Prowler 

Ooo. THAT's a good idea. I get it. Thanks.

canklecat

When I lived in a rural home I mounted my vises to a "bench" that originally was a temporary small deck for a mobile home. After selling the mobile home I recycled the deck as a workbench. It was pretty darned solid, heavy duty pressure treated lumber, and didn't budge.

Road Fan

How perfect! An Estwing hammer also in the quiver!

Road Fan

@3alarmer, I love your pictures in this thread! I need to do some frame tuning and this shows me how much I need a vise!

Trek 610 needs cold-set to 130 for stationary trainer use

Trek 720 needs to have its OLD's restored to standard 126/100 with dropouts and der hanger aligned, and check and mill dropout edge faces to ensure wheels sit in the main tube plane

adjust dropouts/hanger on Mondonico 2005 ELOS to ensure derailleur is in plane.

I see your big vise is in the middle of the bench at the front edge. Do you use a wheel truing stand on the same bench?

FBOATSB

Does an anvil count? It has a 4 1/2 inch Sears vise with the swivel base broken and long gone decades ago securely mounted through the hardy hole. It's good for small jobs that don't require a lot of leverage. The anvil has a history all its own. There is a heavy duty welding stand back there buried in bike crap with a 6" Ridgid vise bolted to it, there's a heavy duty Ridgid chain vise hanging on a hook behind that you can jump up and down with my 48" wrench til your exhausted. The drill press has a drill press vise on it. All my crap has to be mobile because "cars have to be parked in there"

xiaoman1 

Wow, that is a serious anvil...what the back story on it and how did you get the thing home?
Best, Ben

billnuke1 

Ok! We need an anvil thread! I need an anvil! I’m sure...

FBOATSB

I had trucks back then
Well if the OP doesn't mind a little thread drift this late in the game, I'll reply. Though the timeline is a little fuzzy, sometime back around 1980 a buddy talked me into going to a liquidation sale for an auto shop out in the country. He talked me into"needing" this anvil and the price seemed reasonable, so into the van it went. Back in those days I could actually pick that thing up. I don't remember offhand what it weighs, (a lot) but I could look up the markings on it again and maybe write it down this time. Never had the space or drive to set it up for years but at least I had it and meant to keep it. Even painted it a couple times (a big no no in black smithy circles I hear). It also spent several years with a coat of black paint on a tree stump at the end of my driveway, until the stump decayed and it fell over. By then I was pretty well done lifting it so it went back in the garage with a two wheel cart where I could get at it with a chain hoist. Then sometime in the late 90's I'm working in Florida and a buddy, a diesel mechanic working in the tractor trailer garage/warehouse told me they were going to have a massive house cleaning, disposing of years worth unused equipment. I was in and out of that building a lot as our equipment and material was stored in there as well and I had already spied another similarly sized anvil way back in the darkest corner of the warehouse so when the housecleaning was about to commence I asked him if that was doomed for the dumpster as well. He said "Yes it is. Hell, if you can pick it up and get in your truck without a forklift it's yours". Challenge accepted!It wasn't quit as heavy as the other one but still struggled to get in the truck and now wound up with two very cool anvils. And haven't even built the new garage yet. Years later with a good workshop now built and having a place to use one, and finding out the Florida anvil had a very loud distinctive ring to it, as very high end Swedish Kolhswa anvils are known for. Neighbors would not approve. The Kolhswa is cast steel, known as a "country anvil". The US made Vulcan, or "city anvil" is made of cast iron with a hard steel plate welded in the mold to the working surface, making a much more dull muffled ring, more conducive to neighborhood shops, schools, etc. But still a fine anvil. When a dear friend told me he was building a forge on his place out in the country and in the market for an anvil, and what one of his other buddies was trying to charge him for one, I insisted on gifting the loud one to him, leaving me with the one you see today. Paint all stripped off and just some oil on it once in a while. TLDNR?Vulcan

xiaoman1 

That's a great story.... I once had guns that could lift stuff like that....now have to lay on my back and I roll a transmission on my chest to get it in place...no more bench pressing! I would venture to say that the piece in question is worth a Colnago or 2...as they say, "they don't make them like that anymore"
Best, Ben

J.Higgins 

When I used to make custom knives for a living, I used to have a Nimba Centurion anvil. Nimba Anvils ? Centurion Anvil (260lbs)

It was pretty nice, but I soon became bored with blacksmithing and knifemaking, and moved on. Going back to salaried work was the best decision I ever made because it allowed me to actually retire early, so here I am.

BicycleSafari

See, this idea has been plaguing me, it is important to be able to convert to an uninterrupted work surface when needed. This guy who goes by "The Metalist" has made an interesting work table with a grid of threaded holes that he can use to affix all sorts of things to his table. I'm a metal worker too, so this idea makes sense for me. Here's his table BUT
I have just under 180sq freet to work with in my shop, so while pedestal mounts for my vise and bench grinder are also appealing, I can't afford to dedicate floor space to each one of these items and still have room for my larger metalworking tools/storage.
HOWEVER
an interesting idea I have recently started to play with is "drop in masonry anchors". In short you drill a hole in your concrete floor, drop in this smooth anchor with threads on the inside, hit it with a hammer and pin tool to expand the base of the anchor within the concrete hole, and now you have a threaded hole in your floor.
My thought is to put a square pattern of 4 of these in my floor, make a matching pedestal base, and then I could bolt my pedestal to the floor whenever I need to, then unbolt it when I'm not using it.
The next thing I have to figure out is how to cleanly countersink the holes in the concrete so I could have some hex head bolts screwed into these anchors when they are not in use to keep debris out, while sitting flush with the floor so I'm not tripping on them.
This is concept is still in it's infancy for me. Anyone with masonry experience that has any input on this idea?

J.Higgins 

I recommend against this. I've had a lifetime of machinist experience, and thusly have had a lifetime of bolting machines to floors for OSHA safety reasons. I wouldn't bother with keeping bolts in the holes to keep out debris. Just let the debris fall in the holes and suck it out with a shop vac when you need to use them. Your floor is a lot less thick than you think it is, which leads me to the next bit of advice...

If you are going to be using the threaded holes in your floor to mount a freestanding vise, I would certainly be making sure that the base that attaches to the floor, -and- the bolts/inserts are larger than you think you need. The whole concept of a free-standing vise is that it can be used at all angles, and you will naturally use it to bend or hammer on something held within it, and that force will be greater than the force subjected to a bench-mounted vise. Since the freestanding vise does not have the luxury of having all the mass of a bench to support it, then it must rely on the mounting bolts and the base it rests upon. Just make sure that its beefy enough to handle what you give it for work.

easyupbug 

Everyone should have an anvil, even though seldom used like mine. My hanger has 3 bike vices, my favorite the old Park 102L because being C&V I don't need to worry about crushing carbon, 4 machinist vices, my favorite the 5" Columbian 3050, a Ridgid pipe vice, 3 woodworking vices and my favorite is an all around Stanley No. 700

3alarmer 

...just saw this now. I build and true wheels at the kitchen table, looking out the windows, and sipping a cup of hot cocoa in the wintertime.
For this reason, I use a folding, portable stand. Works fine for me, but I only build maybe six sets of wheels per year, and only for myself.

I find that there are some operations in wheel making and truing that are better accomplished with a stand you can move around easily, and folding for storage is a plus.

...when you buy an anvil, bigger is always better. In that sense, anvils are like sailboats.

...I set up the original blacksmith shop at the Green Bay WI living history museum, back around maybe 1980 or so. Ran it for one summer, made very little money, and decided to get a real job. Then I proceeded to drag my anvil, leg vise, and all my tools and swage blocks all over the god damn United States, thinking I'd set up shop again. I have no idea what I was thinking.

tgot 

I just need to shout out appreciation to all those sharing their vise and anvil stories. I wanna grow up to be like that.

I've only got vices and the Stone IPA in common.

J.Higgins 

I may have mentioned this before, and others may have mentioned it as well, but if you want to poke around on the Garage Journal there are a couple threads in there with anvils and vises. Very long, each of them, and very drool-worthy.