A guy at a hammer-in in Ohio told me my forge weld was 'pretty for a guy who doesn't know why it stuck,' and I've been arguing with myself about it for 3 months | Blacksmiths - Pinecone Attack
A guy at a hammer-in in Ohio told me my forge weld was 'pretty for a guy who doesn't know why it stuck,' and I've been arguing with myself about it for 3 months
Last October at a hammer-in near Wooster, Ohio, I showed an older smith a billet I'd welded up from 4 layers of 1084 and 15n20, and it had held together fine through 2 normalizing cycles. He looked at it for maybe 5 seconds and asked what my soak temp was, and when I said 'bright orange, I just watch the color' he laughed and walked off. The thing is, it worked, and I've made 6 more billets the same way since with only one failure. But now I keep wondering if I'm learning the craft or just getting lucky, because he never actually told me what he thought was wrong. So here's the debate I want to settle: does a weld that holds count as a good weld, or does the reason behind it matter more than the result? He was kind of a jerk about it, but I can't shake that he might have been right about something. Curious if any of you have had a run-in like this and whether it changed how you work.