What's wrong with this weld?

[lyuv]

Tried and (still) failed to weld two plates together. The pieces seemed to be partialy welded, which is progress for me. To test the "weld" I wedged a chisel between the plates. It took only slight hammer blows to pry them apart.

The bright spots tell there IS some sticking. But I expect that a true weld will be solid metal, and not be pulled apart like that. Am I wrong? What do I have here?

 

[Gergely]

Hi lyuv,

- what alloy did you use? common structural mild steel, or something else?

- did you use borax or any flux?

- did you somehow fix the two plate faces together so they stick together while in the fire?

- have you welded smaller pieces (ie. rods) together with success and then tried this bigger and more difficult thing?

I'm not sure about the size of the workpiece. Is it around 4" long and 2" wide. If so you need a quite effective fire to take it to an even welding heat (but not burn it).

Bests:

Gergely

[lyuv]

Hi Gergely,

I did not try other welds other than that configuration. So I have no success, and very possibly I"m doing something wrong, But I don"t bother you guys with general discussion about welding technique. Plenty of those. Just to make sense of what happened.

The steels are O1 and some mistery bandsaw steel. For flux I used a mix of borax, boric acid, sal ammoniac and iron oxide. The plated whare held together by tack welds on 3 sides.

The size is about 4X8cm (1.5"X3").

[FoxFire]

Have you done a successful forge weld before? If you haven't I'd suggest practicing on inexpensive (relatively easy to weld) mild steel. Also try just tacking one end of the billet. By tacking opposing ends/edges you can limit the movement of the steels which can make welding much harder.