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Guy at a Ohio fair told me my Russian forge weld was 'too clean' and it stuck with me
Was doing a demo at a county fair outside Dayton about 5 years back, just running basic billet welds on a coal forge I built from a brake drum. This older guy watched me for maybe 20 minutes without saying a word, then told me my welds looked 'too clean' and that he could tell I was scarfing too much and hiding bad heat. I was kind of annoyed at first but he showed me the tell on his own knife, tiny gray line right at the seam you only see under a low light. He said he was a farrier for 30 years and burned through so many bad welds he could spot one from five feet away. Now I always check my billets with a flashlight at a low angle before I ever move to the next heat. Anyone else had someone clock a flaw in their work just by looking? Curious if that low light trick is something other smiths actually use.
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eric_johnson12d ago
That would've bugged me too, but sounds like the old guy actually did you a favor. Getting called out by someone who's seen thousands of welds is way better than finding out the hard way when a blade snaps. The flashlight thing is real, my mentor showed me the same trick years ago and it catches stuff you'd never see in normal shop light.
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