Anhydrous borax

B

boilermaker

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Aug 26, 2005
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G'day everyone, now i've just about finnished my bottle jack press i've been on the hunt for some anhydrous borax for damascus. Where do y'all get yours from? Because i live in Australia ordering from the states is probably out of the question due to shipping costs. I'm wondering what else Anhydrous borax is used for so maybe i can buy it from the suppliers for the other uses? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. cheers!:thumbup:

keetha.
 
Pesticide, algaecide, fertilizer, jewelers and casting industry, glass industry. Check with the chemical suppliers, or just run a google search.

Bottle jack press for damascus??? Sounds a bit too slow to do much ?
Stacy
 
To be honest, I've never understood what all the hype about anhydrous borax is. If you can get it as washing soap (20 Mule team here in the 'states) you can definitely work with that. If you want the water out of it before hand, cook it in the over at 250F or so for a while.

I always just use regular borax and make sure that I just give it a second to boil the water out before it goes back into the forge. Applying it to 1000F steel is going to get rid of water pretty quickly, and I don't need to worry about keeping my borax in an air tight container :)

-d
 
thanks for your replies fella's. So regular supermarket borax cooked for a while is ok? well that makes it much easier!
By bottle jack press i meant air over hydraulic jack like used on thunders press over on donn foggs forum (with video on Youtube) works great by the looks of the vids and i figure that although it may be slow comapared to a propper press it's quicker than using a hand hammer (and people have been doing that for years:D) i've got everything required for a proper press bar the space to put it, so i thought even though it's not ideal, an air jack press is the next best (portable) option. Thanks once again:thumbup:

Keetha
 
deker said:
To be honest, I've never understood what all the hype about anhydrous borax is. If you can get it as washing soap (20 Mule team here in the 'states) you can definitely work with that. If you want the water out of it before hand, cook it in the over at 250F or so for a while.

I always just use regular borax and make sure that I just give it a second to boil the water out before it goes back into the forge. Applying it to 1000F steel is going to get rid of water pretty quickly, and I don't need to worry about keeping my borax in an air tight container :)

-d
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If you have never used the anhydrous your in for a real treat. There is no foaming or popping or falling off. It hits the metal and instantly turns to syrup. Baking it just isn't the same.
 
deker said:
To be honest, I've never understood what all the hype about anhydrous borax is. If you can get it as washing soap (20 Mule team here in the 'states) you can definitely work with that. If you want the water out of it before hand, cook it in the over at 250F or so for a while.

I always just use regular borax and make sure that I just give it a second to boil the water out before it goes back into the forge. Applying it to 1000F steel is going to get rid of water pretty quickly, and I don't need to worry about keeping my borax in an air tight container :)

-d
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Oh what the heck, just to make things fair and balanced, I think I will chime in and agree with Deker on the inexpensive substitute, believe it or not. It may seem odd with all my carping about substituting common substances for the real thing but on the water content I have to agree with not quite getting the enormity of the moisture problem. I have used both anhydrous and 20 Mule team, and found no significant difference in the welding (that could just be a personal or individual thing however. But a little bit of sizzling as it goes on is not a critical factor, either form of borax is liquid by the time the billet is going back into the forge. And if the foaming is a problem 20 Mule Team has nothing on improperly stored anhydrous. I have used anhydrous that was left in the open in a southern summer and could not get a weld to stick at all because all of my flux turned into large chunks of popcorn and flew around the shop, I finally said screw it and found an old box of 20 Mule team and stuck the welds with no further delay… it foamed the same minimal amount that it always does.

Having said all of that, if there are additives in the laundry detergent that could give issue over just pure borax, I would have to side with the unadulterated form on that basis, but water just doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. Currently I have around 50 lbs of anhydrous (I got it free when a huge chemical supplier sent it to me as a sample since they sell by the boxcar), and this may really seem screwy to some but I cut it 50/50 with 20 Mule Team to stretch it out and then add around 10% boric acid to the whole mix. And once again I don’t get the expensive stuff from the pharmacy I buy the bulk bottles of roach killer. (I feel so cheap and dirty:o;))

Flux really isn’t that critical for its chemistry, all it has to do is coat the steel to prevent oxides and interact with them to help carry away scaling that may arise. The only other consideration is that it be able to get out of the weld zone itself and not leave inclusions. Many other substances have been used for these purposes and some folks are proud of the fact that they don’t use flux at all.
 
The reason I say I like the anhydrous the best is simply because half of it doesnt end up falling off before I get it back to the forge. As kevin said the 20 mule team flux's the weld just fine. But if I had my druthers! Paul
 
A friend gave me a very useful tip about using 20 Mule Team. He said a lot of the problem with it fluffing up and dropping off was because it was applied too thick intially. The water boils off the material on the billet, and gets trapped as steam in the thick solid coat outside. As it expands, it puffs the rest of the flux up off the billet, causing it to drop off.
Sprinkling it on a little slower, and more sparingly, solved the problem. It also resulted in less material dripping off the billet into the forge, increasing refractory lifetime.
 
fitzo said:
A friend gave me a very useful tip about using 20 Mule Team. He said a lot of the problem with it fluffing up and dropping off was because it was applied too thick intially. The water boils off the material on the billet, and gets trapped as steam in the thick solid coat outside. As it expands, it puffs the rest of the flux up off the billet, causing it to drop off.
Sprinkling it on a little slower, and more sparingly, solved the problem. It also resulted in less material dripping off the billet into the forge, increasing refractory lifetime.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's why I've never had a problem. I use very little flux in my welding. I basically just sprinkle a light coat until I can just see a glassy coating over the billet. I never understood using a lot of flux when welding and certainly never rely on it to "clean up scale" as I've heard some folks do. IMHO cleaning up scale is chat an angle grinder is for...

-d
 
Perhaps the fluxes that troubled me the most that I have used are the ones that were more silica based, they stayed rather gooey and later examination of the weld zones revealed microscopic blue green glassy inclusions that looked like little chunks of Coke bottle. Carbon and hydrocarbon based fluxes are neat in that they may actually add a little carbon to the weld zone, they are clean but they don’t do much to carry crud away during the welding.
 
A good welding flux mix is 75% anhydrous borax, 10% boric acid, 10% flurospar, and 5% fine powdered charcoal. It works well for forge welding. Makes a good casting flux,too.
Stacy
 
The problem I have always had with fluorspar is it's incredibly high melting temperture, at the temperatures I like to weld it only creates a hinderance by making a pasty non-flowing mess. I have played with silicon carbide powders in the flux but there is one side effect that makes it a bit unnerving to work with- the brilliant sparkler show that looks like burnt steel when welding:eek: Even though you know what it is, as a bladesmith I am quite well conditioned to feel queezy seeing sparkler shows.
 
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