03-16-2018, 10:37 AM
Well Jan, should you ever find your way to Mark's I'll meet you there and bring Rupert with me. Isn't that an interesting picture you posted? I'm going to recommend that they replace those wooden 2 x 4s with something a little more fire resistant if they ever fire the furnace up again. 
You know I was in a very similar place here in Arizona a couple of years ago. It's amazing how we lose track of even the most basic and fundamental things in this age and I'm as guilty of this as the next guy. The guy I was visiting was a blacksmith in the old style and a collector of blacksmithing tools and memorabilia. He had a large collection of Arizona cattle branding irons. I was interested in them but was most interested in very early examples. I kept picking up various branding irons and asking if it was circa 1900 and he kept shaking his head, no. Finally he decided to give me a little lesson in welding. He picked up a more modern era branding iron and showed me the electronic weld that attached the head to the shaft. Then he showed me an example where two pieces of metal had been heated up and hammered together to form a weld. Of course the heated and hammered weld was indicative of an early piece. He ended up presenting me with the example
pictured below. It has a short spike that is meant to be mounted in a long wooden handle. A good idea, especially if you're working without gloves.
I think that you can see pretty clearly how the two pieces were welded in the first picture. For a guy who whose earliest exposure to welding was my dad's electric arc welder, it was a revelation.
You know I was in a very similar place here in Arizona a couple of years ago. It's amazing how we lose track of even the most basic and fundamental things in this age and I'm as guilty of this as the next guy. The guy I was visiting was a blacksmith in the old style and a collector of blacksmithing tools and memorabilia. He had a large collection of Arizona cattle branding irons. I was interested in them but was most interested in very early examples. I kept picking up various branding irons and asking if it was circa 1900 and he kept shaking his head, no. Finally he decided to give me a little lesson in welding. He picked up a more modern era branding iron and showed me the electronic weld that attached the head to the shaft. Then he showed me an example where two pieces of metal had been heated up and hammered together to form a weld. Of course the heated and hammered weld was indicative of an early piece. He ended up presenting me with the example pictured below. It has a short spike that is meant to be mounted in a long wooden handle. A good idea, especially if you're working without gloves.
I think that you can see pretty clearly how the two pieces were welded in the first picture. For a guy who whose earliest exposure to welding was my dad's electric arc welder, it was a revelation.