Second attempt at a forge weld | Problem Solving | Forum

Unfortunately, those still pictures don't really show much.   It's hard to compare one side to the other, especially with still pictures, because it takes some time (albeit just a little) to turn the piece around, and the piece is continually cooling once out of the forge. 

How I would want to see un-welded parts is to look at the profile and see if there's a distinct line/border of different heat colors in the billet, or if one part cools significantly quicker than the rest of the billet (assuming the billet is of uniform thickness).

Another piece of info that'd be nice is what kind of forge/burner you are using.  It could be that one part of your forge is hotter, and even though it looks like you are forging at dusk, it looks to me like there's still too much light to accurately see how uniform a bright yellow-orange heat  immediately exiting the forge.  The cooler/darker the piece gets, the easier it is to see differences under light.

Thanks for the additional pics/vids.  I agree with Eric, probably nowhere near hot enough (unless you're using a hydraulic press to set the weld).  Don't forget (or if you don't know) that the type of welding we're doing in the forge is called 'diffusion' welding where we aren't actually melting the steel to make a puddle, but rather, getting the atoms of the adjacent pieces close enough together that they are sharing electrons.  With a strong enough press and clean steel, you can diffusion weld at room temps, because the press has enough force and is able to squish the entire billet at once.  When hitting with a hammer, you compress the area directly under the hammer, but the surrounding steel outside the face of the hammer actually separates a little, and the harder you strike, the more this happens.  This is why you'll read that the first heat is done with gentle hammer blows.  And because we're using gentler blows, you need the steel to be as hot and soft as possible to get the atoms close enough together across the whole billet.

In my experience, the heat colors on video appear a lot brighter than in real life.  If you take a look at my video of the new forge at our shop, it looks (to me anyway) like the forge is at a bright yellow heat, but when I took the video, it was what I'd call a bright orange heat, not yellow. 
Of course, your phone may have a different filter, so take what I wrote with a grain of salt.

nope. I know no one who is in any hurry to see the the old guard gone. Please, take this to heart. I (and many, many others) value the knowledge and companionship. And, nope, you don't get to go... there, decision made.

looking forward to chatting into the night this spring... and you need to help with the coal forges that I'm bringing and don't really know how to use. So there.