Loading…
23
Took me 11 hours to figure out why my forge weld kept failing, and the answer was sitting on my bench the whole time
Back in 2021 I was trying to weld up a billet for a small dagger and I could not get the layers to stick. I probably burned through $60 in coal and ruined 4 billets just chasing my tail. I kept blaming my flux, then my fire, then my hammer technique, and I even drove 40 minutes to a guy's shop in Waco to watch him do it. He made it look easy and his setup was almost the same as mine. Two weeks later I was cleaning up and grabbed my anvil brush, and that's when it hit me: my fire was too shallow and the steel was sitting too close to the tuyere. The bottom of the billet was oxidizing before the top even got hot. I pulled out a couple fire bricks, raised the pot, and the next billet welded on the first heat. I felt like a fool for not checking the basics first. What's the dumbest thing that tripped you up for way too long?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
torres.leo4d ago
Six months I spent convinced my anvil was the problem. My granddad left me a 150 pound Peter Wright and I kept reading about guys with fancy new anvils and figured mine was just worn out and dead. I drove to a shop in Abilene and dropped $900 on a new one. Same thing kept happening, hammer blows bouncing weird and the steel not moving right. Turned out my stand was the real issue, a wobbly three legged thing I built out of scrap that rocked every single hit. I bolted it down solid and the old Peter Wright hit better than the new one ever did. Still have both anvils now and I feel like a dummy every time I look at that $900 sitting there. Check your stand before you blame the tool, that's the lesson I paid for.
2