Flux
Often a flux is used to keep the welding surfaces from oxidizing, which would produce a poor quality weld. The flux mixes with the oxides that do form and lowers the melting temperature and the viscosity of the oxides. This enables the oxides to flow out of the joint when the two pieces are beaten together. A simple flux can be made from borax, sometimes with the addition of iron filings.
Early examples of flux used different combinations and various amounts of iron fillings, borax, sal ammoniac, balsam of copaiba, cyanide of potash, and soda phosphate. The 1920 edition of Scientific American book of facts and formulae indicates a frequently offered trade secret as using copperas, saltpeter, common salt, black oxide of manganese, prussiate of potash, and "nice welding sand" (silicate).
Read more about this topic: Forge Welding
Famous quotes containing the word flux:
“Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.”
—Ralph J. Cudworth (1617–1688)