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I Forge Iron

Copper fill/inlay?


RogueRugger

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Thanks for all the suggestions. I did run into Robb Gunter and he pointed out that a contributing factor might be the very hard edges in the 'cracks'. These would be artifacts of the plasma torch pulling carbon to the edge.  He suggested normalizing. 

Anyway, here's the first of three bowl 'patches'. Not the original intent but more on that later...

This happens to be 11g mild steel (some drops from a local irrigation supply shop), w/copper wire staples. About 8" diameter(?) I always liked this shape- sort of a Celtic flavor. 

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Reminds me of my brothers boots.......I'll elaborate,

As a hard up apprentice plumber, when he lost the buttons off his Donkey Jacket ( if you are not familiar with that term, it's a heavy rough cloth coat, think coarse felt, that workmen were issued with) he would scrounge a few four inch nails from one of the Joiners and use them, similar to original teepee closures. When his boot laces snapped he went to see the Electrician.....the picture above describes the rest...!:D

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One of the problems that you are facing here is that most non ferrous metals will alloy with iron to create alloys with very low melting points.  This makes what you are attempting a very difficult thing to achieve!  You might try some tin instead of copper.  Tinning steel is fairly easy to do.  The look might be pretty cool too.  Tin can easily coat more area than you desire.  Controlled fluxing and a resist can help with that problem.  

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Okay, last post on this thread.  Attached is the latest adventure - this involved the use of pewter as a fill.  The fill went fine, but the contrast is not what i had hoped for.  For reference, this is 11g, mild steel about 3in square - just a sample piece that can be used as a candle holder or something equally mundane.  The piece was normalized and wire brushed. An old piece of dinnerware was melted and dribbled into crack. After some cleanup, the piece was warmed and something like Renaissance black wax (forgot the actual name) was rubbed on.  Unfortunately, the pewter preferentially took the wax and I ended up with the dark crack instead of the silver/gray contrast I was hoping for.  Sigh.

Going to hold off any more experiments for now. May try the tin that Smoothbore suggested or possible copper powder...but not until i catch up on a bunch of other stuff around the house.  Thanks again for all the suggestions. Dave 

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