Well, my anvil is about done. I need to talk with the welding/fab shop that did most of the work as to how they did it. For $35 they plasma cut out the area for a horn, cut a hardy hole, and welded the base to the rail. The welds look great. Since i had the face flattened and ground down to 80 grit with a belt sander, they even went ahead and pre-work hardened the surface with a power hammer with a flattening attatchment, and even went as far as to sandblast the thing, to pretty it up for some finish (i'm thinking epoxy or BBQ paint on non-forging surfaces).
The guy assured me that if the surface and the welds could hold up to the heavy, heavy blows they inflicted on it, that there is almost nothing i could do to damage it with a 3 pound sledge.
What was funny about the whole deal was that i went in with stuff from the web and a couple books and tried to take the owner of the shop to school on what welding materials to use.....
He listened for a while then said, "let me show you something" and took me into the shop, where he already had about 5 RR anvils custom built for various jobs. One of the anvils was simply a flattened section of track, mounted to heavy angle and tube "sawhorse" kind of rig---that was his general purpose anvil to bash out stuff, for straightening stuff. He had one, more or less in the traditional shape of an anvil, and another that was a real beauty, with a flattened horn on one end, and a perfectly cone shaped horn on the other.
I saw that, and told him to torch out and weld whatever he saw fit. The whole deal cost $40, not bad for the work he did on it. He even plasma cut and machined a square hardy hole, and threw in some chunks of cutoff rail that i could use to make the hardies with (basically, a chunk of rail, with one end machined to fit the hardy hole), that i can machine into whatever shape i need (a cuttoff hardie is my number one thing, then probably a spring fullering tool next).
Today, i'm on the lookout for another chunk of rail. My fiance has a tiny little anvil for silver smithing---it's a lovely little thing (only about 10 pounds) that has a perfectly round horn on one side, and a flattened horn on the other, with only a small hammering face in the middle. I think if i could scale that up to something to resist a 3 pound sledge, made of rail, it would be great for more delicate work. My current anvil with most certainly be used almost exclusively for blade smithing. A smaller, double horned anvil would be good for more intricate work (although i don't currently posses the skills to do much more than bash pieces into tool and knife shapes). Also, i was thinking of having a twisting jig made out of another section of track, and as a final item, using another section of track, this time mounted upside down for a wider, flatter surface, probably having at least one side boxed in, and filled with maybe a hundred pounds of iron and steel scrap packed in there--just really a heavy as hell flat platform that will not deform under the heaviest blows.
Still, I thought the pre-workhardening step they performed was excellent. It saves me from trying to heat treat the object, as well as proving to me that if it can handle that kind of repeated, super heavy pounding without the welds failing, it can handle anyting my wimpy 3 pound sledge can throw at it.
Anyways, i got the face of the anvil to about 80 grit, nice and flat. The power hammering mushroomed the sides a bit, so i'm going to re-finish it to 80 to re-true up the surface, then mabye take it down to 120 grit, which should be fine for my needs. I'm going to use a big pnuematic "jitterbug" that a buddy from a body shop has---it has a huge surface, which will take care of smoothing out any small deviatons in the surface.
Still, i'm pretty stoked about it. Should be bashing away soon. I'll keep you guys posted on any developements, especially any speciallty anvils that I hope to have made in the coming weeks.