I am surrounded by welding and fabrication talk all day-what’s the material? How will the part be finished after weld? What specifications are called out in the drawing? I find myself absorbing little bits of welding information and trying to fit them in with other things I know about welding & fabrication so that I can be as informed as possible when talking to customers. Am I a welder? No, but I work with welders, and try to serve as a conduit for our customers.
I was curious to find out more about welding history, and find that most of the advances in welding have been over the last 200 years. Even though evidence has been found as far back as 2000 years ago, the welding of metal was basically done by pressure (read heat and hammering) up until fairly recently. My exploring fingers led me to the Miller Welding website where they have a great synopsis of the history of welding: https://www.millerwelds.com/resources/article-library/the-history-of-welding
Speaking of heat and hammering, I also stumbled across a great article on the website “The Art of Manliness” about blacksmithing for beginners. We’ve watched blacksmiths exhibit their trade at several living history demonstrations, and this post goes into a little more detail about the four important things that a blacksmith needs: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/07/14/blacksmithing-primer/
It’s interesting to follow the trail from 2000 year old gold boxes that have been pressure welded all the way up to the friction stir technology being used today!
Peggy Terzian
