Tip o' the Day! - Welding

If "boat" welding ain't real world welding I don't know where the real world is.

One problem I have seen in tang construction. this being stick tang and non welded to boot. Is notches cut into the tang to hold the epoxy.

When you you bend test a weld you want no notches, no deep scratches in the "coupon". I break can start from this area.

I used to be a code weldor, pressure vessels and such, kinda like subs, only the pressure is on the inside. :D
Anyhow, the Co. I worked for had a pressure vessel come apart. 3-1/2" steel.
it literally ripped open like you'd pull the rind off an orange, nasty spiralled rip around the chanel.The vessel was over pressured but it still shouldn't have ripped open.

It probably wouldn't have, except for a grinding notch in the seam of the channel. Wasn't very deep but the engineers and insurance investigators identified that notch as the cause of the failure.

It is standard practice on these vessels to make sure their are no such notches, gouges, or unblended welds. this one slipped by a team of weldors and inspectors.

How much attention do we pay to the surface of the tang? Square shoulders, or rounded shoulders?

A 90 bend is the ABS test criteria for a blade. The weld coupons are bent 180. If your coupon holds up, you get the job. Otherwise, so sorry Charlie.

That's a good test for your welding procedure.
 
Mark Williams said:
My, how we have drifted from aluminum foil :D It's all good stuff though.
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When I was a kid, we were so poor, my father had to weld-together used pieces of aluminum foil just so mamma could cover the potato salad for the church luncheon. :rolleyes:
 
Sweany said:
If "boat" welding ain't real world welding I don't know where the real world is.
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Sweany, what I meant by "real world welding", is that, at EB they teach their trades people very very well, but, they only teach you what they need. When you get out to other jobs, if it is not the same material, or different polarity, you have another learning curve. But EB produces some of the best trades people around.

I still like wrapping your head and ankles with the foil :D :D

Larry T

Member of NECKA & NCCA
 
One time I welded two chunks of wood together. It was tough at first, but Daddy said use a dowel. It worked pretty good after that. Trouble is, after that I went to stress-relieve the area with a torch and the dang thing just caught on fire and blazed up. :(
 
TBlade I was a boilermaker for a long time, worked with some of those ship yard hands. Pretty tough work sometimes. Worked in a fab shop for a friend of mine. Repair and bid jobs. You learn a lot around that stuff. Sfun just figureing it out sometimes.

Friend of mine worked a ship yard, down south somewhwere. Got into it with a one of the "clique's" his buddy caught the clique trying to weld him into a bulkhead. They had had cut his welding leads and had the first tack on the bulkhead.
Concealed carry is a good thing.

He left the shipyard and the state that night.
 
jhiggins said:
One time I welded two chunks of wood together. It was tough at first, but Daddy said use a dowel. It worked pretty good after that. Trouble is, after that I went to stress-relieve the area with a torch and the dang thing just caught on fire and blazed up. :(
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I really hate when that happens! It actually happened to me today. I was at work doing NDE on a part of a cast valve, weighed about 3/4 ton, I had to flip it to get complete coverage for the old MT :eek: their are those dang acronyms again Magnetic Particle testing. Well when I got this piece off the ground it swung into a woodent table and blew it apart. So I had the welder put it back together, the only problem was the table was pine and all he had was maple weld wire :confused: :confused: . He had to use nail and junk like that their.

Sweany, those ship yards are very dangerous places, a lot of crazy people working their. I've heard of things like that happening, but never witnessed anything like that. Ya really gotta watch yourself, aside from things like that happening, their is an accident waiting around every corner, like they say, "Move slow and keep your head low"

:D :D :cool:
 
I though this was where one discussed sword building. There have been some very long threads as I recall.

I wonder about these martial artist types, I think a lot of their swords are not quite up to the snuff being traded around here. Few among them could afford a sword make to the highest standards, least wise not for mutual bashing..
 
T Blade said:
Sweany, those ship yards are very dangerous places, a lot of crazy people working their.
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Welding and other trades probably have the highest amount of testosterone than any other industry.
 
Ok I know this is a really old thread, but I just found it and being a welder I found it quite interesting.
I work for a Metal Sculptor, mostly Bronze and Stainless Steel, but a few other metals here and there too. we have all the welders you could ever imagine(Mig, Tig, Arc, and even old school gas welders) . BTW- we hardly ever use the gas welders.
I come form welding where exact technical strength isn't really a big deal, as long as the weld is solid and looks good too, we're set. We basially use the stick and mig to do most of the work. We only use the tig when we need a strong, deep penetrating weld that won't distort the metal too much.
The nice thing about the Tig is that if you know what you're doing, you'll get just as much penetration as a stick of mig, but with half the amperage and hence less heat.

Anyways, My biggest thought is I was wondering if you guys have heard of or use Heat fence on the stuff you weld. For those of you who don't know, heat fence is a material sort of like water clay that you can smash up against your work piece and it will absorb almost all of the heat generated by welding. I've used it where I will weld for a good minute or two and be able to touch the metal just on the other side of the heat-fence right away.

My thoughts are that if you can prevent the massive heat build up you can avoid some of the negative affects of unwanted high-heat, such as brittleness, hardness, etc.

Just my $.02 and might be really applicable here, but what the hay!
 
Mordachai said:
Ok I know this is a really old thread, but I just found it and being a welder I found it quite interesting.
I work for a Metal Sculptor, mostly Bronze and Stainless Steel, but a few other metals here and there too. we have all the welders you could ever imagine(Mig, Tig, Arc, and even old school gas welders) . BTW- we hardly ever use the gas welders.
I come form welding where exact technical strength isn't really a big deal, as long as the weld is solid and looks good too, we're set. We basially use the stick and mig to do most of the work. We only use the tig when we need a strong, deep penetrating weld that won't distort the metal too much.
The nice thing about the Tig is that if you know what you're doing, you'll get just as much penetration as a stick of mig, but with half the amperage and hence less heat.

Anyways, My biggest thought is I was wondering if you guys have heard of or use Heat fence on the stuff you weld. For those of you who don't know, heat fence is a material sort of like water clay that you can smash up against your work piece and it will absorb almost all of the heat generated by welding. I've used it where I will weld for a good minute or two and be able to touch the metal just on the other side of the heat-fence right away.

My thoughts are that if you can prevent the massive heat build up you can avoid some of the negative affects of unwanted high-heat, such as brittleness, hardness, etc.

Just my $.02 and might be really applicable here, but what the hay!
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Yer right... this is an old thread, haha! Hey when it comes time to keep an area cool, I use Satanite on it, and I don't bother to wait for it to dry - just mix it thick and slap it on. I also have a few nice thick slabs of aluminum plate to clamp next to an area I don't want the heat travelling too far up it. Gargh! I miss not having a Tig!
 
Matt Shade said:
I'd be glad to take it off your hands :D
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Double negative? What I meant to say was that I miss having access to a tig, and would love to have one to add to my welding arsenal. :)
 
Matt Shade said:
I figured that. All the same if you find yourself with a spare ;)
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Ever see those plans about making a welder out of an old microwave oven, Matt? Kind of neat if you are on a seriously-small budget.
 
I think it would be better if I didn't :D
I've got a good buzzbox that will do pretty much anything I need to. I've done everything with it from making spurs to repairing peices of machinery. Its just hard to make a pretty job of it sometimes. Would like to get a good MIG someday for the thinner stuff. A TIG would mostly be a toy for me, but I really want one anyhow :D
 
As another retired welder, Stick, Tig, and Mig, I agree with the comment that the broken tangs that were mentioned were a result of faulty welding procedure if the stress relief was done correctly. I noticed one thing that was mentioned, that being preheat. I don't remember what the carbon content was on a large pipe project we were working on one time, but the pipes carbon content was much higher than it was supposed to be. Even though low hydrogen welding rods were being used, and preheat, the welds started popping like glass, at the outside edge of the welds. Needless to say the pipe was shipped back.
 
jhiggins said:
Use Preparation-H on welding burns and bad sunburns. WORKS AWESOME! Heals it up quick too, and if you get it on soon enough there will be very little or no blistering.
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Yep!! It figures that you don't use it in any other applications because you are a perfect A'hole. HEHEHE!!!
:p
 
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