[dtec1]

Hey guys so my brother that works for the metro north rail road here in ny got me a piece of track to use as a anvil since i can not afford a legit "anvil". But from what i seen and heard in my research that some home made anvils end up being better than some manufactured ones. Well any way the piece is exactly 12 inches (1 foot) long. This is some real hard stuff. Half of it i kept as is just took off the rust with a flap disc. The other half i grinded down the top to make it perfectly flat (or as close as i could get) as the top was just slightly rounded as is not much tho. Like i said very hard stuff lets just say i have never went thorough so many grinding wheels just to take off so little metal. So during my research i have found some people say having it horizontal is better and some say to turn it on its end and use it vertically. I think it just depends on what your doing. I did try hitting some metal on it in both positions (just sitting on concrete floor tho) but i can see both positions being useful in different situations. So now the question is how to mount it i originally was planning on just taking big lag screws and either drilling a hole or cutting notches in the base of the rail and screwing it down to a big tree stump and seeing how that works. But since i see the use in having the anvil in both positions i want to try to mount it in some way that i could easily un mount it and change it from horizontal to vertical. If i did that with my original plan i am sure those lag screws would get very loose and come out after a few times of tightening/loosening every time i want to change it. And i can only drill so many hole in the tree trunk before it starts to fall apart and i dont want to have to constantly replace this thing i would rather take the extra thought and time and build something that functions good and will last for a long while. 2 things i thought of is i also have 2 wheel weights for a tractor (basically a big metal disc) it is exact same diameter as the length of the rail (12 inches) and it is about 1 1/2 inch thick it also has a couple holes in it (i assume that is how they control the weight of these things when they make them). there is 5 or 6 holes in it they are about a little over a inch in diameter. So i was thinking maybe use the lag screws to attach this to the wood and then drill and tap holes in the wheel weight so i could put screws through the base of the rail and into the taped holes. The problem with this is the wheel weight is only 1 1/2 thick so the screws couldn't go that deep and i dont know if that would hold. The other thing i heard of is people making a box filling it with sand and putting the anvil in the sand but i couldnt find any real details about this. Does it just sit in the sand not attached to anything? Or does it still have to be mounted to a solid base? ANY ideas or advice would really be appreciated from any one. thanks guys!