It's really hard to tell about the temperature based on color in photos because colors don't hold true from camera to camera, monitor to monitor. With that said, the brightest orange on the left side looks pretty close to welding temp. The dull red on right side doesn't look like it's at welding temp yet.
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My very first Forge Weld
- Thread starter Okie405
- Start date
I am about 90% sure it welded this time. It never would get white... just a really bright light yellow.. the whole piece was ringing just like my anvil after the third heat.
My rebar handle fell off on the 8th heat while I had it turned over on the edges hammering those. Nothing came apart doing that so I'm hopeful.
Gonna let it cool down in the air then reweld the rebar handle back on then grind all the welds off and check it to see if there are delams. Be back in about 2 hours to tell what I find.
My rebar handle fell off on the 8th heat while I had it turned over on the edges hammering those. Nothing came apart doing that so I'm hopeful.
Gonna let it cool down in the air then reweld the rebar handle back on then grind all the welds off and check it to see if there are delams. Be back in about 2 hours to tell what I find.
Successfully welded as far as I can tell !!!
Ground out about 1/4th past all the welds and i cant see any cracks or seams. Gonna weld a rebar handle back on it and forge it out to reduce thickness and make it longer. I'm sure if there is a problem it will show up doing that.
Ground out about 1/4th past all the welds and i cant see any cracks or seams. Gonna weld a rebar handle back on it and forge it out to reduce thickness and make it longer. I'm sure if there is a problem it will show up doing that.
Looks good from what I can see in photos. Congrats! Ain't it fun and a good feeling with the forge welding? I'm still new enough at forge welding it's still amazing to me.
I don't think it should actually get "white hot", just a bright orange. I allowed one billet of SS/1095 to get too hot and it wasn't "white", but a really really bright orange. I'm saying too hot because it crumbled on first tap with hammer.
I don't think it should actually get "white hot", just a bright orange. I allowed one billet of SS/1095 to get too hot and it wasn't "white", but a really really bright orange. I'm saying too hot because it crumbled on first tap with hammer.
Forge welding is stressful but I'm sure it will become less stressful the more I do it.
Got all kinds of plans for some san mai knives now !!!
I'll come back and share some pics of the two kitchen knives I'm making now for my wife. Spalted tamarind, indian ebony, brass spacers and an inlaid 9mm black pearl. Woohoo !!!
Got all kinds of plans for some san mai knives now !!!
I'll come back and share some pics of the two kitchen knives I'm making now for my wife. Spalted tamarind, indian ebony, brass spacers and an inlaid 9mm black pearl. Woohoo !!!
weo
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Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
ilmarinen - MODERATOR
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Looks good. Nice and soilid.
I have to say - You need to take a welding class. Those welds are pretty horrible to look at. It looks like it was done with a wire welder that isn't big enough and the wire feed rate was too high. What welder are you using?
The photos of the billet that didn't work shows the pieces not tightly together. You need to clamp the bars together in a vise or with several screw clamps and weld the corners and several stitches along the sides. There should be no gaps between the bars when you are done.
I stick the coat hanger ( mild steel wire about 12 gauge) nin the forge for a few seconds to get it hot. Then I stick it in a can of borax flux to put some flux on the end. Next, I stick it in the forge and push it against the toip of the billet and rub it around to smear the flux in a small spot. The wire usueaal welds to the billet immediately if the billet is up to welding temp.
With your desciptions of the colors and difficulty welding, I suspect your forge isn't running hot enough. What type forge do you have?
I have to say - You need to take a welding class. Those welds are pretty horrible to look at. It looks like it was done with a wire welder that isn't big enough and the wire feed rate was too high. What welder are you using?
The photos of the billet that didn't work shows the pieces not tightly together. You need to clamp the bars together in a vise or with several screw clamps and weld the corners and several stitches along the sides. There should be no gaps between the bars when you are done.
I stick the coat hanger ( mild steel wire about 12 gauge) nin the forge for a few seconds to get it hot. Then I stick it in a can of borax flux to put some flux on the end. Next, I stick it in the forge and push it against the toip of the billet and rub it around to smear the flux in a small spot. The wire usueaal welds to the billet immediately if the billet is up to welding temp.
With your desciptions of the colors and difficulty welding, I suspect your forge isn't running hot enough. What type forge do you have?
Stacy,
I have a Chicago electric Flux Core Welder from Harbor Freight. Learned how to weld on YouTube. My welds do look like dog poop. I absolutely hate this welder with a passion. Has been nothing but hassles and a big piece of %^&*. I do have plans to take welding class at the vo-tech, it's just right down the street from me but even so I have to save a bit for a better machine. After that is done I will decide on Mig or Tig. That is all coming just as soon as i get my son through his driver-ed courses. Asininely expensive here.
On that first failed attempt it was clamped tight in a vise when I welded the 4 corners. Before I put the heat to it, you couldn't have slipped a babies hair in between them plates. I thought it was forge welded until I started hammering the edges of it and then that's when they popped open like you see in the pics.
I am almost positive I am not getting as hot as the average Joe forge welding. It is a home made bbq'er propane bottle forge (20 pounder). I have two inches of Kaowool in it with a hard firebrick floor on top of the kaowool. Then all of that is covered by about 1/2 an inch of Bubble Alumina Refractory Coating from hightemptools. For my burner I am using the single Gas burner from Mathewson Metals. I have a 0-60psi regulator from hightemptools also. For the doors I have two hard firebricks covering the opening in the back and two in the front. They slide apart on some small angle iron rails. I know this burner does not run as smooth as it should. From all the venturi style burners I see on youtube they are all a nice steady soft continuous roar sound. This one also makes a nice smooth roar but every so often (about every 15-20 seconds) it will make a hissing/gurgle noise for a couple seconds then go back to normal. It's much worse than that if I restrict any of the air-in at all. I have spent hours trying to adjust the gas and air mixtures, to get that hiss/gurgle to go away and as it is now is the best I can get it to perform. So based on that I don't know if I want to risk a second burner or just spend the money on a DFSW2 from Devil-Forge.
The mild steel rod I was trying to use was about the size of a 16 penny nail. I did exactly as you described, heated it up till it was soft orange, covered it in flux, then rubbed it around on the surface of the billet while in the forge. It never once tried to stick but it did start to crumble and fall apart in chunks after a minute or so. When That happened I just cranked the burner up as high as it would go and after a certain point the billet never got any lighter in color. It stayed at the same color (a really bright yellow) for about 10 minutes and that was as hot as it would get. On the youtube videos I watched they all get it almost white and have like this steam looking halo that comes off the steel. I never got that. A bright yellow was all I could get
On this new billet (round 2 today), it is forge welded. I got it hammered down to size now but one corner has delamed about 1/4 of an inch on the very end corner. Other than that it appears fine after hammering it to about 75% it's original thickness and about 20% longer than it was when i started. I got some more thickness to take off and length to add, tomorrow, so hopefully nothing else comes apart. Oh and I chopped off that delamed corner and it looks fine there too now.
More to come tomorrow. Thanks for all the help everyone has given. This site and it's community are awesome.
I have a Chicago electric Flux Core Welder from Harbor Freight. Learned how to weld on YouTube. My welds do look like dog poop. I absolutely hate this welder with a passion. Has been nothing but hassles and a big piece of %^&*. I do have plans to take welding class at the vo-tech, it's just right down the street from me but even so I have to save a bit for a better machine. After that is done I will decide on Mig or Tig. That is all coming just as soon as i get my son through his driver-ed courses. Asininely expensive here.
On that first failed attempt it was clamped tight in a vise when I welded the 4 corners. Before I put the heat to it, you couldn't have slipped a babies hair in between them plates. I thought it was forge welded until I started hammering the edges of it and then that's when they popped open like you see in the pics.
I am almost positive I am not getting as hot as the average Joe forge welding. It is a home made bbq'er propane bottle forge (20 pounder). I have two inches of Kaowool in it with a hard firebrick floor on top of the kaowool. Then all of that is covered by about 1/2 an inch of Bubble Alumina Refractory Coating from hightemptools. For my burner I am using the single Gas burner from Mathewson Metals. I have a 0-60psi regulator from hightemptools also. For the doors I have two hard firebricks covering the opening in the back and two in the front. They slide apart on some small angle iron rails. I know this burner does not run as smooth as it should. From all the venturi style burners I see on youtube they are all a nice steady soft continuous roar sound. This one also makes a nice smooth roar but every so often (about every 15-20 seconds) it will make a hissing/gurgle noise for a couple seconds then go back to normal. It's much worse than that if I restrict any of the air-in at all. I have spent hours trying to adjust the gas and air mixtures, to get that hiss/gurgle to go away and as it is now is the best I can get it to perform. So based on that I don't know if I want to risk a second burner or just spend the money on a DFSW2 from Devil-Forge.
The mild steel rod I was trying to use was about the size of a 16 penny nail. I did exactly as you described, heated it up till it was soft orange, covered it in flux, then rubbed it around on the surface of the billet while in the forge. It never once tried to stick but it did start to crumble and fall apart in chunks after a minute or so. When That happened I just cranked the burner up as high as it would go and after a certain point the billet never got any lighter in color. It stayed at the same color (a really bright yellow) for about 10 minutes and that was as hot as it would get. On the youtube videos I watched they all get it almost white and have like this steam looking halo that comes off the steel. I never got that. A bright yellow was all I could get
On this new billet (round 2 today), it is forge welded. I got it hammered down to size now but one corner has delamed about 1/4 of an inch on the very end corner. Other than that it appears fine after hammering it to about 75% it's original thickness and about 20% longer than it was when i started. I got some more thickness to take off and length to add, tomorrow, so hopefully nothing else comes apart. Oh and I chopped off that delamed corner and it looks fine there too now.
More to come tomorrow. Thanks for all the help everyone has given. This site and it's community are awesome.
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
ilmarinen - MODERATOR
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Sounds good.
One tip is to NOT close up the forge too tightly when welding. There is a lot of gas going in and if you don't allow the exhaust gasses to come out, it won't get hot enough. I like at least 10 sq.in. of opening when running at full blast.
One tip is to NOT close up the forge too tightly when welding. There is a lot of gas going in and if you don't allow the exhaust gasses to come out, it won't get hot enough. I like at least 10 sq.in. of opening when running at full blast.
I'm not forging blade shape yet. Just decreasing thickness and extending length. It was waaaaay to thick for a kitchen knife . I was able to get it down about 25% thinner than it was and about 20% longer. Got more to do there tomorrow. I'm old and fat and got wore out about then.
On attempt 2 that welded good, from start to end of today I did 4 heats with light hammering. After each heat I would lightly hammer it down the middle slightly off center to the right then again slightly off center to the left then flip it over do the same again then a sprinkle down each side with my salt shaker of flux and back in the forge. I did that 4 times.
On the 5th to the 7th time I hit the same pattern as the previous 4 but every cycle I put more force in my blows. By the 7th I was hitting it pretty good. 5-7 it was ringing nice.
The 8th time was when I flipped it up width wise and hammered each sides edges lengthwise. I understand you do that to put shear stress on the welds to see if you got good welds. The last hit on the edge on the very end was when the rebar handle broke off. I ground off all the welds and scale and at that point it looked great, there's pics of that up in the thread.
After coming back to it a couple hours later to see about reducing thickness and drawing it out I just heated it to forging temp and was on about the 4th heat when that small part of the corner delamed. I hacked it off and called it a night. More decreasing thickness and stretching it longer tomorrow.
On attempt 2 that welded good, from start to end of today I did 4 heats with light hammering. After each heat I would lightly hammer it down the middle slightly off center to the right then again slightly off center to the left then flip it over do the same again then a sprinkle down each side with my salt shaker of flux and back in the forge. I did that 4 times.
On the 5th to the 7th time I hit the same pattern as the previous 4 but every cycle I put more force in my blows. By the 7th I was hitting it pretty good. 5-7 it was ringing nice.
The 8th time was when I flipped it up width wise and hammered each sides edges lengthwise. I understand you do that to put shear stress on the welds to see if you got good welds. The last hit on the edge on the very end was when the rebar handle broke off. I ground off all the welds and scale and at that point it looked great, there's pics of that up in the thread.
After coming back to it a couple hours later to see about reducing thickness and drawing it out I just heated it to forging temp and was on about the 4th heat when that small part of the corner delamed. I hacked it off and called it a night. More decreasing thickness and stretching it longer tomorrow.