154CPM and arc welding??

G

gixxer

Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
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Okay, so I have this stick tang bowie I am workin on. I want to put a brass female threaded skullcrusher on it. So, I contemplated the ways of threading the stick, and after reading the thread about a guy trying to size the tang just right to thread, I got an idea. How bout cutting a slot in the tang and spot welding the allthread in? What stick ## would I use? Would the stuff splatter all over the place? I am not talkin about runnin a full bead, just tacking it in and the rest would get fileld in with epoxy when I attach the handle. BTW my tang is about 1/2" and I was contemplating using 10-24 allthread. 1/4-20 is too thick. Of course this would be tacked in after HT. Opinions?
 
I guess I would consider silver-brazing over arc-welding, for a number of reasons, including the splatter issue. 47 Knuckle
 
Wrap the blade in aluminum foil to keep the spatter off. I just wire weld any tang extensions on..
 
Most of the time 309 rod is used for stainless alloys to carbon. Never done any cpm154 but thats what I would use in either stick , mig or tig wire. Works well with most high carbon materials also.
 
bladsmth said:
Wrap the blade in aluminum foil to keep the spatter off. I just wire weld any tang extensions on..
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ib2v4u said:
Most of the time 309 rod is used for stainless alloys to carbon. Never done any cpm154 but thats what I would use in either stick , mig or tig wire. Works well with most high carbon materials also.
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Thanks. I will pick up some 309 rod and definately wrap the rest of the blade. Sounds like this is not a shorts and sandals welding job either!:eek: Just for kicks I will post the outcome when the time comes. Still have about a month till I get the blades ready and back from HT.
 
If you are way out on the tang you could probably just heat the weld area to a good red wrap it it some kaowool and let it cool off. It would be best done before HT though. On the 309 rod, get 3/32 rod and turn your machine down to about 50 amps an d try it on a couple of similar sized scrap. This rod is not particularly splattery but watch the slag as it can pop off pretty good. How big a hurry are you in. I will have a bit of 309 left from the job I am currently running. I have no idea what the stuff costs, thats the toolrooms problem : )
 
If you are going to weld, do it before heat treating. welding hardened steel can produce enough stresses to crack the steel. If you are silver brazing, post heat treat is fine.

Here is welding information from crucibles site:
Welding
Use type 440C or 420 filler material.
Annealed Material: Preheat to 600/800F. Maintain above 600F during welding. Reanneal or temper 1300F 4 hours.
Hardened Material: Preheat to 25F below original tempering temperature (400F minimum). Maintain above 400F during welding. Cool to 150F after welding. Temper 25F below original tempering temperature (400F) minimum.

Ken
 
i didn't see what method of welding you were doing ??
if Arc use "Missle rod" made for welding dissamilar metal's it work's really well do as suggested and cover the blade .id do a aluminum heat sink and just tack it on then after about 10 min run the bead assusing there was no crack's in the tack's .probably throw a 375 degree temper at it just for good measure . i used to arc weld tang's onto tool steel blades and never had any problem's doing it this way . good luck
 
I would Tig weld, there is a lot more control of heat, but stick and wire should work. ! would also recommend using the 420 filler rod over the 440C, as you are probably welding to a 304 or 316 screw. the lower carbon content of the 420 should blend to both materials well.

Stainless steels often require different treatments than tool steels. I have seen many SS welds crack because the proper methods were not used. Sometimes this is because of the air hardening qualities of the SS, other times it is because of impurities in the weld. That happens more often when you are welding SS to carbon steels. One of the more common ones I have seen is a longitudinal crack(one running the length of the weld bead) because Joe Welder thought this rod is good enough. On one e job site I had to grind out and re-weld over 150 welds left by Joe that had cracked within a day.

I would suggest following the recommendations of the manufacturer of the steel, they have studied this much longer than you or I.

Ken
 
ib2v4u said:
If you are way out on the tang you could probably just heat the weld area to a good red wrap it it some kaowool and let it cool off. It would be best done before HT though. On the 309 rod, get 3/32 rod and turn your machine down to about 50 amps an d try it on a couple of similar sized scrap. This rod is not particularly splattery but watch the slag as it can pop off pretty good. How big a hurry are you in. I will have a bit of 309 left from the job I am currently running. I have no idea what the stuff costs, thats the toolrooms problem : )
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Now I wonder what the possibilities of the weld failing during HT since its gonna be cooked to 1900deg (or whatever). I was not really concerned about stress since it is so far from the blade, but it would suck if the tang split clean off at the welds. If I were to do this before HT it would have to be less than a month, but I wont be ready for that for about 3 weeks. Small window to get stuff done and mailed off.

IronWolf said:
I would Tig weld, there is a lot more control of heat, but stick and wire should work. ! would also recommend using the 420 filler rod over the 440C, as you are probably welding to a 304 or 316 screw. the lower carbon content of the 420 should blend to both materials well.

Stainless steels often require different treatments than tool steels. I have seen many SS welds crack because the proper methods were not used. Sometimes this is because of the air hardening qualities of the SS, other times it is because of impurities in the weld. That happens more often when you are welding SS to carbon steels. One of the more common ones I have seen is a longitudinal crack(one running the length of the weld bead) because Joe Welder thought this rod is good enough. On one e job site I had to grind out and re-weld over 150 welds left by Joe that had cracked within a day.

I would suggest following the recommendations of the manufacturer of the steel, they have studied this much longer than you or I.

Ken
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To be honest with you, I might just consider using JB weld and grooves in the tang to lock the adhesive plug in! Being a FNG to knifemaking, and NO experience in HT or tempering whatsoever I am starting to think that what I want to do is more complicated than just slappin a couple tacks on it, grind, and assemble the knife. The guy wants the knife to show people, he has no plans to use it to cut anything. Kinda like a gee whiz thing, "Wow, that's a cool knife!" sort of thing when he has guests over. It looks kinda like an ST23. Since it will never really see work, I might not worry about it.
 
gixxer said:
To be honest with you, I might just consider using JB weld and grooves in the tang to lock the adhesive plug in! Being a FNG to knifemaking, and NO experience in HT or tempering whatsoever I am starting to think that what I want to do is more complicated than just slappin a couple tacks on it, grind, and assemble the knife. The guy wants the knife to show people, he has no plans to use it to cut anything. Kinda like a gee whiz thing, "Wow, that's a cool knife!" sort of thing when he has guests over. It looks kinda like an ST23. Since it will never really see work, I might not worry about it.
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Speaking from experience you should make the knife like it is going to be a hard user. The fellow may have the best intentions and state he will never use it but if he does use it and it breaks it is your name that will take the beating.
 
I just drill and tap the end of the tang and screw the althread in there after heat treat. If you want to make it permanent dip the all thread in flux screw it in and solder it like you would a guard with sta-brite. In retrospect if you are going to solder you probably don't even have to tap the hole.
 
I asumed he would be using a carbon piece of allthread. I do like the tap and solder idea too by the way. I never assume a weld is good enough and my welds don't crack. I do code work on boiler and pressure vessels and system piping. I keep wanting to get a picture of the inside of a furnace at work. The forges from Hell. The one I am working on now has 20 venturi burners and the assemblies are about 16" in diammeter. The burners can be fed a variety of fuels from gases to heavy distillate (heavy diesel). I am repairing a bad piece of external wall where it is starting to leak a bit. Plating over the carbon wall with 1/4 304 stainless plate. about 120 sq. ft of wall and in places it turns the plate brown and blue so I know it is around 6 to 800f. Like welding on a frying pan while they are cooking eggs in it. When near these spots we wear cool vest that have slots to hold chemical ice packs and where the so and co fumes leak out fresh air masks with flip up welding lenses. I mostly supervise and have some young guys weld. But I have to do the fit ups and tthe plate grows as you put it in place do to the heat. so it can be hammer and wedges and it doesn't take long to sap you. They won't shut it down because of the lose of production. Just doing my part to keep America in cheap gasoline. But I do have access to most any rod I want so if you guys want a small batch of something just ask and pay the mail.
 
I cannot exactly tap the slot for the allthread since the material is 1/8 and the smallest size prethreaded pommel is 10-24. For the silver soldering, I can use ither carbon or stainless, matters not, I can get both. Whichever works better with the solder.
 
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