Serious Mistake!!

[DiamondG Knives]

Hello all, wanted to share my newest goof with you guys so it won't happen to you, (although most are probably smarter than me to start with!!)
I found some "nickel" welding rods at lowes. The ones that come 4 to a pack, and are coated with the blue flux.
I hammered them flat, then annealed them, then wound some into a piece of cable for cable damascus. Put the stick back into the forge, and started getting some slight smoke and haze comming out of the forge. Trying to set up my initial welds was a disaster, cable just smoosed all over and nary a weld! Not One!

Come to find out after reading the small print (under the large print that says Nickel rod) This rod was nickel silver! My forge is now contaminated, and has to be cleaned and relined.

guess the best advise is if your not sure, don't use it!!

[sjaqua]

Ouch!.......No Fun at all!


If you want to try again, I can suggest going to a welding supply store (or even sears believe it or not!). Check the packaging. What I have found that works is Nickle 99 rod. It is sold for welding cast iron and other ductable steels. It sounds like you, already have the technigue down, but for anyone else feel free to visit my web site where I show how I use Nickle rod to dress up welded cable.

http://sjaqua.tripod.com/cable.htm

[Geno]

It is important to make sure there is no silver, copper, or especially zinc in the materials we use in the forge.
Especially ZINC. The fumes can kill.

[raker]

I was under the impression that nickel silver was about 18% nickel and was only called nickel silver, similiar to german silver. I wouldn't think that the forge was ruined because of the welding rod. It wouldn' have been sold as a stick welding rod if it had any solder type material in it. The forge needs to be a slightly reducing atmosphere from what I have read about it. And nickel is quite gummy and doesn't want to weld to itself when forging.
It might not be ruined at all.

[DiamondG Knives]

Ray
It was definatly contaminated, I tried to weld another piece of cable the next day and had the same effect. what I was told was
that the coppersulfide is the problem. And it will leach out of the koa wool at temps just above welding heats.

I was wanting to try some modifications on my forge, so it's not that big of a deal, just a pain in th @#$%^

Mike

[raker]

Sometimes my forge will get too hot also. I just about had a melt down the other day when making some damascus in the freon tank forge. I used the same burner from a larger forge and it did get some kind of hot. A patch of satanite may have helped. It isn't dry yet so I don't know for sure .
Such is the pain and thrill of learning.

[tom mayo]

that is NOT a serious mistake.

A serious mistake results in a trip to the hospital!!!