I thought we had discussed sand in depth and even mentioned dirt daubers---mentioned in one of the FoxFire books I believe...
I demonstrated billet welding to an 82 year old german smith once (Bad Windsheim open air Museum) who thought I had sold my soul to the devil cause I was welding at such low temps. He used sand and I was using borax. he mainly welded low carbon materials that can stand the extra heat and not high carbon knife steels that do not.
I left him the rest of my little sample box of borax so he could track some down...
Plain 20 muleteam borax seems to do fine on my billets though I have a copy of the steel glue receipe for if I get a hankering to weld up high alloy steels.
For real wrought iron I will use clean sand or crushed glass sometimes.
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Thomas
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