Inlaying copper and bronze into steel

[skunkriv]

FYI-something that stuck in my mind (hey it happens sometimes, really)

Was once told that 'merican pennies up through 1989 will work for forge brazing. So you don't have to search out your old wheat pennies (they work good too!) Always keep a few pennies and some borax in my travelling box.

[ladysmith]

Very cool!

Actually the roofing copper I have should melt fine. I know for a fact that copper ground wire from Lowes melts easily (whether I want it to or not.)

Pam

[PBARNHART]

Consider attenting the 2007 Tinsmith/coppersmith convergence, there are some old fashioned techniques that may be applied here..don't know for sure..
June 21 - 24 in north west OHIO...

[BT]

Originally Posted by ladysmith

Just for reference for those that look here for similar information, Bill Epps also suggested treating the area to be brazed like a "penny weld". An old penny is copper and can be used to forge braze by fluxing the area to be brazed, heating again, and melting a penny into the joint. The penny melts at a lower temperature than steel, so brazes the area (rather than welding). He said I should be able to just treat the area I want to inlay copper (or bronze) the same as if I were "penny welding" it. (ie. heat, flux, reheat, and melt the copper into the fluxed area.) The flux should burn off or float to the top.

I like to use stranded copper wire for forge brazing. I have some # 9 stranded where the individual strands are about 22 or 24 guage (about the size of telephone conductor). You can easily break the strands down to just what you need to wrap your joint. Then heat, flux, and heat to the melting temp of the copper.

To help clean up the joint, quickly dip the piece in the slack tub just for a second or two as soon as the copper solidifies. This will cause the flux residue to pop loose and then it can easily be removed with a wire brush.

[evfreek]

Hi. I have a big coil of romex wire that I bought at a garage sale. It is much cheaper than penny's. It is just cut into segments of a few inches. When it is needed, it is warmed abouve the fire and just pops out of the insulation. Works great, and if you splash it around on dinged steel, it makes interesting accents for jewelery. But, you don't use it up all that fast doing a few little penny welds here and there.

Someone posted a neat mokume video, and I wonder if a bunch of twisted copper wire can be consolidated with heat and flux into something like mokume. Or it only works with sheets due to the increased oxidation?

[Rich Hale]

Brownells sells some solder they c all Tix strips,,have to get the flux with it,,,it melts at under 300degrees f........Should work.

[evfreek]

Uh oh, not Tix. That stuff is really expensive. I think it costs more than commercial base metal mokume. I did see some other less expensive solders, like the cadmium silver for $159 per pound. That sounds expensive, so I might pass on that. The regular silver bearing solder, the Hi-Force 44 with 96% tin looks more promising. But it costs $73 per pound. Much less than the others, but still not worth it for sticking copper wires together. This does give me an idea, though. Something like fluxed spelter paste or waste drippings from soldering copper pipes. Got lots of that.

[smitty7]

You could use a cutting wheel on an angle grinder to undercut your groove so that the copper will grip better instead of using a gouge and hammer.

[Rhandir]

Heh, I just read this today and tried a very simple form of it. Took me all about five minutes to do. All I did was take a scrap of steel that I had tried cutting with a hardy tool, but left half done. I'm glad I did, all that was in the steel was a groove about 1/2 a cm, which I took a dremel tool to, and dove tailed it. Looking baisically like this:

After doing this, I just stripped a Romex(?) copper electrical wire, and cold pounded the copper into the dove-tail. I tried to pry it out once it was in, and I was quite unsuccesful. I then ground with the wire, trying to dislodge it that way, and I was also unsuccessful. Here is the finished project, turned out to be a very nice inlay that took me about five minutes on my first try.



It's so COOL!!!

[sam]

i have often put brass and copper inlay on to steel by chiseling the pattern on to the metal and then melting copper or brass in to the chisel marks you can ether use borax or just sift flux or any brazing flux you have handy then just polish off the surplus hope this helps lady