Hot vs cold forge welding, which one actually sticks better for you?

I been trying both approaches lately on some railroad spikes. Hot welding where you get the metal white hot and hammer it together seems to hold stronger in my stress tests, but the cold method with borax flux gave me way cleaner seams with less scale. Over the last 6 months I've done about 20 test welds on each side. The hot welds snapped at around 1800 pounds of force, cold ones held to 1500 but looked way prettier. Is there a middle ground I'm missing or do you guys just pick one method depending on the project?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.nora9d ago

Are you counting the time you spend cleaning up the cold welds in your stress tests? Cause that extra prep work changes the math a bit if you factor in how many you can crank out in a day.

oscarb719d ago

Hot welds hold better for me too, pretty much every time.