[TheForge] Borax; anhydrous vs. out of the box vs. commercial fluxes.

Thu Aug 14 15:26:01 2003

20 Mules isn't lab. grade for sure but it's plenty pure enough.

As I recall it's been a year ago give or take that the anhydrous vs. out of
the box vs. commercial fluxes occured.

As I recall it was determined the main benifit of anhydrous borax over the
out of the box variety was it didn't foam and drip off the work.

Some folks on the list experimented a bit and discovered simply baking
laundry borax at 240f was enough to drive off the hygroscopic moisture or
roughly 98% of the removable (non-molecularly bonded?) moisture and produce
a non-foaming stick to your piece flux with NO grinding necessary.

There was also discussion of adding boric acid and the hassle of trying to
remove the iron filings deposited by (some?) commercial fluxes from finished
pieces.

Roach Pruf was cited as being an economical alternative to buying "boric
acid". It is boric acid but being sold as roach killer it's much cheaper.

I'm sure the folks who carried the thread will correct/clarify any mistakes
I've made. Please.

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph E Douglass" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: Rust,pickling

> gladish wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > How can you say 20 Mule Team is "inferior as a flux.." with so many
> > > sucessful
> > > years (decades) of forge welding?
> >
> > Makes me want to test them side by side. If I can weld with 20 mules,
maybe
> > I can weld that much better with pure borax...
> > Andy g
>
> What else is in 20 Muleteam Borax than borax? I will have to look
> tonight when I get home, but I thought it WAS pure Borax.
> I have used anhydrous borax and I can see no difference in welding
> between the two. But then again I think the only difference is the H2O
> content.
>
> Ralph
> --
>