Friday, May 29, 2020

Brazing.




I made a rack for my grinding wheels. One stick each for grinding wheels, cut-off wheels and flap wheels. Made from a scrap piece of angle and some 1/2" conduit.


I brazed the conduit onto the angle. Conduit, because of the galvanized coating, brazes real well. Also, if you were to MIG weld it, best practice is to grind the galvanize off prior to welding. Because the conduit is thin, it's also the kind of stuff that ends up looking like something Paddy shot at and missed, shit at and hit when people use the hobby welders with the flux cored wire.

Brazing is a skill that's not taught or practiced much anymore. However, for this job it's a real good choice. Because the conduit is thinner than the angle, concentrate the torch heat on the angle, when it turns red add the filler and away you go. Grind the mill scale off before brazing and remember the brass flows towards the heat. I use plain filler rods rather than the flux coated ones. On a job like this, because the angle was clean and I was welding to galvanized, very little flux was required. With the powered flux in the can you can add as much or little as required. Just heat up the end of the filler rod and dip it in the flux. By using the minimum flux required, clean up is held to a minimum and as long as you keep the lid on the can when not in use it will last just damn near forever. I don't know how old the can in the photo is but AIRCO hasn't been around for a long time.

If you're going to be a decent all around fabricator, you need to learn some torch skills. The plasma has replaced a lot of the oxy-fuel cutting, and the MIG and TIG have replaced a lot of the torch welding and brazing. That doesn't mean that it's not a viable process. I've mentioned this previously a couple of times here but it bears repeating. If you're going to set up a shop, get yourself a set of tanks with a combination torch and learn to braze and fusion weld. One very handy skill.

No comments: