A method linear friction welds a rotor blade to a disk. The method includes: providing a linear friction welding machine having disk tooling at which a disk is mounted, and further having blade tooling at which a blade is mountable; mounting a dummy blade at blade tooling, dummy blade carrying one or more first measurement devices which interact with mounted disk to measure position of dummy blade relative to disk; adjusting position and orientation of blade tooling relative to mounted disk until first measurement devices indicate that dummy blade is in a suitable alignment with disk to start linear friction welding a blade to disk; releasing dummy blade from blade tooling and mounting a production blade thereat; and linear friction welding the production blade to the disk with the blade tooling starting at adjusted position and orientation.