Borax

E

Elmin

Joined
Jun 18, 2015
Messages
4
Hi, me again. I wanted to know if borax is needed for making damascus. I was searching for it in every shop and I didn't find it.
 
Try the grocery store in the laundry detergent aisle. The most common brand is 20 Mule Team.
 
Elmin,

Although the membership is Worldwide, this a predominantly US forum. Putting your location details makes it clear to anyone who cares to look, whether they are likely to be able to offer advice applicable to your location.

Not providing such information, yet expecting others to provide you with information tailored to your undisclosed situation seems a trifle unreasonable to me.

I understand Borax has been banned as a laundry product within the EU. It is still available from industrial chemical suppliers though, at least here in the UK.

You will need to look for Sodium Borate or Sodium TetraBorate (same stuff). It is usually supplied as the Decahydrate or Pentahydrate. The Pentahydrate is better for our purposes (less water associated with the Borax molecules).

A search for Borax on ebay.co.uk brings up several suppliers in the UK, along with others in Poland and Bulgaria.
 
If you are working in a correctly tuned propane forge, it is not needed as a flux. If all the parts of the billet are ground clean and maintain full contact in the initial stack up and you do everything right setting the initial weld, borax is not necessary for the weld to take. Having done several billets without it, just to see if it was possible, I still use it as insurance. If the steel is not in complete contact or things get wonky when setting the weld, without borax, you often ruin the billet or large parts of it. If you are just starting out I would highly reccomend some kind of flux that you can get your hands on. I have not tried it with coke, coal or charcoal and don't plan to because I rarely use those fuels.
 
Also, read up on "hydrocarbon welding flux". That is a fancy term for using a carbon bearing liquid like kerosene or other things (NOT gasoline/petrol) as the flux agent. The benefits are zero slag and greatly improved welds.
https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=000051236030827549219:_i6taktwi50 - type in "hydrocarbon flux welding".

Another method is "Dry Welding. In that you seal up every seam with a TIG welder and then weld up the billet. It requires moderate welding skill, but produces a very high quality billet.
https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=000051236030827549219:_i6taktwi50 - type in "dry welding".

Use the same search engines for other threads on welding.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top