Tried forge welding with a borrowed hammer and it nearly ruined my billet

I was working on a Damascus billet last weekend and couldn't find my good cross peen, so I grabbed this old rusty hammer from the corner of the shop. Big mistake. The head was loose and it bounced off the steel instead of hitting clean, which left cold shuts all through the layer. Took me 3 extra hours to grind those out and re-weld the stack. Has anyone else had a bad tool mess up a forge weld like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

craig.mila25d ago

Val Williams gets it, a bad hammer will wreck your whole day.

elliot_patel25d ago

Funny how the same principle applies everywhere, not just in a forge. Borrowed tools, borrowed cars, borrowed lawnmowers - it's like people treat them differently because they don't have to live with the consequences. Same thing with loaning out your own stuff, you get it back all dinged up and nobody says sorry. There's a whole unspoken rule about this in life, where the moment something isn't yours, you just don't take care of it the same way. It's like we've all got this switch in our heads that flips off the responsibility once the item leaves our hands. Makes you wonder if we'd all be better off if we just treated everything like it was borrowed from someone who really cares.

val_williams25d ago

Knew better than to use a borrowed hammer myself. Swung a chipped one once and it bounced off a hot billet, leaving a deep gouge that took ages to grind flat. Never borrow tools for forge welding again.