First Forge Welding Attempts

[Dustin Quade]

This weekend my local blacksmithing group held a forge welding workshop for 2 days. The projects consisted of flux spoons, fire pokers, chain links, heart hooks and cable damascus. I have attached the images of my heart hook, "flux spoons" and cable attempts. The heart hook isnt perfect but im really happy with how the weld came out. The cable was interesting because we did not do the method i usually see. Most of the time i see people weld up the ends of the cable to prevent splitting then they heat the cable and twist it together tighter before welding it flat using the anvil. The way we were taught was to use the u shapped depressions in a swage block and hammer into the swage depression while rotating the bar. It seemed to work pretty well and i am excited to work the piece out now to see what i really have.

[Frosty]

Not bad at all Dunstan. Hearts aren't perfect but you gotta love em anyway.

Another trick if you don't have a swage is to forge into the inside angle between the face and step on your anvil. Did you flux the cable?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Dustin Quade]

14 hours ago, Frosty said:

Not bad at all Dunstan. Hearts aren't perfect but you gotta love em anyway.

Another trick if you don't have a swage is to forge into the inside angle between the face and step on your anvil. Did you flux the cable?

Frosty The Lucky.

Hey Forsty

Yea the heart isnt perfect, i especially messed up the part where the two curves of the heart meet. It was supposed to be a very shallow taper but i went pretty deep which made for this odd twist to happen after the fold over.

I luckily do have a swage block but thats a pretty good tip if im to lazy to dig it out lol. I did flux the cable just with regular borax. The man who did the demo did not use flux but he said his was the cocky way to do it and said that flux was not a bad idea for those of us not comfortable forge welding. They actually said they rarely use flux, one guy said he never ever does.