welding 1940's american steel what a treat today!

carvel minne farmer

Well-known Member
good evening everyone I was working on my new Moline af plow today and what a treat that was! I was heating, straightning and welding on the trip rope guide and the trip lever itself, wow you forget how nice that old steel was to work with the amount of heat input you need to get metal moving and flowing I'm so used to this Asian hard brittle steel made of recycled god knows what that you have to have your torch and welder cranked right up to max to get any type of metal flow!! it's like walking a tight rope between having the metal flow into your puddle and having it just blow away in a shower of spatter! I had to crank my mig welder right down and watching the metal flow into the puddle with no effort, no spatter, no roaring arc, just the sound of bacon frying in the pan!! so smooth, still can't get the smile off my face, I'm gonna have to go out and see if I can find any more cracks to weld :D you know our polititians and industry leaders are always spouting about how much we've progressed? the new techknowledgy, I call b.s. we have lost so much more in the name of progress!! i'll get off my soap box now and go back to working on my new plow :wink:
 
I have also noticed this being a welder for many years and
working on antique farm machines for a hobby. Succesfully welded
a lot of old pieces.
 
(quoted from post at 15:43:46 08/24/17) I have also noticed this being a welder for many years and
working on antique farm machines for a hobby. Succesfully welded
a lot of old pieces.
moll one of the more telling signs I've found that your working on new recycled steel is in drilling a series of holes with your drill press in a length of steel, the drill bit will walk through with ease and you move the piece over 4 or 5 inches and start drilling the drill bit starts a high pitched squeal and instead of a nice curl of shavings coming up you have little chips flying everywhere!! no matter how much oil you pour into the bit! lift your drill bit out and it's finished. this new crap is so inconsistent.
 
Back in the day, most welding grade steels were made in open hearth furnaces. This process produced clean, high quality steel at reasonable cost. The down side was the amount of pollution produced. As the open hearth furnaces aged, they were shut down and not replaced. Most of our welding grade steel is now made by the basic oxygen process. Less pollution is generated, but the quality of steel produced varies from crappy to abysmal.
I too save every usable piece of old steel. It's a pleasure to weld and machine high quality steel that we used to take for granted. unc
 

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