Thread: Welding the big ring - 1904

Geez , no safety equipment , goggles , gloves , nothing , and amazingly all that hammering and walking around that noone gets clobbered.

Originally Posted by Disco_owner

Geez , no safety equipment , goggles , gloves , nothing , and amazingly all that hammering and walking around that noone gets clobbered.

Yeah, they were they days when people were responsible for themselves and actually looked out.

Very nicely choreographed process! Talk about the bad ol' days!

A lot of people do not know about hammer welding - it was the only way of wellding iron or steel from the start of ironworking about 1200 BC until the introduction of gas welding late in the 19th century.

It became pretty much obsolete as electric welding became available in the 20th century, but was common workshop practice at least up to WW2. The other thing against it is that it is a lot easier with wrought iron than with mild steel, and mild steel began to replace wrought iron with the introduction of the Bessemer Converter in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, until wrought iron became difficult to find by WW2.

John

John, blacksmith's welds were still common in Winton and no doubt other outback towns through the 1950's. I saw numbers of broken axle beams and spring leaves hammer welded during my time as an apprentice there, bent diff housings bunged up on the forge and straightened, wheel rims heated and flogged out round again, broken iron castings heated in the forge overnight before being brazed. Plenty of items used on stations were brought in to the blacksmith to be flogged back together, or replacement parts made. The skills exhibited were wondrous to observe, more artist or craftsman than tradesman, black art perhaps. Industrial blacksmithing, as opposed to ornamental, has had a resurgence over the last twenty years and there are quite a respectable number of apprentice smiths nowadays.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

John, blacksmith's welds were still common in Winton and no doubt other outback towns through the 1950's. I saw numbers of broken axle beams and spring leaves hammer welded during my time as an apprentice there, bent diff housings bunged up on the forge and straightened, wheel rims heated and flogged out round again, broken iron castings heated in the forge overnight before being brazed. Plenty of items used on stations were brought in to the blacksmith to be flogged back together, or replacement parts made. The skills exhibited were wondrous to observe, more artist or craftsman than tradesman, black art perhaps. Industrial blacksmithing, as opposed to ornamental, has had a resurgence over the last twenty years and there are quite a respectable number of apprentice smiths nowadays.

I was not in the outback until the sixties, and by then it was virtually all electric welding and oxy, although I am certain there were still a lot of people about who had the skills. When My sister and her husband bought their place here in 1970 it had a functioning blacksmith's shop - but they brought an electric welder, oxy and a lathe! I am reasonably familiar with blacksmithing (although I do not consider myself at all skilled in it - my maternal grandfather was a coachsmith who spent most of his career doing blacksmith's work).

John