[TheForge] RE: Stick rod vs mig (Larry Brown)

[Mike Spencer]

artgawk wrote:

> When forging hollow body pieces..synclastic forming sort of stuff 
> where the steel is really pushed to it's limits.

Synclastic?  *Synclastic*?!  I thought Kurt Vonnegut made that up --
his "chrono-synclastic infundibulum" or broken together in time.  And I
made up "clathro-synclastic", broken together in a basket, as in,
Don't put all your eggs in one...." 

Googledy-google.....oh.  Right.

    <mathematics> Curved toward the same side in all directions; said
    of surfaces which in all directions around any point bend away
    from a tangent plane toward the same side, as the surface of a
    sphere; opposed to anticlastic. 

A compound surface.  Never heard that one.  And "anticlastic", a
saddle shape.  Some metalsmithing professor has been reading math
books to spice up his lectures.

Okayyy, smart guy, I'm a gonna go and forge up some non-ergodic
surfaces.  Look *that* one up. ;-)

> Crack repair most commonly is where i encounter problems.  I've
> tried different kinds of welding (MIG,TIG,stick, gas,), filler
> material, prep, post weld grinding, heat treating...most everything
> i could think of over the years.  Some techniques work better than
> others, but none work well.

I've made more or less concealed welds of cracks in some nice pieces
with good results but *never* had any luck doing further forging on
the weld unless at a welding heat.  Since I like to do kinda organic
shapes, it's easier to make any repairs of fix-ups become part of the
plan than it is to conceal them.



- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^