wood block when welding? and other weird ideas

[northmanlogging]

I'm not new to making metal stuff, been heating and beating iron as a hobby for over 30 years, 98% self taught... some from books some from watching others, most from trial and error (lots of errors)

Anyway, been seeing a few you tube vijeo's of folks lately forge welding but starting the intitial welds by tapping with a wooden block on the anvil, and I simply do not understand why?
Is this one of them weird grampa tales such as never quenching in anything but oil (I've never quenched in oil) or heat cycling steel (this is how you bleed carbon out of high carbon steel) or the old standby that wrought iron is "stronger" because its grains have been "hammered" tighter. or is a whole bunch of this all for show? 

Now I do remember a time when at least local knife makers straight refused to teach anybody their methods... (hence why I'm 98% self taught) So i'm just curious where the xxxx some of these idears come from. 

Edited January 9 by Mod30
Language

[George N. M.]

Welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming.  Glad to have you.

If you add your general location to your profile we can often give better answers and there is a chance of visits for in person consultations.  This is a world wide forum and we don't know if you are in northern logging country in Maine, USA, Lapland, or Queensland, Australia.

If you are talking about putting a block of wood under the welding heat metal it may be to cut down on deformation because things are pretty oft at welding heat and it is easy squash things.  

There are lots of old blacksmith stories that are tradition that take on almost religious fervor of what is "right" or "wrong" such as tapping the anvil between blows.

One of my favorites is that a number of times I have been told at demos that the metal will reheat faster if I quench it between heats.  Not in the physics of this universe.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

 

[BillyBones]

I have not seen the wood block thing yet. 

When i first started my journey into smithing i was told that i should spray my anvil down with Pb Blaster to get forge welds. Later i found i was getting my chain pulled. 

As George said maybe it is to prevent deformation but then isnt that why when welding we use quick light blows? I think it is the same as i have seen many to say use a different smaller hammer to weld with. It is my opinion that is wrong. My opinion is that if you need to change hammers or use a block of wood to hit it with what you need to learn is hammer control. 

[M3F]

I've heard of putting a block of wood UNDER the piece being forge welded to reduce the heat sink from the anvil, and I've heard of forge welding with wood to show that it doesn't take alot of force to set said weld. My thought is yeah you could do it to prove a point but in practice, good hammer control does the same thing. 

[Goods]

One thing I’ve always tried to keep in mind when forge welding is that I need to apply force to get a good weld, but need to (at least initially) avoid too much forging that can result in shear across the welding surfaces. The place I see wood under the work as being useful is when you’re forge welding oddly shaped things. I have a project coming up where I plan on welding up roller chain into flat bar. I’m probably going to try the initial welding with a board on the anvil. I’ve not used wood yet, but I’ve never welded up something with so many air gaps and moving parts.

Keep it fun,

David

 

[George N. M.]

Goods, depending on the size of the roller chain I think I'd try squashing it tight to compress and avoid the various air apaces before I tried welding it.  I think if you try to do both at once, collapse the voids and stick the parts together, there is more chance of problems.  Also, I  think I'd run a bead of weld down one side to make the piece of roller chain stiff rather than limp while working on it.  Just some ideas.  Let us know what works best. Do you know if roller chain is made with different steels for the rollers, pins, and side links or is it all the same stuff?

GNM

[Goods]

I’m not sure exactly what the chain is made from and I don’t have it yet. This is basically a commission project. The person it a big Harley fan and he wants a clever made from it. He’s going to provide plenty of extra chain and I plan on using 52100 that I have as the core of a Sanmai billet to make sure the edge is actually good material. (Lots of challenges on this one!)

If it doesn’t work out he’ll be okay with that, but personally, I won’t give up till I get good results. It’s not a money making venture. It’s a hobby for me and with my personal requirements I don’t think I could ever make it profitable, but it’s nice to get a little coal/propane money.

For reference I benchmarked “sharup” (YouTube) for technique on this one. I will be welding up the links some, but a minimum amount to avoid messing up any pattern.

Keep it fun,

David

[Latticino]

You might also want to consider going the cannister route and using 1095 powder (you could even "San-Mai" that around a 1095 core as well).  A Western style heavy cleaver is going to take a bunch of stock.  An Eastern style, light vegetable cleaver considerably less.

I'm one of those who likes to switch to a lighter hammer to set welds.  Two reasons for that.  First, in the excitement of getting my first weld pass to stick, I want to force myself to use a lighter tap that sets the weld without knocking it apart.  My 1.25# ball peen does this nicely.  The second is that you can certainly make lighter blows with a heavy hammer, but it either takes a bunch of effort to hold back some of the weight, or requires you to choke way up on the handle (which gets your hammer hand awfully close to the screaming hot metal and spitting flux).  I suppose if you are using a 2# hammer for general forging hammer control won't be that difficult, but I tend to use a 3 or 3.5# hammer for the larger stock manipulation I typically have when I forge weld (pattern welded billets, axes, hawks...).  Someday I hope to get into more ornamental smithing, and this may all change.

Do what works for you.

[George N. M.]

I like L's idea of using the chain with 1095 powder as a canister filler.  That strikes me as a way to further minmize problems and you may get more pattern which is identifiable as a Harley chain, particularly if you keep all the chain oriented one was and use the sides of the billet as the sides of the cleaver.

BTW, how much larger is motorcycle chain than bicycle chain?

G

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard northmanlogging, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a much better chance of meeting up with members living within visiting distance.

When watching youtube or other online video how tos it's good to keep in mind that the ONLY thing a person needs to be a YouTube "expert" is a camera and connection. Sooooo, lots of the weird stuff you see is posted by folks looking for their 15 minutes of fame, counting likes. Many of the tricks like using a piece of wood for hammer, anvil, etc. to make a forge weld, etc. you see as THE WAY to get a forge weld are posted by folks who don't know what they're talking about, read, heard, saw, or whatever.

There is a list of smithing videos on Iforge that have been vetted by members, often as part of a thread, like this conversation is likely to become.

Forge welding has assumed a mythical aspect among folks breaking into the craft, I know I was pretty excited the first time I made a good one. Anyway, you see lots of folks who've made a good first time weld and THINK it's because of some special trick they thought up. 

I dispel the "magical mystery BS" aspect of forge welding by making it a 1st. session exercise. People I show what I know make a good forge weld their first time at the anvil. Just follow the steps and welding is no big deal. 

I like to consolidate roller chain before fluxing and welding I don't get as many inclusions that way. I've only made a roller chain billet a couple times for the experience, I don't make blades so I don't nave much reason. What I am interested in is pattern development and roller chain offers a number of interesting opportunities to develop interesting patterns. 

My small experiments were with a short length of motorcycle chain and old chainsaw chain. Lots of guys like chainsaw chain because of the higher carbon steel in the teeth but I don't think it's significantly higher C than the rollers and the link plates aren't mild by a long shot. 

Anyway, In one experiment I wire wrapped the chain in as tight a bundle as I could and consolidated it with the rollers flat on the anvil and links on edge. I had to wire it a couple times before I felt it was consolidated enough to weld. 

Another experiment I consolidated the bundle with the links flat, sort of a pancake, and folded it to make a bar shaped billet. 

In both cases I got voids which would've required more consolidating, folding and welding. 

My next thought would've been a canister but I don't make blades and never gave it a try even though I was gifted with a number of containers of metal dust used for spray deposition, some crazy high carbon or hard like Stellite.

Uhhhh, there was about a 3 hour break while I plowed snow again. 

I mentioned playing with chain and the next thing I knew I was gifted with something like #75 roller chain and a length of drive chain from a Champion road grader with links nearly an inch long, maybe 2-4 links would make a decent sheath knife. 

So, plowing is done and I'm hoping we don't get much if any more or I'll have to rent/hire a loader to push my dump piles farther out so I can stack snow. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Goods]

northmanlogging, sorry for taking over your post…

George, here’s a pic of the chain that was just sent to me:

He’s clean up 3 chains to play with, each over 2lbs.

I plan on starting the weld by hand hammering, but will use the power hammer to get good consolidation. 
I’m looking to make the final billet up with 1/4” of consolidated chain on each side with 1/4” core of 52100 for a total billet at 3/4”x2”x6”. That should give me plenty of material. (It’s more than I’ve used for my large hatchets!)

I’m expecting this to be a fun, challenging project and don’t really expect the first try to be quite right…(I’m generally not that interested in making knives, but this intrigues me.)

Just a note on the YouTube channel for “shurap”. He’s a knife maker from Summy, Ukraine and his videos are well done with interesting forge welding pattern development and shop built equipment, without crazy music or even commentary. I really enjoy his videos and was very concerned after the situation started there and he videos stopped coming. I was very relieved when he started posting videos again last spring! The world can be a very dangerous place… If you have any interest, check his videos out, it may help the circumstances for him, maybe…

Keep it fun,

David

[Frosty]

Are you going to consolidate it in a V block? Treating it kind of like cable helps.

Do you know what that chain came out of? Double or greater roller chain is pretty common but I've never seen the itty bitty 3rd. roller. The voices keep saying it's a "Pinky" roller but you know the voices, they make stuff up sometimes.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Goods, thanks for the lead on Shurap from Ukraine. I just watched his video on making knives from the Occupiers Tank Cannon. Absolutely outstanding knives, I can see what I'll be doing, watching a lot more of his videos. 

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Goods]

Frosty, I wasn’t planning on using a swage, but I’m not opposed. I’m probably going to figure it as I go.

The 3rd small roller is a visual effect. The chain is folded back on itself and you’re seeing one of the rollers from the bottom layer. It mess with me too, and I had to take a me a close look at the other pictures he sent.

Irondragon, I’m glad you checked them out. Beautiful results with all the details of the steps. I was really surprised/impressed by his hand sanding aid.

Keep it fun,

David

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I found the press and power hammer he was using interesting. It appeared that the round lower die in the power hammer was turning with every blow.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[northmanlogging]

14 hours ago, M3F said:

I've heard of putting a block of wood UNDER the piece being forge welded to reduce the heat sink from the anvil, and I've heard of forge welding with wood to show that it doesn't take alot of force to set said weld. My thought is yeah you could do it to prove a point but in practice, good hammer control does the same thing. 

see now that actually makes sense, especially if you're starting with a fairly cold anvil, or Small stuff (which I'm simply not talented enough to hammer weld small stuff lol) 

3 hours ago, Goods said:

northmanlogging, sorry for taking over your post…

George, here’s a pic of the chain that was just sent to me:

He’s clean up 3 chains to play with, each over 2lbs.

David

No worries, one of the projects I've been meaning to get around too... is welding chainsaw chain into a billet, but somebody went and started a logging company while working full time as a machinist, so I haven't had a whole lot of time for playing in a couple few years... at one point I was part time blade smithing/armor making etc but knocking down trees paid better, so I've gone that direction, for now anyway. 

as for location, as a rule I leave that out of forums, other then W Warshington/PNW  where its getting harder to find good coal, and I might have to find a propane forge soon.  

Another vid I recently watch spouted off the idear of "cleaning" the hammer between strikes, hence all the whacking of the poor anvil... it sounds all neato and makes a skookum show for the punters, but its simply wasted movement and hard on the anvil.   But some grey beard extolled the importance of it... so now those that know better are going to spend a lifetime trying to correct the wrongs of a 5 min video...   (fer the mods... Skookum= big, best, toughest, or rumors, news etc PNW Chinook Jargon) 

Now if you tap the anvil to reseat ye ole whackin stick in yer lunch hooks to maybe switch from mashing the steel to say creating a taper, etc thats different. 


Anyway, I get distracted (and i get hit in the head... like a lot...) as for forging drive chains, or roller chains, they are made up of 2 or more types of steel, the pins and rollers are generally high carbon, the side plate medium carbon, and some are sometimes chrome plated, getting and keeping the heat right for welding is I hear the hardest part. so a canister type weld might be a pretty good idear 

[swedefiddle]

Welcome Northman,

You are in the North West Blacksmith Association (NWBA) area. Yes I am a member, even though there is an imaginary line between us, there is no difference. There are a huge amount of VERY talented individuals who generally don't blow smoke .........something about where the sun doesn't shine.... The web site is blacksmith.org .  Their workshop is in Longview at the fairgrounds. They have a monthly get-together, a Spring Conference and in the fall Swaptoberfest. NWBA covers, Warshington, OhRegon, Idaho, B.C. and Alberta, quite a large area. Lots of members between Blaine and Ohregon

Enjoy your stay. There is a lot of information here!!

Neil

[northmanlogging]

OhRegon.. lol Stealing that

Seems like someone or many someones have suggested the NWBA to me in the past, something about a news letter etc... though at the time (pre interwebs, MTV still played music...) I was a broke as a joke kid, and many of the "smiths" I tried to talk to didn't seem real interested in sharing ideas or knowledge, saying lots of things like sorry kid, "its a trade secret" hence why I'm largely self taught. Things are much much better now, I guess the surviving smiths got the memo it was a dying art form? Though shows like farse'd in fire make me wanna scream, they do further the artform so I do try and bite my tongue to some extent "quenching in water! omg its ruined gasp, sob, whine" Never quenched in oil, so far only broke one knife, and that was before a magical thing called tempering it... (I wanted to see just how hard it was, and maybe whacked it a wee too hard lol, start over sigh) 
I did get to spend some time with a dude named Jess Roe (sp?) RIP who was deaf as a post by the time I met him, but he was an open book for information. Sadly not around an anvil but through things like the SCA and various other arms related thangs. 

[BillyBones]

14 hours ago, Latticino said:

Do what works for you.

And right there is the gist of it all. I have my opinions and everyone else has theirs but when it boils right down to it do it in your own way that works. It is the results that matter most not the process. 

Northman, close enough. PNW or just Wershington is good. Machinist you say? I run a Davenport 5 spindle screw machine right now. I had someone once tell me that to sharpen my drills to turn off my oil and run a few parts. I said yeah ,ok, and backed away slowly. Just thought ya may like that one for weird ideas thread. 

I have never worked with motorcycle or chain saw chain but i have worked a couple pieces of transfer chain form a FWD transmission. Cleaned the ... out of it, brake clean and compressed air did the job. I just folded it back on itself, put a tack weld on it to keep it from being to unruly. Heated it up fluxed it, then with the links flat on the anvil and the pins standing up welded it. Took another heat, pins flat on the anvil links standing up and welded. Rinse and repeat. Until i had what seemed like a solid billet. I then forged a knife out of it for a guy who taught me all about rebuilding transmissions when he retired. I just kept working the material at or very near a welding heat and it came out nice. May have to dig up a piece of chain this weekend to play with. Which of course now i will fail miserably at. But with out much on the schedule if i have fun it is worth it. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Northman, glad to have you. Don't like to let folk know where you are on fora eh? So I suppose you aren't interested in getting together with other members living within visiting distance. You aren't trying to repay the guys who didn't have time to teach you the craft I hope. It is a dead end and pretty much opposed to the reason Glenn Conner started and built Iforgeiron.

I'm largely self taught myself, there weren't even books available to me so I just heated and beat steel. blacksmiths didn't advertise here, farriers have established schools and I didn't want to shoe horses. We raised horses in the day and farriers were always to busy to do more than let me watch from a distance. 

Anyway, I found a couple smithin books at a book store's clearance table and more were listed in the back. Some reading material and I was on the trail. Then along came the internet and the first day I was online I discovered Artmetal.list and Theforge.list and I got to talk to people with the same and similar interests. 

I've never come out a loser sharing what I've learned, it's come back many fold. Heck, just putting my general location in the header has paid major dividends. I get contacted by guys and gals living in Alaska frequently, people who read my location here and darned if quite a few live within a couple hour's drive, and maybe 5x as many 1 hour. We started getting together to beat steel and swap tricks. While I didn't start the club the Association Of Alaskan Blacksmiths grew out of people knowing how to locate and meet other smiths.

The funny thing about talking to other people, you discover things about them and yourself. I was born in Everett and have relatives all over the PNW. IF that is you count the PNW extending from the Canadian, Okanogan, Idaho and east, S. Cal, Az. and points between. The Frosts are just part of the family clan. Our bit moved to S. Cal in the mid-late 50s, Dad following work after the war. Part of the clan killed trees, the Hicksons were millwrights, one Grandfather was a Superior Court circuit judge, quite a few worked in the shipyards during and after the war, etc. etc. Reunions were interesting things.

I've even met shirt tail relations living here. But then I enjoy meeting people so I put myself out there.

Of course that's just me, I could be wrong.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

[northmanlogging]

Frosty....

It's not a matter of not wanting to share, I've had plenty of folks over to my forge and got them started, some of them went on to be way better then I'll probably ever be, and I will continue to do so. 

However, I've had more then my fair share of weirdo's wanting my attention, (I was once almost famous famous...) so its  more about keeping my privacy than anything else. 
 

[George N. M.]

Northman, a lot of us here are self taught, including me.  No shame in that.  I started in 1978 when I bought a rivet forge and a 100# Vulcan anvil at an auction in Riverton, WY (west central part of the state).  This was long before the interwebs an all I had to learn from were some library books and my own mistakes (lots).  It was probably 12-15 years before I even met another smith.  So, since I did not have a mentor of teacher I probably still do some things bass ackwards.

As to maintaining privacy and avoiding unwanted contacts in the years I have been on IFI I have not once have had a negative experience, contact, spam, etc. and I think that even those who have been around longer than I have (ten or so years, including under a prior "handle") have had a similar experience.  Even the lte Thomas Powers who used his full, legal nme and his town of residence never reported any problems.  But the call for how deep in your bunker or out in the world  you want to be is, of course, up to you.  I don't think a state or province and a "handle" is much of a security breach.

George

[BillyBones]

Northman, that is why i chose the screne name Billy Bones, from the book Treasure Island. And also my location is just SW Ohio near Dayton. Gives people a general local but not enough to actually find me. There are a few here that have my real name and even my address and phone number. If you do ever want to share that it can be done through a PM so that only that person gets it. But yeah i get ya, it is your decision and i for one will not hold it against you. It was bad enough when i bought the house with the solicitors going on what was just public info so i try and stay as anonymous as possible on line. This is my only social media i have or want to have. 

 

[northmanlogging]

hrm... lessee if I get another warning from the mods... 4 posts, 4 rather childish warnings, excellent way to welcome new members BTW 

Anyway George, I sorta hail from WY, Douglas, Casper, Muddwest/Edgerton Riverton is a nice place 

If  theres some sort of public gathering I might be interested in somethink of that sort, and I'm sure most of ya'll are good folks... However I do live precariously close a large metropolis, but still far enough in the sticks to deal with the local bill hillies, (which can be a good, and bad thang frankly mostly bad) I'm also fairly well known in other weirder circles, so no offense meant by keeping myself anonymous, think of it as an overabundance of justified paranoia

 

[Frosty]

4 posts and 4 warnings, excellent way for a new member to make himself known. Not that long ago someone would say something like you are a guest in Glenn's house, act like it. My favorite was to say Iforge is like a cocktail party folks who can't or wont behave might get 86ed. Perhaps put a lid on the attitude? Dissing the moderators by calling them childish could've capped you at 5.