gatewood

No, but I assume, almost any sufficiently fibrous biomass would suffice. I guess the japanese used the rice straw since agricultural practices would have left tons of it as waste material.

Yes this is exactly what I was looking for. Sand seems better, since it a lot easier to get it than clay (they're both made of silicates and aluminates), my point of mixing it with wood ash, is to add potassium carbonate, which the heat will dissociate into potassium oxide, which will then reach with the silicates in sand and make potassium silicate, which will readily melt at such temperatures. Most appreciated input as well, thank you , didn't know about that function of non-oxidizing torches. You know what kind of flames are reducing? The only ones I suppose I know about, are methane and butane torches. If it interests you, I once burned charcoal in a gassifier, collected the resulting CO2 into a tire and used it to blow it (hehehe) on fluxless welding rods and it totally worked, as the CO2 is pretty inert (though be careful, only do that outside). Forgive my ignorance, so wrought iron is (a kind of) ferrous silicon? No need for the nests, just do a soil analysis and see if your soil is loamy. Wow... I'm still pretty new to forging (my first forged knife was made a week ago and its not pretty), so amateur here. I've mostly been spending time designing furnaces and kilns to make iron and titanium castings, so my knowledge about metallurgy is lacking. If you could provide a link to or the name of that thread, I'll be most thankful. The japanese rice straw might actually work, as dried plant biomass is mostly made of cellulose (used in welding rods), though it'll smoke quite a bit (like a welding rod). An advantage I see from glazing fluxes (that become amorphous glass), is that they will leave behind a layer of slag that'll act as the perfect protective paint. I just looked for the "canister welding", but the only thing I got was "canister damascus". What is that exactly?

I was wondering, if you people know of any cheaply made ferrous alloys with a reasonable resistance to oxidation (since commercial stainless steel is way beyond the scope of homemade products). P.D: my homebrew kilns can easily melt iron and titanium.

I've seen many videos of people using borax, to protect forge welding processes from the air. Since such technique has been around since ancient times, borax wasn't there and I guess, ancient people's found a way to do it with something else. Wood ash seems like a good candidate to me, since at such temperatures, potassium and calcium oxides would form that would react with the silicates in clay, forming a thin layer of glass around the metal. You guys know of other methods of protecting metals from oxidation?