Welding Coil Spring Steel

Feb 04, 2005 3 Replies
E

Howdy,



I'm thinking about making several pitch-fork type things using coil spring steel for the fork stock, which I will forge. I've used "Weld Mold 880" rod (some grade of stainless, can't remember 312?) which is expensive. I've heard 4140 is fine to weld with regular rod or wire, but since spring steel varies (5160, etc) I'm wondering if that would be advisiable to try with unknown spring steel. The welds won't have alot of demand on them though, as a no-impact hand tool. Oh, I'm welding the spring steel to mild steel tube.



Thanks for your thoughts.



Ed



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R

You should preheat the material. The idea is to get enough heat into the surrounding metal that it does not draw heat away from the weld too quickly. E 7018 would be a good choice. You will have to do some trial welds and bend to distruction to find the preheat temp. I would try around 300 F to start. Randy

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T

I use High Alloy 500. It, too, is expensive but is worth having around for problem metals. You can probably also use 316 stainless.

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G

Forge weld it?

- "Ed Fasula" - spluttered in news: snipped-for-privacy@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

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