Welding in a seam in Silicon Bronze

Hey all,

I'm contemplating a sculpture that will involve one component fabricated from sheet Silicon Bronze... for those not in the know, this particular bronze usually comes in 24" x 120", although I HEAR that I can order it from time to time in a 4' wide dimension.

This piece may have a total dimension of 15' high by 5 or 6 feet wide and I don't see doing it without seams. The trouble is, Silicon Bronze distorts like nobody's business when under the torch (even Pulse TIG). I'm afraid that even if I stitch weld it together using

1/4" length welds and let it cool between passes, it's STILL going to warp.

If I DO make this in the size I want, I can go with 3/16 or 1/4 inch material, if the total cost doesn't scare the client away.

Any suggestions on keeping this sculpture from twisting into a knot when I weld it up?

Thanks,

James, Seattle

Reply to
RainLover
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James Silicon Bronze comes in 4'x8' sheets, just maybe not from Alaskan Copper.

When I did the 4' x 4' x 34' tall bronze monolith in the house on Queen Anne I used 12 sheets, 4' x 8', of 1/8" bronze. The 12 sheets we used added up to almost exactly 2000 lbs of Silicon Bronze. Alaskan Copper said I COULDN"T have them. Not "it will cost XXX much more, because we don't have them in stock", just NO.

I ordered them from Atlas Metals in Denver for a lower price than Alaskan was asking, and they had plenty in stock.

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Atlas is the largest distributor of Revere Silicon Bronze in the US. Alaskan Copper is number 2. Revere is the only maker of 1/8" and thicker silicon bronze in the US.

Normally I praise Alaskan copper, but this once they really dropped the ball.

email me direct and we can chat. I can show you how to seam weld the stuff with no distortion.

The hardest problem we had was color matching panel to panel.

Reply to
Ernie Leimkuhler

I've seen a report recently of a company welding broken/worn bells. Huge old bells from churches. They have built an "oven" and heated it up in there for 24 hours (gas flame), made a small opening, welded with O/A, closed the opening and let it cool down slowly for several days. Now to the "oven", the "hi-tech" part of the process: Go get some wire mesh, build some kind of cylinder/dome/shape of it and wrap the whole thing with rock wool. Looked uggly. But they did the job that way for generations. And if a bell doesnt suffer*) and sounds like new ...

*) All this happened in Germany. You have to know that church bells aren't just bells, but _church_ bells. There are specialy trained people from the church that come with tuning forks, stopwatches, whatever and test the bell all over.

HTH, Nick

Reply to
Nick Müller

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