forge welding

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twynn5586

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I've never forge welded before but I want you advice on welding a air hardened steel to some 5160. The air hardened steel's about 76RW and I was wondering if I could weld the 5160 around the steel so that it's a thin strip down the cutting edge of the blade (the thin strip being the air hardened steel that is).
 
Most air hardening steels are high chromium alloys. Those are very, very hard to forge weld, if at all. Mixed with a low chromium alloy like 5160 i strongly doubt that you can forge weld them in a normal forge.
And then, why should you do that? I do not see any technical reason to weld a good, non stainless blade steel on the outside of a bar and have a much more stain resistant steel on the inside.

Achim
 
Nothing wrong with trying something new.

I saw on the anvil fire sight about 6 months ago a question on welding stainless. the answer was to put in a 5% mix of some element similar name to phelspar but notphelspar in your borax flux. It is used in the potery industry.

I was going to buy some but was put of by a mate of mine that said this stuff is realy nastie to your health if you get a lung full. or even a little bit. I have not got the appropriate ventalation to try it. But it works with stainless and I believe that has a lot of chromium.

secondly I was once told you could not weld chainsaw chain because of the chromium. As you probably know you can weld chainsaw. So while I am agreeing chromium is hard to weld if at al possible. It may be that it is low enough to weld. Only advice I can give is make sure the forge is well up to heat. weld a couple of bits of anything while you make sure it is at welding heat. Have your work clean give it a fux heat and reflux. try a test weld on a small piece and let us know if it works. If not you had better throw some stones at me for waisting your time.
 
Reg, it's fluospar. Nasty stuff. Don't use much and don't breath it.very corrosive.

1% boric acid in the 20 mule team improves it quite a bit.

5160 is tough to weld I've made a billets with it mixed with old saw blades.Anything with chrome is tougher to weld.
Watched Ray Kirk over the weekend weld up a billet of 52100 and 15n20, he made it look easy, I learnedsome stuff from him. That's a mix I thought woud be hard to do, but he does it quite well.

Daryl Meir makes some clad steels, a big press makes it easier, I hear.


Yeah for a steel to be stainless it has to have 13% chrome or better.
 
well... First, the steel's a hacksaw blade that's all covered in rust. I had talked to a machinist friend of my dad's and after I explained to him that when I tried to grow the grain I got nowhere. So he suggested that it was air hardened. I had thought that only stainless was air hardened but he said that that wasn't true. If it is stainless how could it have so much rust on it (enough that you had to grind off)?
 
MikeS

thanks for the feed back.

20 mule team is that a flux brand name.?

I think I will stay away from the flourspar. If 2 people tell me its too dangersous. I'll take that as good asvice thank you.
 
The problem is not to forge weld stainless or high chromium steels in general. If for example you want to forge weld two stainless bars to a plain carbon steel center bar, you can do that in a normal forge with some experience and without too many difficulties. The problem begins when you are dealing with chromium in both steels you want to weld.

Hacksaw blades, at least over here in Europe, are either bi-metal which means the blade body is from 1095 and the teeth from high speed steel are brazed to the blade body. Or they are completely made from HSS. The bi-metal blades are not useable in forge welding unless you grind off the teeth and the brazing. No problem to weld the 1095 blade body. The pure HSS blades can be forge welded, but it's not too easy to do that for the reason i mentioned above. 5160 isn't a steel that welds too easy, too. And then lets count in that twynn mentioned that he never forge welded before!!! I would suggest to begin with something easier to weld.

Achim
 
Reg, 20 mule team is the laundry additive here in the states

Just Borax, makes clothes brighter, disinfects and if used heavily makes your clothes kinda fireproof. Sprinkle it on the carpet let it sit a while and vac up, kills the molds and dust mites in the carpet.

Twnn is that one of those power hacksaw blades about 2" wide?

Probably HSS, some things may not be worth it.
I vote for stock removal on the HSS. My .02

Get some bandsaw blade and pallet straps. better choice for a first try, cheap too.

Look for steel classification guide. most of the knife supplie houses have them and there is a couple on the web. Reading about the properties of different steels and how to work them will help you a lot.

Grain growth? Why were you trying to grow the grain?
 
One of the teachers that my dad works with gave me a bunch of old inch wide hacksaw blades and wanted me to make him a knife. My first thoughts were that it would be to brittle. So I thought I could grow the grain on one side to give it a little more give but when I broke a piece off I saw no difference. I could bend them close to 45 degrees without them shattering. So I thought they'd be ok for little utility blades. Well after about the forth test blade I decided to put a handle with pins on it and I failed miserably. I had spent eight hrs on this tiny knife (the best one i've done so far) and started to drill the holes but the cobalt bit I bought wasn't even scratching it so I put a little more preassure and snap the damn thing broke in half at the gaurd(I almost cried, I just stood there looking at it tring to will it back together). So I thought perhaps I could weld a strip of it to some scrap 5160 and see how it goes. With the test blades I was chopping hangers and nails in half and thought it was good enough for me. Since he gave me a hand full of blades and they were free I decided to give them a try.
 
twynn, that's definitely HSS blades. Hard to weld, very hard to drill, but quiet good for stock removal blades. I sometimes make machetes out of big ones. I managed to drill them with reground masonry drill bits. Problem is you need diamond tooling to regrind the tips of the masonry bits.

Achim
 
HSS steel hacksaw blades.

Torch the holes for the pins. If it's little big, fill it with brass or epoxy. Grind an edge on it. Put a couple pieces of handle material on it and you are done.
 
So the trick iv found with adding chrome layers like 5160 is to put 15n20 in very very thin amounts or razor thin 1075 on the sides of the 5160 then the alloy next to it, iv done this for cru forge v for swords. (So it goes cru forge v, 15n20 then 5160. I like to really clean my peices before hand and then very thinly paint the billet with satanite and bake it to welding temp, let it cool off to about 1000 then reheat back up to 1900, and stich up 3 edges leaving one open and then work back and forth to seal up the box and squish out any flux that has the chrome content inside it. I also leave 15n20 on the outsides of the billet work the sides down to a bevel hot cut them off to crimp the sides so only 15n20 is on the outside. I dont have problems with delam, adding the billet to other billets or folding this way being there is no exposed chrome to air or very very small lines of it.

As for the wasted steel layers from the cuts i save those and work them into tiny bars and weld those together.

Its a little different but iv found it works for me.
 
Ummm …. this is a sixteen year old thread … did you see that Joseph ?????


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