/ Torch Welding Other Metals: Bronze, Aluminum, Copper, Stainless, Cast Iron, Ti..
#11
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rScotty
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- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
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- 8,330
- Location
- Rural mountains - Colorado
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- Kubota M59, JD530, JD310SG. Restoring Yanmar YM165D
Thanks for the compliments.
The metals are all regular bare rod from the welding supply house. I do use a pinch of basic borax brazing flux when it might help. There are probably better fluxes, but I've never tried them. For that outer ring I used LFB - low fuming bare bronze - in 3/16". That's the common alloy brazing rod that most welding supply shops carry. I noticed that the box of that particular 3/16" rod was sold by Inweld. The ring is made by heating the rod while wrapping it around a piece of water pipe, welding the ends together, and form the circle into an oval on the horn of an anvil.
When I want a slightly darker reddish brassy color to give the illusion of depth - like to the mountains in the background - for that I used up a rod of 1/8" silicon bronze from NCG...sometimes Airco has it too. It's just slightly darker.
For the white metal of the pines & tops of mountains I used Airco #21 "nickel/bronze" bare brazing rod in 1/16". It looks like nickle ought to look. In fact, it looks more like polished silver than silver does. And doesn't tarnish, either!
Those three rods all lay down and join about the same. I can tell by the color which one I have in my hand, but they all weld very much alike.
Sometimes I'll use pure copper wire - often old telephone cable - to add some bright red color. It does work differently. It's difficult for me to run a copper bead with the torch. It wants to fizz, ball up and blob. But it does join to bronze very well. Here's two examples of a different type of tree with & without copper "apples" added.
rScotty
