My anvil stand collapsed mid-hammer swing and I nearly lost a toe

Last Tuesday I was working a 3-pound cross peen on some 1/2 inch stock when the whole plywood and 2x4 contraption I built buckled sideways, the 150-pound anvil tipped and landed on my boot, and I spent the next hour rebuilding it with carriage bolts and a level, anyone else ever had a portable setup fail on them in the middle of a project?

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2 Comments

olivers283mo ago

Jump right into the fix and you're back in business, but I've noticed this pattern in a LOT of stuff people build these days. Everyone is so focused on making things cheap and fast that they forget the SIMPLE rule of bracing against sideways force. I've seen it in furniture, shelving, even car ramps - people just throw some wood together with screws and hope for the best, but a sudden sideways load will wreck ANYTHING that's not properly triangulated. Your design probably worked fine for 100 light taps, then that one HARD swing hit at just the wrong angle and everything gave way. It's like when people build a workbench with just a flat top and legs but no cross bracing - it'll hold weight straight down all day but one shove sideways and it's toast. Glad you caught it before losing a toe, that's a good reminder for all of us to look at our shop setups with a more critical eye.

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hayden5873mo ago

Oh man, that's brutal! I had almost the exact same thing happen with a welding table I threw together. Worked fine for months until I leaned on it hard while grinding and the whole leg folded up like a cheap chair. Took me way too long to figure out diagonal bracing is not optional. Did you end up going with a different design this time?

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