An Old Welder

About the time I bought my first MIG welder the welding supply store manager and I were just making conversation and he was relating stories about customers. At one point he remarked that he could spot an old experienced welder when he pulled a piece of soapstone out of his pocket no bigger than his fingernail. This image seemed curious enough to me that I have remembered it probably because I didn’t really understand it at the time. Soapstone came in long sticks and it was inexpensive so why the little piece? It seemed like a frugal oddity.

When I load up my overalls pockets each morning, soapstone is one of the items which goes in. The title phrase jumped out at me when I looked and saw I was putting in several little pieces of soapstone that were approaching finger nail size. If soapstone came in long sticks and was inexpensive, why was I still carrying the nubbins? The answer is because they still work and the smaller they are the easier they are to carry around. So now it didn’t seem so much a matter of frugality as a matter of savvy convenience.

Each marking method has something to recommend it. Back on September 19, 2010 I wrote about how much I like using a presto pen. One of the disadvantages of the correction fluid line is that often I need to use lacquer thinner to remove it so it doesn’t leave a permanent ghost image on the steel after being heated.

I use soapstone a lot. It’s clean, more durable than white chalk, erasable, good for sketching on a rusted sheet but not as good, in my opinion, as charcoal on paper.

I carry a silver pencil too. It’s not as good for sketching as soapstone but easier to draw a clean thin line.

If a really accurate line is needed a scribe is hard to beat but it will often leave a process mark which may be desirable or not. I already spent some time last July 20th writing about witness marks of various kinds so no more here.

The little pieces of soapstone are probably have a permanent home in the bottom of my pocket. I have never been able to adapt to the holders that clip onto a shirt pocket. For me, that is an example of gilding the lily.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Witness Marks

Yesterday I started a small sculpture project which required seven pairs of elements. The pairs are similar but not identical so I stamped reference numbers to keep the pairs matched. This one example of what I call a witness mark. They may not be readily apparent in the finished piece but theoretically a forensic examination might reveal them.

After a little checking I found this phrase can be used to express quite a range of subjects. The online Double Tongued Dictionary, which describes itself as “a lexicon of fringe English focusing on slang, jargon and new words,” gives this definition:

“witness mark n. generally, an intentional, accidental, or naturally occurring spot, line, groove, or other contrasting area that serves as an indicator of certain facts; in geography and surveying, a blaze, cut, hole, paint splash, or message written on a post, tree, rock or other guide to indicate a boundary, feature, or significant point on land, especially on a witness post; in construction and manufacturing, a line, groove, score, notch, cut, or written indicator made on the surface of material to impart information, such as where to cut or join; in forensic investigation, a surface groove, smear, stain, abrasion or other feature that can serve as evidence.”

I’ve used the term a long time. I think I learned it when I was doing woodworking. I distinguish it from a “process mark” which may be detected on close examination but not intentionally placed - just a surface mark related to the tooling used.

I make witness marks mostly to demonstrate the proper alignment of a tool or jig. I remember watch Tom Clark forge a hardy and fit it to the anvil - it only fit in one orientation so he made a mark on the side which should face the horn. I call these “registration marks.”

I also don’t think of transient marks as witness marks. Silver pencil, paint marker, layout fluid, presto pen and soapstone marks are quite useful but disappear as the work progresses and they are no longer helpful. Interestingly, I don’t know if there is really a proper name for that group but I’m going to call them “layout marks”. Even a center punch mark, which could be a permanent thing, disappears if it serves as a place where a hole was drilled.

Likewise, I think of touchmarks as being in a separate special category as well as the numbers stamped to indicate a pieces’ place in a series.

So, what makes a good witness mark? This is the rhetorical question that keeps me going. Usually, I use a punch. Usually the punch has a sharp round tip. Usually it is a center line mark. I was taught that a sharp square punch mark is easier to see in the fire than a round one but I really can’t say it has made enough difference for me that I make square punches which are more tedious to sharpen.

If I think I will have a hard time seeing the mark in the fire I will use a round punch to make a frog eye, my favorite - see the images, or use a gate fuller or guillotine tool to place shallow fuller marks on opposite sides for reference. Of course, these need to be used in areas where they will disappear with subsequent forging.

A scribe is nice for precision cold work as are transfer punches. Sometimes a chisel cut works well, sometimes a shallow file or saw cut or a zip disc nick. Occasionally I just put bars in the Hossfeld bender and make a slight kink to mark a transition spot. As John Wayne said in "Hondo”, "A man ought'a do what he thinks is best."

So, I think the name of the set is Witness Marks and the members of the set are all those other examples. At least that’s what a splitter would say.

I found this by searching for witness mark but I would call it an illustration of process marks: Cute animation

http://www.kanabco.com/vms/glossary/w/witness_mark.html

http://www.persimmonforge.com/

Presto Pen Marking

Correction pen marker fluid has a high visibility and has become a much used tool in the studio.

Originally I used the pens to delete ink lines on sketches, but now I use them when I want to mark a workpiece temporarily to designate some type of transition point where a punch mark would leave a permanent mark and a soapstone or silver pencil mark is sometimes hard to see or easily rubs off on the hot work. The white material deposited from the correction pen works something like a fast drying paint. It doesn’t come off easily even with a wire brush but can be cleanly removed with lacquer thinner.

The white line is very easy to see on hot iron. One point of caution, if the material is allowed to remain on the workpiece through several heats it may protect the underlying metal from oxidation, so the protected area might be visible on the finished piece as a local difference in reflectivity of the surface .

I find they are nice for labeling containers and for marking instructions on stock to be forged at some future time when I otherwise might forget the plan. They are handy for marking a date on machinery to record when the oil was changed for instance. In the offcut rack I sometimes record the length of the piece so I don’t have to pull out the tape each time I’m looking for a certain length.

I have tried several products and so far I prefer the Pentel brand Presto pens. I got some here on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NNXZ4W/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000NNXZ4C&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1F245Y3BJDMAZKMD6YMW

http://www.persimmonforge.com/