Beginner here, looking for an anvil. Is cutting railroad track worth the trouble?

[Sberry]

I have torch cut a lot of them, a minute or 2.

[Matt Shade]

Rather than buy a torch and make a production out of it to try and get your money back, I'd suggest going down to your local tool rental and getting a partner saw for the afternoon.
Sunbelt will rent you a 12 inch gas powered cutoff saw for $49 and will probably hit you for another 10 bucks for a cutting wheel. That will make short work of cutting the rail to length and will be much cheaper and easier than buying a cutting torch capable of cutting a rail and hauling the bottles and everything around in your car(my "medium duty" torch set me back about $600 with bottles).

After you get a piece home you can use an angle grinder to shape it however you want and then go to town doing some forging. It won't be as nice as what Mike made in the thread listed above but there are LOTS of home made rail anvils out there that people are using and most of them haven't even been heat treated.

[Bender]

Heres the one I made. A few good pics of my brother cutting it out.

Welcome musicguy

http://www.shopfloortalk.com/forums/...8&postcount=14

[moe1942]

Plasma.

[aametalmaster]

Just make sure you get your rail from a scrap yard and not from the side of a rail line. Maybe they will cut you off a chunk. I have quite a bit of it left over from my dads building that had lots of sidings...Bob

[USMCPOP]

I have some very nice machetes that were hand-forged from spring steel. The old blacksmith used a sledgehammer head embedded in a huge hardwood log (maybe 16 feet long). He would have liked better, but it did the job. I'll bet you could tap out a few small blades if you can find a 16 lb. sledge head and put it in a stump.