Forging mosaic, W's pattern coming apart?

Will52100

Will52100

Joined
Dec 4, 2001
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Haven't had this trouble with more traditional mosaic with an accordion fold. But this time I did a couple bars of W's with the Ferry Flip. Worked great, and some very clean looking W's and way less waist of material.

Problem arose the other day when I went to forge a blade out of one. Mix was 1084 and 15&20, fairly low layer count, and kept wanting to come apart where the W's were, not the 45deg weld of the Ferry Flip.

Just how much manipulation is possible? Due to welding it up the way I did the bar surface ground clean about 3/16", so there's not a lot room for forging to shape anyway. I was running at a welding heat, do I just need to use gentler and more blows from a smaller hammer? Or aim for a larger block and make a thicker billet?

Thanks
 
I would guess that you had some welds that did not stick for whatever reason. Sometimes a long hot soak at welding temp followed by correct thermal cycling can help. Sometimes not.
 
The welds were stuck, and I did normalize and anneal, both in the forge and in the oven. What it looked like was it tore itself apart due to the layers running sideways instead of length wise. I will try another tonight, hopefully light forging will work better than my normal hammering methods.
 
Guess I wasn't holding my mouth rite, went fine this afternoon, no problems. Guess sometimes you just have to back away for a little while. Either that or the F up fairly left the building.
 
Will the W's will do that at times, I find that giving a longer soak at forging temp between forgings help a lot. I have also seen guys weld up the cutting edge side and spine side of the bar before grinding and they grind it off just before they do the last few forging heats.
 
Will,

Light forging and good heats will help. This was a prime reason I went to a dry weld process. I use a tig welder to weld up the final layers and also make sure the faces are perfectly flat. Either mill or surface grind them for the best weld zone possible. Each lay-up will refine the previous lay-ups so the final layer is very important. If you think it is happening on early layers you might want to think about taking the extra time to do it dry.
 
Did this one the kerosene method, worked well. The stacks were surface ground, and the bar was surfaced before cutting to do the ferry flip, tack welded together then forge welded. Forged two blades from it without a problem, but delaminated in a couple spots while heat treating, the other held together fine. Both blades from the same bar. It won't be a complete wast, the flawed blade will give me one to test to destruction.

Thanks
 
Will-
Several years ago I was experiencing the same problems of some delamination. For the life of me I couldn't make sense of it and for awhile thought it was the "barometric pressure" or as you said "wasn't holding my mouth right". I finally tried normalizing my billet after the last welding of the "w's" but before the prepping and welding the final weld of the flipped tiles (hope this makes sense). Since I started doing this, it has made a huge difference and now I very, very seldom have any delamination in tiled welding (and still, of course, normalize again after the very last final weld of the tiles too). Just my two cents FWIW- good luck- kc :cool:
 
Thanks, I normally normalize after a weld session, but for the life of me can't remember if I did it or not this time.
 
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