Thursday, October 18, 2007

Brazing Experiments

Last weekend I finally got the oxygen bottle to go with the torch I picked up on ebay some weeks ago. I am using propane driven with an acetlyene regulator after some reading on the framebuilders list that this is a safe and reasonable option. The whole kit cost me only about $180 including shipping but not including the propane since I already had the bottle on my grill.


I had also ordered some 1" x .035" wall tubing from Aircraft Spruce to practice on. Overall I'm very happy with the results. Even my first braze had reasonable penetration and draw through the joint. I brazed up my second and third joints in a sort of drunken H and tried to break them and was unable to. I twisted and mashed the tubing all to hell and even bent the heavy wall 3/4" steel pipe I was using to try to bend it with, but the joints didn't budge.

I also cut apart my 1st and 4th attempts to look at the penetration and overall fillet quality. I'm not saying I'm anything like a pro yet, but what I did on my first few attempts would have easily held a bike together and even looked reasonably good with a bit of cleanup. That's good enough for me for this project.


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