damascus welding question

insanity

insanity

Joined
Feb 28, 2002
Messages
392
ok, I can get the first weld to work just fine, it's the second weld that I can't get to stick. This is what I'm doing. First I started with a 28 layer billet. Heated, fluxed (borax powder), heated, fluxed, heated to bright yellow, welded in press, drew out to bar, ground surface and sides with 9" angle grinder, cut in half, tack welded with mig, repeated process as for initial weld. Wouldn't weld.
Any sugestions?
Thanks

Wayne Suhrbier
 
What was your stack composed of, especially the outside layers? Put a fresh layer of your plain carbon in between and try again. I keep some very thin shim stock for that purpose.
 
There was no pure nickle in the billet, but I will try useing a shim between layers.
 
There is no need to grind and tack weld the billet when folding.
Weld up the stack and draw it out.Hot cut it almost through in the middle,brush it off with a wire brush,sprinkle with flux, fold it over,bring it back to welding heat,flux, set the weld with a hand hammer,and press it together on the press.Keep drawing it,folding and so forth.With a 28 layer billet it will go very fast (four folds to 448 layers).If the billet never cools down it is no problem.Sticking a piece of shim stock in the fold may help,especially if there is nickel in the billet,but usually is unnecessary.
 
You may also need to let the piece soak a bit longer for your second weld, with the first weld of 28 layers, I am guessing that the pieces were rather thin, with your second weld, the outside may look about the same, but you need to bring up the internal temperature to match. you are dealing with metal probably 14 times thicker. you may want to grab a couple of pieces of mild steel as thick as your pieces for the second weld and try welding them together to get a feel for temperature and time

hope this helps,
Ken Nelson
Iron Wolf Forge
 
sorry for this OT post....:o

Wayne,

I sent an email a while back - did you get it?
 
Wayne I had the same problem with the second welds. I found out they were actually welded fine but the weld sheared when I set the billet on its edge to narrow and true it. It was because some of the stock was wider than the rest and when pressed hard on the edge it would take the path of least resistance which was to pop open a weld or two. What I do now is grind all the edges after mig welding or hot after the forge weld. Just remember that fresh forge welds are pretty tender for awhile and cant stand allot of abuse until they are drawn out some and aggressive edge squeezing can pop a weld open, just quickly reflux and reweld.
 
When I grind the sides down I can see a line where the last weld is. Is this normal or does it signify a bad weld?
 
I grind clean all surfaces with an angle grinder that are going to touch on the next welding pass. Clean surfaces weld easier and I've found for what I do,it's well worth the extra effort. If your using 1" wide stock try to maintain that 1" width or work towards a wider width if thats what your heading for in the finished bar.
If your wanting a smaller width then your starting bar stock width, maintain the original width until your bar is finished and then in very small bites reduce the width with several welding heats. Small bites and high heat will be a lot less stressful on the bar and will let the steel move and not try to sheer. I've seen solid stock tear apart when moved to quickly to reduce in size, so just reduce slowly.
I figure you either got a little hurried in your second weld and didn't let the heat equalize through the entire bar or you tried to move it to much after it welded. On your 1st welding passes, just press or hammer the stock enough to get it welded , then bring it back up to welding heat, this will let the steel equalize more into a solid bar again. Heats after the 1st welding heat are better for moving steel.

Good luck,

Bill
 
Wanted to thank you all for the responces. I think that I got it to work. I believe that the problem was mostly not hot enough with some lack of soak time thrown in for good measure. I added two inches of ceramic fiber on top of the forge and closed in more of the front. Some day I'll get around to makeing my own equipment instead of adapting the industrial stuff at work. The up side is that if I wanted to work on a 30# billet I could.

WS
 
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