Advice for attaching brass to steel ?

[Jeff Lary]

Wow !! lots of good information to be sure, your crankshaft weld is amazing it looks beautiful never seen anything like that before Great job.
I will wait till next week then go to the welding shop up in Bangor and armed with this advice they should be able to set me up with somthing that will work for me.As far as a steel guard on a steel knife yes I have thought about that but I wanted to have the contrast between steel and the yellow of the brass thas all. I also have a peice of Copper as well I can try not sure about how to attach that either? I am guessing silver solder also?

( Carbonizing Flame hua) ok I will remember that.

There is flux mentioned a few times so I assume that the flux on the rod itself is not enough, and I will need seperate flux as well ?

I looked silver solder up on the web and it looks to be Very Expencive ? unless I am looking at the wrong kind? I hate to spend $100.00 on somthing like that. If I ever figure it out I wouldnt think I would need more than an inch or so of rod to make the weld work. If that turns out to be true and each rod is a foot long thats 12 welds to the rod x ? a tube of rods,....thats a lot of welds ha ha ha . Considering I make 1-4 knives per year oh well you can see my point.

 

[crash325]

You might be better off stopping by a Jewelery store that has bench person on premiss and talking to them. Depending on the person, they may do it for free or very low cost. Or maybe give or sell you a very small amount of solder.

You don't melt the solder with the torch, let the metal do that. If you heat the solder too much it will never flow out.

Simple flux is Borax & alcohol. Regular old Borax o will work.

If you like PM me your mailing AD and I will send you a little piece of solder.

Crankshaft looks beautiful. A little hint use less solder & heat the inside of the joint to pull the solder through the joint.

 

[Jeff Lary]

Thanks for the offer but that wouldnt be right , Nope if I am gonna do This I just need to buy the solder thats all.Maybe there is a way to buy a few rods instead of the typical tube full ?
What were your thoughts on the Copper qusetion? How should I weld that to steel? Silver solder as well? I have a mig welder and if I used steel to steel that is what I may have used for that. A few posts back someone mentioned mapp gas what is your thoughts on that? should I use that or oxy / acet torch for silver soldering brass to steel? Thanks for the replys from everyone. in the end I just need to know what to ask for at the shop ( ie) solder type and flux or maybe I will just mix some myself?

 

[troutsqueezer]

I would not use oxy/acet as that is too hot and will usually kill the flux off instantly unless you are working on a large fabrication such as a loco boiler where you can localize the soldering. Borax was used for flux back in the good ol' days but we have come a long ways since then. Many model engine engineers use Harris Safety-Silv 56 with Stay-Silv white braze flux.

Go to https://weldingsupply.com/cgi-bin/einstein.pl and search on 56150 and 40021.


Propane or butane will work for heating, MAPP however, is easily obtainable, pretty cheap (Lowes, Home Depot) and gets hotter.

Silver soldering should not be confused with jeweler's silver soldering which has a lot more silver in it. You don't need to pay $100 to get some silver solder (see links above). Also, hard silver solder (as opposed to the soft silver solder) is not really solder at all, but is a brazing alloy. Anything done at or below about 800 degrees F. is soldering. Anything above that, but before the base metal melts, is brazing. You need the stuff that is around 50% silver.

Copper melting temps are above brass and you can certainly solder that if you want. In fact, it accepts "solder" better than steel.

 

[Jeff Lary]

Great info thanks a bunch I will go back over all of this info and gleen the parts I need to buy.Thanks for the kind i need too,.. i will write that down as well. Mapp Gas, (oh yea) I need some of that , no really I been gonna buy some and this makes a good excuse. You seem to know a lot about this sort of thing , how much hotter is mapp than propapane? I will do that instead of oxy / acet thanks but I do need to practice with the oxy set as well some time , brazing espically.

 

[tcreeley]

Spent over 30 years silver & gold soldering. We called it welding as solder sounds like something cheep. Did lots of brass & copper as well.

Commercial business or craftsman?

 

[Soundguy]

i'd silver solder as well.. plus easier to clean and polish up as it is softer than either base metal..

 

[yomax4]

I don't think Propane or MAPP with Air will get you there. You really need Oxy Acet. look up a Smith Jewelers Torch. If you use the Black flux you can be a little less careful in burning the flux. I like Harris 50 Ni1. 1% nickel. Used it a lot for carbide inserts.

 

[crash325]

Commercial business or craftsman?

You might say commercial. Owned & operated a wholesale & retail jewelry business. Also had my own school and taught Jewelry making.
Specialized in custom ( 1 of a kind ) designs. Did much of the bench work myself as well as hiring people and sending some work out.

Did a lot of my own wax sculpting, casting, & mold making. It all depended on the work load. Did all my own art work for new designs.

Most work was in gold, some silver & platinum. Cast a few brass models to make molds from.

Back to the thread.

In the jewelry business there are 3 main classes of silver solder. They actually referrer to melting temperature and are miss named.
Easy, medium & hard. Sub classes are super easy (repair) & extra hard ( very high temp.) Gold solder much the same.

For your job most any of them will work. Don't be confused by easy Etc. Just means melt & flow temp.
60- 40 or 40-60 are fairly low temp and will work well.
For silver work I mostly used a plumbers torch. Acetylene & air, self mixing. No reason not to use a an Acetylene & oxygen torch, just be careful of over heating. Hardware store bottle & head type of torches would work just fine as well.

I personally would not use flux coated solder. Both objects still need to be fluxed and flux coating just gets in the way of good vision. Good flux is cheap.

If you live near a small city go to a jewelry supply or lapidary supply store. They sell small quantity's of solder & flux.

More later if you like.

Jim

 

[Jeff Lary]

So buy some 60-40 or 40-60 un-coated silver solder and buy the flux seprately. Will flux for plumbing soldering work ? Cause I have a tin of paste already.
Also easy=melts at lower temp,... and hard = needs higher temp? correct.
Next a tank of mapp and my propane torch head will work fine?
Just trying to pare all this down into a list as I will go shopping tomorrow. I will try to look up a Lapidary supply in Bangor Me on the web to see if there is one? Thanks for the advice.