If you'll notice, I didn't say the chisel-and-hammer method was the proper way to do that job, just that I had seen it done (and that I don't think it required anchoring the cylinder, which was the point I was intending to make). This was on track-hoe cyclinders. Just checking here, it looks like cold chisels for that will run $10-$30 or so, pretty much nothing compared to the cost of the cylinder, so dulling a chisel is about zero concern. Tearing up the gland nut is a bigger concern.
Curious thing- there at that same shop, they had a 60" pipe wrench. Which is an uncommonly large and heavy and unwieldy size of pipe wrench. But the curious thing is that it was BENT. They had bought it specifically to try to use on those cylinder glands, and had pushed it with the bucket of another trackhoe and bent the wrench sideways a little.
Googling around a bit, I find this contraption, not sure just exactly how it is used:
And I find a couple of rigs specifically set up to do shop work on hydraulic cylinders, and I assume they can undo that gland nut:
"can generate up to 30,000 lb-ft of torque to loosen threaded glands...then provides 5,000 lb-ft of torque at 8 rpm to quickly remove the loosened gland"
That's impressive when 8 rpm is considered "quickly" removing a nut!
I find hand tools for glands like that, but they seem to be very light weight relative to the items they attach to, and I think would have been fairly useless for the cylinders in question: