I've got some small stainless parts that I was thinking about TIG welding... but I'd rather braze them, and if possible I don't want to use flux because there are small spaces it could get trapped in. My thoughts went to TIG brazing. I know Tom Stovall does it -- can anyone chime in with a basic procedure for SS and silicon bronze filler, or something? Thanks, guys!

I think Ries Niemi can help you but don't know if he posts here - he does visit across the street at Sparky's site.

I got some feedback from one of my coworkers that has a lot more welding experience than I... still wouldn't mind hearing from y'all though :)

I am old fashioned, and I only use brazing on Cast Iron and brass. On Stainless I use stainless. The only silicon-bronze I have ever used with the tig was on an old Brass Steam Engine Bell that had the top broken out of it.

T-Gold,
Why do you want to braze rather than weld? I had a "side job" once upon a time welding pretty small fittings to tubing and sheet for an outfit that built lint collectors for the textiles industry. Never had any problem with the small parts since you've got such good control over heat and where it goes with the TIG.

ML

IMO,the only time you would need to braze stainless is when you are welding the stainless to copper or brass.

When we had the alcohol plant running (we made 200proof ethelalcohol) we lined the reactors with copper sheets 4'x8' and welded a stainless strip 2"wide to one end. We then welded the stainless strip to the stainless wall. The reactors were 5'ID approx 30'long and 7"thick. Acid, pressure, & temp. would eat everything but copper and silver. Parts of the inside of these had 99.999% pure silver to protect the walls. Also had 3 spray rings in the quench pot that was made out of 2" sch.80 silver pipe that we rolled into a 28"dia. The hard part of all this was butt welding 1/32" silver sheet to make parts! NO warning when you were about to burn through...just a LARGE hole to fill in. Yeah, I know you probably weren't interested in all this, but...

I've got to join a piece of ~1/4" tubing tangent to a short (less than 1/2")section of thin-walled stainless tubing. Figured it would be easier and prettier to braze. I think I'd have trouble getting all the way around that joint fast enough when welding. The prep's simple enough that I'll probably try one of each, though.

silicon bronze filler rod is for joining dissimilar metals, not stainless to itself. I have experienced severe cracking as the joint cools, as I was looking for appearance only...(went to AC to solve that)
Get a hold of some fluxless silver solder and try that, nice look, no where near the strentgh tho