Possibly a silly question abt metalworking

I made a sheet lead casting box like this when I was a kid:

table is covered with cloth and the back side of the open-bottomed box is raised to set the thickness. The mainly lead+tin alloy is like solder or pewter. I never got it to work as well as in the video.

Electronic soldering (I'm a lab tech) may not be that much like welding but soldering larger objects, sheet metal, etc requires similar control of the molten puddle. After learning the stack-of- dimes technique in night school I used it at work to solder some RF filter cans to a ground plane, moving the soldering iron the same way as the TIG torch.

jsw

"Tim Wescott" wrote

Most all welding, soldering and brazing involves learning the melting points of metals and how they behave when in a liquid state. Once that concept is grasped, it is an aha moment, and real understanding and learning progresses. It was like that for aluminum with me.

Steve

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend. Download the book.

"beauvine" wrote

Look for a welder in your area, or in your circle of friends/family. They can shorten the learning curve substantially.

If you can trust his IP, he's a lot closer to Houston than Indiana.

I stick (arc) welded the 0.050" stainless steel bucket for my tractor, using DC and 308 (or 312??) flux-coated rod. The beads ran as easily as 6013. The flux fumes are irritating and the metal expands and distorts considerably when heated.

jsw

Soldering is NOT welding. Welding involves fusing two pieces of metal together - melting the base metals together. Soldering and brazing join the base metal by attaching with a layer of solder or spelter melted between or on the base metal parts. The difference between soldering and brazing is generally accepted as a difference in melting temperatures, with soldering requiring lower heat than brazing, and brazing being generally stronger than soldering.

A stained glass table top would HAVE to be supported by a single sheet glass as the caming used in stained glass does not have adequate strength, and steel caming welded together would involve too much heat, and the glass would most definitel break or be otherwize damaged. I have seen nice steel or stainless steel tables with stained glass sandwiched between 2 layers of tempered glass. Nice wooden tables done the same way.

Edge lit they can be incredible!!!

Welding stainless is trickier than welding steel. It does not conduct heat well, and it wants to "walk" all over the place as you heat it. It CAN be soldered with the right solder and flux, but it is not as strong as welding. To properly weld stainless steel you REALLY want a good TIG welder and a lot of experience. A good friend of mine welds a lot of high end stainless steel furnishings and cabinetry etc in Kitchener Ontario. When he is done you cannot see where the weld is - even on brushed or highly polished stainless.

You're going to want a protective cover over your stained glass for sure, and depending on design, maybe under as well.

Some of my first projects:

Never did get around to photographing such oddball stuff as "implied tetrahedrons."

"Jim Wilkins" wrote

I stick (arc) welded the 0.050" stainless steel bucket for my tractor, using DC and 308 (or 312??) flux-coated rod. The beads ran as easily as 6013. The flux fumes are irritating and the metal expands and distorts considerably when heated.

jsw

Coefficient of linear expansion for some common materials: (coefficient of linear expansion definition: The increment of length of a solid in a unit of length for a rise in temperature of 1° at constant pressure. Also known as linear expansivity. )

Read more:

Aluminum 22.2 Steel 13.0 Stainless Steel 9.9 to 17.3 Lead 28.0 Copper 16.6 Titanium 8.6

All values vary slightly to severely according to metallurgical alloy compositions.

Steve

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend. Download the book.

Depending on what size, it could very well do, especially if you've got something solid around the perimeter.

Solder them, but maybe do an experiment to find out how much weight it'll cantilever.

Or, you could buy a tempered glass tabletop off-the-shelf, and just lay your SG on top of it. :-)

Have Fun! Rich

[about stained glass tabletop]

Don't weld on stained glass. The glass will crack or melt.

Have Fun! Rich

Please see "coaster." ;-P

Cheers! Rich

Welding stainless is a bit more difficult than other metals. Welding mild steel is quite easy. There are torch methods for stainless, and also brazing, but I think most people who do stainless use TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas). This requires a fairly fancy welder, but allows you (with sufficient practice) to do amazingly good-looking welds in stainless. If you've ever seen a commercial kitchen, that was all welded with TIG. But, it takes a while to get really good with TIG. However, if you are really good with soldering the glass caning, that is a skill that may transfer well to TIG.

Oh, one thing about TIG, the UV from the arc is extremely powerful, and will burn you the color of a cooked lobster THROUGH your clothes. So, heavy welding jackets and other protective gear is an absolute must. You don't need to ask HOW I know that!

Jon

Sometimes. I had some old pipes that may have dated to pre-civil war times, or certainly early 1900's. They were amazingly soft, and collapsed under their own weight. This is a well-known problem, and it was standard practice to move the pipes up a note every few years and fabricate one replacement pipe for the lowest note of the rank. You could see the notes scratched out and rewritten several times on these. The better pipes were made out of pure Tin, and were astonishingly harder than the solder pipes, I at first thought they were galvanized steel, but they were Tin all the way through.

Jon

Ive done stained glass assembly with lead camions and ive also done a lot of stainless steel welding using arc and an inert gas shield ,called argon. I think i might be able to help you decide whats the best way forward it might just be that its better for you to to concentrate on your glass work and get someone else to do the s/steel welding and assembly for you to your design. A table inherently needs a firm flat surface for its use, and a stained glass panel when laid flat without support is inherently going to sag in the middle from its own weight let alone in use . so as someone else has suggested, you would need a clear glass table top undereneath you stained glass panel to provide the neccesary support. If it were me, id do something quite different with the stained glass table top. This is what id do, using all glass and no lead. Id take a clear glass sheet and lay the stained glass on it to the design id want. have a border around it like on double glazing, then pour a clear resin over it all with another clear glass sheet on top. When illuminated from the underneath would look stunning and be structurally sound. hope this helps. ted in Dorset UK.

"Jon Elson" wrote

Make yourself a snood (yes, that is a word, it's even in OSHA literature) of a piece of supple leather to cover up the exposed skin in the vee in your shirt under your chin. That area can get lobster red. Of course, it happened to a friend of mine. I'd never be that stupid .....................

Steve

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend. Download the book.

Ted Frater wrote: ...

I've seen tabletops and bar tops where the resin was on top, i.e., no additional layer of glass, although it could still be done if you felt like it.

Usually, they have coins embedded in them. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Soldering and brazing add the additional wrinkle of knowing when the filler is sticking well to the base metal, knowing whether it's insufficient heat, insufficient flux, or insufficient cleaning -- the first two can be solved on the fly, the third is a cause for cussing and reworking.

My few experiences with trying to gas weld aluminum ended up with the puddle going "floop!" and running onto the floor -- one of these days I'm going to try again.