[TheForge] welding heat

Thu Jul 31 22:37:01 2003

Welder's shades work as well.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Chuck Robinson
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 8:28 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [TheForge] welding heat

Hey Folks,
At the risk of incurring the wrath of the fluxless weld crowd again,
I find it a big help to use my Didymium/gold face shield when forge welding.
Didymium doesn't filter UVA and UVB or IR.
It is effective only for filtering out sodium (Yellow) flair, caused by the
borax flux: But the Gold filters out everything else without darkening your
whole field of vision.
When making damascus, since it filters the IR, you can see any dark shadows
that indicate weld flaws, and you can really see the flux dancing on the
billet when you reach welding temperature. It is Like having x-ray vision.
The gold blocks the IR so effectively that you can stick your face way too
close to the forge and not feel any heat behind the shield. Of course at
this point any unprotected areas of your body will be reaching flash point.
The only other cautions I have are, that there is a color shift in the color
temperatures you have to get used to, and the gold surface of the shield is
fragile.
One other point, the forge welding temperature is inversely proportional to
the carbon content of the steel in simple carbon steels.
The higher the carbon content the lower the welding temperature.
Chuck