Just realized my forge welding was failing because a guy in Boise told me my flux was too thick

He said 'your mix looks like pancake batter, it needs to be like milk' and after thinning it with more borax, my next three welds held solid, so has anyone else had to totally change a basic recipe like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

west.henry21d ago

That pancake batter line is a good one. Makes you wonder how many other basic recipes are just slightly off because of some regional quirk or bad info that got passed around. What was in your original mix that made it so thick, was it just not enough borax or did you have some other stuff in there?

nancy_hernandez26d ago

Yeah, it's crazy how one tiny detail can ruin everything. Like @gray_carter96 said about the mud flux, I was using a charcoal mix for months that was way too chunky because some old book said 'coarse is better.' My welds kept popping until a buddy asked if I was trying to grill with it. Switched to a finer powder and suddenly my work didn't look like a broken zipper. You get stuck on one way of doing things and forget to just look at what's in front of you.

gray_carter9626d ago

Remember spending a whole weekend convinced my steel was cursed, only to find out my flux was basically mud. I was so stubborn about the recipe I read online that I almost melted my whole project. Sometimes you just need that one person to tell you your mix is way off. What's the dumbest thing you stuck with for way too long?