Forgewelded a billet and the whole thing delaminated on the anvil

I was at my shop outside Austin last Thursday, working on a san mai billet I'd been building up all week. Got it to welding heat, fluxed it right, and gave it a solid set of hammer blows. First hit on the anvil, I heard that hollow ring and saw a crack run right down the middle. Turns out I didn't clean the scale off one of the core pieces good enough. Spent the next two hours grinding the mess apart and starting over with fresh steel. That was 20 bucks of 1095 and 15Ni20 down the drain. Anyone else had a billet go sideways on them from a dumb prep mistake?

2 comments

2 Comments

stella_roberts14d ago

Man, I used to think you could get away with just a quick dunk in the flux and a prayer... but Dakota's advice about the wire brush changed my whole approach. I'd been getting these little cold shuts and figured it was my heat control, turns out it was just leftover scale hiding between my layers. Last month I tried scrubbing a 1084/15N20 stack hot before fluxing, and the welds just grabbed so much cleaner... no hollow ring, no delams. Now I keep a dedicated brush by the forge and hit every layer right before I flux, feels like it saves me a tenner in wasted steel every week.

dakota_king8014d ago

Switched to using a wire brush on the hot billet right before fluxing and that fixed the issue for me. Had the same thing happen with some W2 and 15N20 a while back, just wasn't scrubbing hard enough between the layers.