Fellow smith at the guild last night convinced me I've been overthinking my forge welding temps

He said he just goes by color and doesn't even bother with a pyrometer, showed me a clean billet he did by eye, and now I'm wondering if I've been wasting time obsessing over exact numbers instead of just reading the steel.

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyw1216d ago

The guy showing you a clean billet doesn't tell you about the ten he ruined before that one. Color reading works great when you've got a perfect eye and consistent lighting, but most of us are working in a shop with bad overhead lights and a grimy window. I've seen plenty of "by eye" welds that looked fine on the surface but had cold shuts you could drive a truck through. Maybe your buddy is a savant, but for the rest of us, a pyrometer is like a ground clamp - cheap insurance against a stupid mistake. Overthinking temps beats underthinking them every time.

craig.parker16d ago

Dang dude, that's exactly what I was wondering too. So like, when he showed you that billet, was it a simple stack of the same steel or was it something trickier like mixing 1095 with 15n20 or throwing some wrought iron in there? Because I feel like "by eye" gets a whole lot harder when you're trying to nail the sweet spot for two different alloys that spark and move totally different under the hammer. I've had days where my color read was perfect on a mono billet but I absolutely blew up a san mai trying to guess the temp on the core vs the jacket. Did he mention what he was welding up?

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