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Welding Corten steel


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 Cor-Ten steel first I have heard the name, so I had to look it up. Seems you can weld it and using some for a filler would work. This doesn't mention gas welding it but still any steel that can be arc welded, as far as I know A/O welding will work. Here is the site I was looking at.  https://weldingheadquarters.com/how-to-weld-corten-steel/

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It has a lot of similar properties as Wrought iron. Mainly, it rusts and seals instead of rusting and flaking.  I'm guessing this means low in carbon. I've never looked at the specs. Best advice is to try it and see what happens. 

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The original COR-TEN steel developed in the 1930s (ASTM designation A242) is no longer made, but there are still three "weathering steel" alloys available that are sometimes sold as "COR-TEN". They are:

  • A588 for heavier gauge plates, comes in three grades:
    • Grade A: C: 0.19% max, Mn: 0.80-1.25%, P: 0.030% max, Su: 0.030% max, Si: 0.03-0.65%, Ni: 0.40% max, Cr: 0.40-0.65%, Cu: 0.25-0.40%, V: 0.02-0.10%

    • Grade B: C: 0.20% max, Mn: 0.75-1.35%, P: 0.030% max, Su: 0.030% max, Si: 0.15-0.55%, Ni: 0.50% max, Cr: 0.40-0.70%, Cu: 0.20-0.40%, V: 0.02-0.10%

    •  

      Grade K: C: 0.17% max, Mn: 0.50-1.20%, P: 0.030% max, Su: 0.030% max, Si: 0.25-0.50%, Ni: 0.40% max, Cr: 0.40-0.70%, Mb: 0.10%, Cu: 0.30-0.50%, Nb: 0.005-0.05%

  • A606-4 for lighter gauge flat sheets

    • C: 0.22%, Mn: 1.25%, S: 0.04%, Cu: 0.20% min

  • A847 for pipe and tube

    • C: 0.20%, Mn: 1.35%, P: 0.15%, S: 0.05%, Cu: 0.20% min

It seems that the weathering that protects against further corrosion comes mainly from the high copper content.

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How initial? The Corten building at Cornell University has been a decades long problem:  ithacavoice.com/2014/09/cornell-building-regret/

I think it's like all steel alloys: good for particular uses; but not for others and when folks try to apply them out of their "good use area" they run into issues.  (One thing mentioned is that the Ithaca area lacked the pollutants in the air that made Corten work well in Pittsburgh...)

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It depends on what you want of a weld. If shipping containers are cor-ten, I weld on that all the time. The bottom floor of my shop is shipping containers with some interior sections cut out with a plasma torch. Sometimes I use MIG sometimes flux core. I haven't had anything drop off yet. I just today welded a bracket to hold an aluminum box above my lathe to be a machine tools cabinet.

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  I worked for a large international mfg company near Omaha, Nebraska that made a lot of structural stuff 20 or so years ago and they had a job come through building very large metal sculptues out of corten for the Civic Center in Omaha.  I believe they had the same problem Thomas mentioned.  Probably a good choice for power transmission poles out in the tropics.  :)  We just used flux core, I'm not sure if it was special wire or not.  I think it was.  Moot point I suppose, as they demolished the center since.  My memory is foggy and I tried to google it but nothing came up.  I had a flip-phone with no camera back then.  :angry:

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Actually, Thomas, I don't have a clue. I got interested in it when I built my log house back in 2000. I liked the idea that it was kinda like wrought iron and would rust, seal, and not fade with time as pro panel will do. It was also thicker and more expensive. I don't remember why I didnt use it. A few years later I looked into it for another building and came across the idea, as you mentioned, that it weeps. I checked it out a bit more and it seemed that after a short(don't know how short) time it would seal and not stain the surrounding area. My use was for roofing, not walls.

As for the article,,, it appears that the author doesn't like the color, and there is not a great amount of detail as to the cause of the maintenance costs other than its high and caused by the massive amount of glass and the cor 10 problem. I have no clue as to the validity of his critiques and opinions. They may be valid or not. But considering, if you read the article, the building was completed in '72, and the costs he quotes were from '73, we have no clue if this was the normal for cor 10 and the problem went away or is still a 2014 problem. His other figures are changing from '73 dollars to 2014 dollars and not actual 2014 maintenance costs, I'd take his article with a grain of salt.

 

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  • 11 months later...

Good evening all-I know that this thread is approaching one year of no activity; however, a discussion I had with Paul Brown of Weld.com provided these webpages with exact proper filler material and techniques for welding Cor-ten steel.  Very good info, and I hope of use to someone someday who comes across this thread.

https://weldinganswers.com/how-to-weld-weathering-corten-steel/

This link below was previously posted by Irondragon, just to consolidate.

https://weldingheadquarters.com/how-to-weld-corten-steel/

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