Why nobody talks about forge welding railroad spikes being a total trap

Spent 3 damn hours yesterday trying to forge weld a railroad spike into a knife. Shoulda been a 30 minute job start to finish. Problem is nobody tells you how much carbon has leached out of those things from sitting in the ground for decades. Got it cherry red, fluxed it proper, hit it hard and it just flaked apart. Took me 4 tries and a trip to the scrap yard for some known 1095 before I got a weld to hold. Anyone else run into railroad spikes that just refuse to cooperate?

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1 Comment

claire95818h ago

Yeah that's the thing about salvaging old materials, everyone assumes they're a shortcut but you're just trading time savings for hidden problems you can't see. Kinda like buying a cheap fixer-upper house and finding out the wiring's all knob and tube.