Slide Hammer Tool for Removing Weld Spatter

Weld spatter and pressed pins. These are 2 things that can be difficult to remove.

This video is about a slide hammer tool for pulling pressed in pins and removing  spatter.

I have pulled thousands of pressed in pins in my welding career.

and that is not an exaggeration.

There are many aircraft parts that have small pressed in pins and they are removed and replaced when then get worn out.

There were special tools made when there were hundreds of pins to pull but sometimes the only tool that would work was a modified slide hammer welded to a pair of vise grips.

So what does that have to do with using a slide hammer for weld spatter?

Well, I got to thinking about my very first welding job the other day and how removing spatter was part of that job.

I welded some high strength steel parts on that job with 3/16" 11018 stick rods.

Sometimes, when turning a corner, arc blow would cause some serious BBs  and they were really hard to remove...even with a hammer and chisel...and some areas were really hard to reach with a hammer and chisel.

High strength steel sometimes have a really nice finish like cold rolled.

and spatter really can stick to that finish a lot more than hot rolled mill scale finishes.

That got me to thinking that maybe a slide hammer attached to a wide chisel might be useful for removing spatter.

weld spatter

spatter removed with slide hammer chisel

So that is what this video is about.

I grabbed a standard masonry chisel from my local big box store along with a 10" eye bolt and some 1/2" nuts.

(I know that masonry chisels are not designed for metal...but this is only going to be used for weld spatter and I just wanted to prove out the concept before trying other types of chisels)

I had a left over slide hammer handle from a previous job done by a machinist friend.

So just by welding a nut on the end of the masonry chisel, that allowed my to attach the eye bolt with the slide hammer handle.

All this took about 10 minutes tops.

And it worked great...way better that using a hammer and chisel.

I can come back later and weld a nut to any chisel I choose.

I could even weld a nut to a center punch and try that out.

this tool could be used for setting finishing nails too!

I know that if I had this tool back in 1977 when I was trying to get rid of  spatter with a hammer and cold chisel, I would have really appreciated it.