[TheForge] Vision damage and welding shields pt 2

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> Hey Bob,
> I guess you and Philip must have mastered the fluxless forge weld.
> Congratulations!
>  The majority of us average Bladesmith / Blacksmiths tend to use large
> amounts of borax flux.
> You might want to look up the chemical formula for Borax.

Well, since you gave such a pissy answer to my mild joke, AND misspelled my
name, I'm in the process of doing some research, to discover exactly what
does happen when borax melts onto a weld. So far, I have discovered that
sodium flare is considered a hazard in the glass industry because the silica
sand used for glass is usually sea sand, thus has free salt (NaCl) as an
impurity in it, while borax, the mineral, is composed of  Na 2 B 4 O 5 ( OH
4), meaning that the sodium is already bonded to the oxygen, thus not
forming a new chemical bond, as is the case with the  silicates containing
sodium chloride.

> I find didymium /gold coated face shields extremely helpful in spotting
weld
> imperfections in my damascus welds.

That's a reason it itself to use them, if that's the case, but that does not
necessarily follow from the question of whether or not mineral borax emits
light in the spectrum referred to as "sodium flare".

Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....