Finishing up a weld project only to find you’ve got tiny balls of spatter all over your work, the welding table, or both, is not a fun way to become familiar with weld spatter. Sometimes it’s pretty easy to knock off of whatever it is stuck to, but not always. And even if it is easy to remove it always seems to leave some kind of dimple or bump or whatever. This isn’t a big deal on a project you are going to sand and grind and what have you, but it adds extra time to the finish process and just isn’t an nice as having a clean finished product when you are done. Of course welding spatter is mostly a problem when you are working on, or above, a horizontal surface where the spatter can come to rest which is why it isn’t as big a problem for some welders as it is for others.
When I was in the ironworks business there were lots of times where spatter was potentially an issue and I used a variety of products to try to combat it so that a customer’s project that was slated for powder coating, and had no need for sanding, didn’t require that extra step just because there was spatter on it. In typical Jason at Fireball Tools fashion, he’s setup the perfect storm for spatter and then went to town testing a variety of products to see which one makes cleanup the easiest by keeping the spatter from sticking in the first place. He tries products specifically made for this purpose, along with some others that are just things welders sometimes say work that you might already have in the shop. Check it out and see what you think, and tell us if you have a suggestion too!
