Mushroom Stake — Domed Anvil for Raising and Sinking
Mushroom Stake — Domed Anvil for Raising and Sinking
The convex bench tool that turns flat sheet into bezels, bowls, and domed components
A mushroom stake is a domed-top metalworking anvil used for raising, sinking, and forming hollow components in jewellery and silversmithing. The smooth, convex profile lets the smith hammer sheet metal from either side of the workpiece, gradually pushing flat stock into three-dimensional shapes — bezels, cups, bowls, dome-tops, and the curved walls of holloware. The tool is named for its silhouette: a polished hemispherical or ovoid head on a tapered tang.
Form and use
Mushroom stakes are forged from tool steel, hardened, and polished to a near-mirror finish on the working face — any pit or scratch on the head transfers directly into the metal being formed. The tang is held in a bench vice, leg vice, or a dedicated stake holder, leaving the dome free for the smith to drive sheet against. Heads range from small button-sized profiles for ring-shanks and small bezels up to fist-sized domes for raising vessels.
In raising, the smith hammers sheet against the side of the dome to compress and curl the edge inward, gradually reducing the diameter of an opening and pulling up the walls. In sinking, the sheet is hammered into a depression with the work supported by the convex face beneath. Both techniques are repeated through cycles of forming and annealing — the metal is heated to dull red and quenched between passes to relieve work-hardening and prevent cracking.
Selection and care
A workshop typically holds several mushroom stakes of different head diameters and curvatures. Tighter curvatures form smaller radii; flatter heads work larger sweeps. The faces are kept polished — any blemish is dressed out with progressively finer abrasives because surface marks transfer into the workpiece on contact. Stakes are stored dry to prevent rust and never used as anvils for chasing, riveting, or any operation that would mar the working face.
In the trade
Mushroom stakes remain standard equipment in traditional silversmithing and bench-jewellery shops. They are sold individually or as part of stake sets by suppliers including Otto Frei, Rio Grande, and bench-tool makers in Birmingham and Pforzheim. Antique forged stakes from the nineteenth and early twentieth century still circulate among smiths, often valued for the quality of their polish and the geometry of their heads.