
View attachment 40156

Then just because I was in the mood, I flipped it over to clean up the saw cut that wandered. That blade is long overdue to be changed, but it keeps cutting so.....It doesn't really wander on tubing, but this fork was really bad. I half expected it to snap, but it kept chugging. The swage blocks I cut flat ways and there was no wander, but they took a while.....
View attachment 40166


View attachment 40157


Next I threw it all on the floor with a square for scale, so I can do some sketching tonight to connect the dots (la la la la).
View attachment 40159

Should be able to finish it off tomorrow, or a good chunk at least. The spring needs some forging to make it fit so I'm looking forward to that part.

This was the first time I've used that APKT 1" insert cutter, and it was awesome. I turned the shank down, and pressed on a collar to turn it into a Tormach TTS tool, but it also works great in a 3/4" collet on the Excello. I also have a 2" face mill that takes the same inserts, but I need to machine an arbor for it.

I just noticed how far that collet is hanging out the spindle nose while posting these pics. Seems excessive no? I'm going to investigate later. I have a lot of TTS tooling, so I can see me robbing them quite a bit to use like this. Less collet changes. Will also be handy when I build a power drawbar.
View attachment 40170

........ummm, nice work, but aren't you supposed to be drywalling?
We don't want to see all this work being for naught.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

lol. She opened the door to the shop no less than 3 times today to say something about drywall.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Spent some time before lunch today having a good look at my scrap/material pile and doing some "imagineering". Played around with some various profiles to try and get a good visualization going in my head, but decided to change gears and play in cad while eating lunch instead. Moving steel around is a lot easier with a mouse than it is in a crowded shop. I really try and keep cad out of my builds at home as much as possible. I do this all week at work and I like the break from the screen it and the creative problem solving on the fly, but sometimes it's just easier....In this case, with all the compound angles, I didn't want to waste a bunch of material figuring stuff out. too

Here's what I came up with. You can now see the benefit of the scaled side profile pic I took. Very handy to be able to bring that into cad, scale it to the proper Dimensions, and then build around it. This isn't a huge heavy duty vise, so mounting it high for punch and chisel work is what I was after here. Overall ground footprint is 24x32". Height to the jaws is 42" (bent elbow height for me) and to the anvil is 33. Anvil is too high to be a good striking anvil, but it's just how things worked out. Being a bit higher than my big one should be nicer for some lighter detail work which is what I'll probably be using this for anyway.



And the model without the pic



It's not a 100% complete model, just enough to allow me to get the legs and proportions right. That's as far as this model will get, the rest I'll build on the fly. Hoping to get at least the frame done tonight and if I have time I'll machine the hardy hole later after dinner. My big anvil is 1.25", but I'm putting a 1" in this one.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

After lunch I got the rest of the material cut up, and cleaned up the rust with a wire wheel. I made the last of the straight cuts, then rotated the vise on a 15* angle.


When I was designing this ealier I had this idea to make paper templates for the compound angles directly from the model. I've never donw this before, so I had no idea how it would work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.


I took the line edge from both sides, and flattened it out.


Cut them out and fold.


Then lay it on the steel, and move them until I get the 24.5 between the lines. Magnets are a great help here.



Then is was a simple matter of just tracing a sharpie cut line over the ends, and cut them off with the portaband. THought I took a picture of that, but guess not......Only the 2 cut offs. To cut the other hand, you just fold the template the other way.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I also took the time to figure out where the hardy hole is going to go, and make some clearance in the top plate for stuff to fall through. I wanted it directly over the single leg near the end.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Then it was my favourite time. Hood time.

I welded the top beams together first, then the front cross member, then I tacked the single leg on (a few times, as you can see by the big glob....) and used a wedge to wedge it slightly obtuse. I always apply a little windage with things like this, knowing the tack is going to pull closed when it cools. Somewhat of a magic guess how much it'll pull, but it always will. Something to keep in mind when you freestate fabricate things like this.



My garage floor is complete garbage. running down the middle to the back, the right hand side has about a 4-5" slope from the middle to the edge. Poor ground prep, and a giant crack down the middle. BUT the tiny bare patch in front of the mill is perfectly level lol. So that's where I setup this janky contraption to get the front legs tacked on.




At first when I held them up they were about 0.5" too high. There was A bit of head scratching before I noticed the sharpie marks denoting the handedness.......No Dummy, your other left......Once I flipped them around they fit perfect. . I'm definitely happy with the template idea, and can't wait to use it again.

All that was left was to weld it up solid. I didn't take any pics of that. I've switched to wearing dollerama Durabrand shop gloves, and the material isn't conductive like the previous Mechanix ones I always wore. When I'm mig welding I wear one on my right hand, and a welding glove on my left. Taking my phone out to take a pic requires me to take the glove off my right hand, and I wasn't doing that everytime..... So far that's the only thing I dislike about these gloves. They seem to hold up just as well as the much, much more expensive mechanix ones for my mix uses.

Here she is, all welded up.


Grew another arm and tossed the anvil on, and clamped the vise into it.



Vise is still sitting about an inch too low, but it was too tricky to try and hold it up and in there and tighten the clamp but you get the idea. Pretty happy how this came together. Still a bunch more work to do, but a few steps closer anyway.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Didn't feel like I accomplished much today, but I kicked the can a bit further down the road.

I got a chance to rough out the clamping mechanism last night, and finished it with a roloc disc.


I also made the vertical leg that supports the post, and the post bushing.


But first I had to clean up the leg of the vise with a file and get it a bit more uniform.




Then i went a bit overboard and machined a taper to the face to mach the leg......Totally unnecessary, but I was having fun making chips.......



I was originally going to just drill a plate, and weld it onto the bottom of the beam, but spotted this pipe, and offcut of steel sitting on the table and had this idea. That's why it hangs off the end 3/4".......I didn't want to waste the only 3/4" thick plate I had on this, I need it for the next smithing project....



Then it was time to weld it on, and add a cross brace. I still need to add some to tie in the front legs. Will have to cut/scribe those to fit the old fashioned way. No fancy cad templates this time.



A trial fit with the vise in there. I was aiming for 42" and still have to weld some 3/8" plates on the feet.


And here it is with the vise bolted in. Even without the fork plate welded on it's pretty solid to hammer on, and pretty stable too. I think this will be a pretty handy addition some light forging and detail punch and chisel work. It's not going to be used for heavy forging.


I'm going to weld the Offcut from the tip of the forks onto the plate here, and machine the inside corner to 90* for a nice inside corner to hammer into. I'll probably round over those ends sticking up too.


I have a lead on some nice steel workbenches for the smithy shed, so I might take off tomorrow afternoon and grab those. If I don't then I should be able to finish this tomorrow.

I have an old mill vise I bought years ago that was locked up tight, soaking in some eds red hoping to free it up so I can put it on the excello. I wanted to mill the hardy hole tonight, and some other things, but so far it does not want to be free. It's an old GS kurt clone in not bad shape, so I'm hoping I can rescue it.

 

[6.5 Fan]

I wanted to mill the hardy hole tonight, a

An awesome build. A wire EDM machine would be a lot more fun to make that square hole than just to mill it.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Thanks. Yeah a WEDM would be great here lol. Wish we had one at work. I'll just mill it then broach out the corners.

 

[Susquatch]

I'll just mill it then broach out the corners.

When you broach the corners, please post how you did it.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

When you broach the corners, please post how you did it.

Will do. I have a 3/8" square HSS toolbit I ground a round shank on to hold in a collet. The end is ground on an angle, and it's used like a vertical shaper, taking bites a few thou at a time with the quill while moving over.

It's a funny story that was born out of malicious compliance due to an arrogant designer who insisted on square internal corners on a guage even though they were unnecessary. No amount of facts logic or reason were able to convince him, so I said f*&k it, and turned it into an afternoon make work project . I've used it quite a few times over the years since, so it wasn't all wasted.

It works great on Aluminum, but I'm not sure if I've ever used it on steel though. I can't remember. We'll find out this weekend sometime. Might be hand filing those corners out......

Of course, I could just do it on the shaper......but I haven't got it operational yet. It's only been 12 years......

 

[historicalarms]

I have used square HSS bit a couple of times to build homemade broach's to square up round holes . I sloped one side of the bit with a grinder and then cut jaws into them with a dremel. Made a blank insert for the hole that held the cutter where i wanted it and pressed the cutter throu with hyd press. It worked passably but required a bit more push pressure than a factory made broach. I advanced the cut 2 thou at a time by using strips of shim stock strips cut from a roll I had on hand.

 

[140mower]

Of course, I could just do it on the shaper......but I haven't got it operational yet. It's only been 12 years......

I have had one about the same length of time that is still holding its place in the que..... Perhaps you can use a die filer instead of hand filing.....

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Someday I would like to build one of those die filer kits. I could find use for one everyonce in a while.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Didn't get much time today, had to run a bunch of 11 year old over to laser tag for a birthday party. Watched Motogp sprint race when I got home, then dragged all the stick leads down, and setup shop out back to get this chunk welded on.

First I tacked it up square with the mig


Then stuck the torch on a for a while for a little preheat.


Single pass all around, except for the front inside corner with the bigger bevel. 3 passes of 1/8' 7018 filled that up nicely.


Then I ground out most of the inside corner. I will finish it on the mill.



While I had the torch out, I also took things to the next level trying to unstick the mill vise screw......


A few alternating heat/squirt, heat/squirt cycles of atf/acetone mix, and I still couldn't get it to budge. Usually the heat helps the mix get in there. I left it to sit full of juice, so hopefully it'll work in there some more, and I'll give it another try tomorrow.

I'll probably just fire the Tormach up and mill the hole tonight. I wanted to do it manually, but I want to swap vises even less.....I really just want this done and out of the shop by tomorrow afternoon so I can drag the next project in..... Not much left to do now.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Went out after dinner to try and work on the vise for a bit. Threw in the towel for today, and decided to just mill it in the Tormach. 1"x1"x1.53" deep hole with a 3/8" endmill of unknown history (used, not by me). Coolant pump not working again (it gums up if it sits too long), and I didn't want to piss around with it, so I grabbed the squirt bottle and air nozzle and was the Tormach's next best M8......



Surface finish OK, not the greatest. Picture actually makes it look worse on the screen.

You'll notice I moved it towards the end more, from where I initially drew it. I actually had a last minute idea that I can make a cradle for the swage blocks to sit in that sits in the hardy hole, so I moved it to 12" off the corner block I welded on earlier. We'll see if this idea pans out later.......Might be a stroke of genius or a flop.



Didn't have an em long enough to mill the inside welded corner either.......nor could I find that broaching bit.......I think it's at work actually. I can't wait to bring all my tools home from work and have them at home where I actually need them. With what I do now I could probably work out of a small top box that would fit in my car.

My filing arm should get a workout tomorrow.....

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Wasn't too bad. Only took about 45 minutes start to finish.




Shop computer/tv was instrumental in this task......

At work this morning I went searching for my "broach" and couldn't find it. I'm sure it's somewhere.....but I might just make another one, or maybe a couple different sizes.

 

[Susquatch]

.but I might just make another one, or maybe a couple different sizes.

If you do make one, please show us how you did it.