Welding Woes

[montea6b]

Well, I had grand ambitions of welding up 5 bolt handles this week. After a botched attempt to use a wirefeed welder, followed by the abandoned thought of investing in a OA unit and leasing some bottles, I hit on the idea of renting a TIG welder. I'm both disappointed and discouraged at my pathetic attempts.

 

I worked in a sheet metal fabrication shop for a couple years in college, and fancied myself a bit of a TIG'er... well, I welded more like Tigger of Winnie the Pooh fame.

 

About all I have to show for my effort so far is the filled in forward locking screw hole of a military triggerguard, (the rear one arced and spat severely...) and a set of stockmaker's screws I fashioned from the milsurp screws and some 5/16" bar stock. I did these as a warm up, and then went after a rough bolt I set aside for the first test case.

 

Putting a smooth bead down the tight fitting outside corner of a stainless steel countertop is a far cry from filling in the root of a bolt handle, and the results are just as bad as the wire feed job. It looked like hell and snapped off in my hand. It went so bad that I dare not risk the nicer bolts and Talley handles I bought. I certainly won't go anywhere near the checkered bolt knob I bought.

 

I've been thoroughly humbled. Looks like my incurable do-it-yourselfishness has caught up to me. About all I ended up with is an expensive set of stock makers screws that don't even look very nice.

 

Just crying in my beer...

[polinidad]

Hi,

 

Sorry to here of your bad luck. Some of us are not meant to be welders......I too can not weld that great. I send mine to Rod "tanglewood16137". He does nice work. I have watched him do it and makes it look easy. You would be suprised how much time goes into 1 bolt. Good luck.

[Clemson]

Monte: I feel your pain.

 

I have to hire my welding done, too. (Or sponge off someone else, which is more likely the case for me!)

 

The last bolt job that I got done, I got a few pointers from the welder ----

 

1. Make sure that the surfaces to be welded are spotlessly clean with no oil on them.

2. If there is any porosity showing up, it must be ground out. You cannot fill it in with the rod.

3. Stainless rods are more tolerant of dirt and less likely to create that porosity, but they will not blue, so they have limited use in gun work. The welder was very happy with the Brownells 3 1/2% Nickle steel rods that I brought.

 

Don't give up. Keep practicing!

 

Clemson

[z1r]

Monte: I feel your pain.

 

I have to hire my welding done, too. (Or sponge off someone else, which is more likely the case for me!)

 

The last bolt job that I got done, I got a few pointers from the welder ----

 

1. Make sure that the surfaces to be welded are spotlessly clean with no oil on them.

2. If there is any porosity showing up, it must be ground out. You cannot fill it in with the rod.

3. Stainless rods are more tolerant of dirt and less likely to create that porosity, but they will not blue, so they have limited use in gun work. The welder was very happy with the Brownells 3 1/2% Nickle steel rods that I brought.

 

Don't give up. Keep practicing!

 

Clemson

 

While probably 95% of welding is done by following the same basic rules or guidelines , everyone develops their own way to weld. I absolutely agree with everything Clemson said but, for me, the Brownells Nickle Steel rods were the worst. I have since settled on another type. Yet, I know a long time gunsmith who uses nothing but coat hangers.

 

One reason I hate the Brownells handles is that whenever I use them, I seem to get more voids than with any other handle. Yet, I have a colleauge that has no trouble whatsoever. That, and my customers don't generally request the Brownells.

 

Tips #1 & #2 are absolute musts!

 

One thing that make the Mauser so much harder to weld on is the contaminents added to the surface layer during the case hardening process. That is why one gent I know welds the new handle on AFTER he has the bolt body recarburised. It comes back cleaner and welds easier. I do the opposite just because I like knowing that every surface on the bolt is of proper hardness. I've welded plenty of handles onto bolts that were not rehardened and none were soft. But, my preference is to weld first then reharden. Proper heat control is a must. You can see that Clemson's weldor has mastered that.

[BobVZ]

Now, I'm not a welder(yet), but in reading through several publications(including Dunlap) it is generally recommended that the Mauser bolt handle root be annealed prior to welding. This is to soften the steel thus eliminating carbon at the surface(case hardening), which contributes to voids(along with residual blueing and pitting). I wonder if this could be the source of the problem?

[donmarkey]

Practice, practice, practice. The tig issue sounds like a penetration problem, the mig problem is just a brittle weld by nature. I just got a tig myself and I've been playing around with it. I think I will weld alot of other thing before I attempt a bolt with a tig. I have done a few with OA. As for rods, I get some mild steel rods locally from crown, but I have to test it out for bluing before I use them on anything that shows. I used the brownells rod for welding up lock screw holes and liked them except they are so short. As for bolts, I'll send them out until I feel confident.

-Don

[z1r]

Now, I'm not a welder(yet), but in reading through several publications(including Dunlap) it is generally recommended that the Mauser bolt handle root be annealed prior to welding. This is to soften the steel thus eliminating carbon at the surface(case hardening), which contributes to voids(along with residual blueing and pitting). I wonder if this could be the source of the problem?

 

I wouldn't recommend annealing the root. It gets done to some extent when you weld the handle on, especially using OA. And annealing the root is likely to anneal the cocking cam.

 

I doubt it is so much the carbon, because other steels that weld just fine have more carbon in them. Rather it is the other contaminents that may have been used in the pack hardening process.

[roscoedoh]

Monte,

 

It sounds to me like you're out of practice. Back in my ag days I took several welding courses and my welds had to pass a guided bend test for me to pass the class. I passed the test on the stick welder no problem. The MIG however was pretty temperamental and it took some studying to get it set up right. Believe me, if you have it set a hair too hot or a hair too cool your weld won't be worth beans. In my case, they cracked everytime we cinched down on them with the bender. Eventually though, I figured it out...

 

I'll second Don's suggestion to practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. Try and pick up some low carbon steel rods somewhere and work on joining pieces together. Then go attach those Talley handles. I have every belief that a fellow has handy as you are can figure this out.

 

-Jason

[fritz]

The reason for annealing the bolt root prior to work is because it is easier to cut through annealed steel than hard steel. That is the reason given in most manuals, and may have been more important in years past. With the new cutting wheels we have today, there is no need to anneal the bolt root before cutting, and welding with or without annealing first is of no concern.

 

Pre-heating the parts is probably the most important thing to a good welding job. Starting a weld on cold metal parts may be the reason for many failures. The method used to weld is not as important as the pre-heat. Or so has been my experience as a weldor for the last 45 years.

 

Makes no nevermind what you are welding on, if you start a weld on a cold part you are adding to the difficulty of getting a good weld. And more importantly, a solid weld.

 

fritz

[BobVZ]

Fritz,

 

When welding a bolt handle, how hot do you need to pre-heat the parts? Can you use a propane torch or do you need O/A? Also, is the pre-heat procedure necessary only when welding thick materials or would I benefit from using it on thinner stock like angle steel?

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

[montea6b]

Thanks for all the encouraging words. I'm confident that I could get good enough, but this machine cost me $130 for the week and I have to take it back tomorrow. It would have been economically viable if I would have gotten my 5 bolts out of it, but it's too expensive to practice on. Given my low rifle output I think I'll farm these out.

[Doble Troble]

Good on you for at least trying, Monte.

 

A big part of the reason I got sucked into this was to learn how to do things myself - learning is the sundae, the bolt is the cherry on top. It sounds like you're going to get the best of both.

[z1r]

If nothing else, you won't balk at the idea of paying someone to weld it for you.

 

In a perfect world we'd all have plenty of time to learn everything we wanted. But in reality our time is limited and we need to prioritze how we spend our precious little free time. That's one of the main reasons I don't checker wood. I'd spend more time learning to do it to my satisfaction and loose more moeny in the process than I can make doing metal work. At least for now.

 

I know with practice you could do the job you want. Have you looked into taking a (tig) welding class at the local JC? $135 would probably come close to covering the cost and you'd have access to the welder for eight weeks at least.

 

 

[montea6b]

I spent a little time reflecting on the experience this weekend and I have determined that there are two root causes to my failure: (1) Not enought time dedicated to regaining proficiency, and (2) Not enough heat applied to the weld. I'll break it down further:

 

1. My previous success gave me a false sense of proficiency, and I didn't allocate enough time to practice. The conditions I had used the TIG under in my past job pretty much garuanteed success to anyone coordinated enough to write their name with a pen. Joining two pieces of uniform thickness with uniform gap spacing and predetermined welder settings based on thickness rendered it foolproof. Just back off the foot pedal and add a dab of filler rod when you get to the edge and you would have a fine looking weld. Since 3 rental days equaled a week in terms of cost, I rented it for a full week and thought I had plenty of time. Yeah, but there was also a leaky faucet and closet door to fix, a lawn to mow, garden to roto-till, work on 4 out of 7 days, plus attention to give to wife and kids. My hobbies always come last. And at my stage in life that's the way it should be. I did notice a pretty good learning curve, but didn't really give it the proper time to get enough confidence to tackle anything but the roughest bolt.

 

2. I was a little gun-shy about getting too much heat into the cocking cam, safety lug, and handle root area. I had a heat sink and slathered on the heat stop paste, but I think I was still to ginger in getting a good puddle going on that side of the weld. I would build up a puddle on the handle side and try to coax it over to the root, but would invariably get the electrode stuck, or the glob would just stick, but not flow. Add to that the fact that I was afraid to trip the 50 amp breaker. I only had 45 amps dialed in and the foot pedal was pretty much bottomed out all the time. After giving up on the bolt and going back to the rear guard screw and screw T-handles I had the machine dialed up to 60 amps and didn't have any problems. This gave me a little reserve capacity to goose the throttle when I needed a little extra.

 

I think I could still get 'er done, I just got frustrated too quickly and gave up. Maybe this summer when the wife takes the kids out of town for a few days...

 

A couple other afterthoughts... I was using my failed wirefeed bolt to work on first and I didn't clean it up and get a good uniform grind to start with. It was kinda lumpy. I also thought about cleanliness, but figured that the arc would vaporize any impurities. I can probably do better with a little more prep work. I also didn't have the best work space. The machine was too heavy to get in and out so I backed my truck up into the garage and used the tailgate as a work surface. I didn't have any scrap plate material, so I put down a piece of plywood to protect the tailgate. Everytime I flipped up the hood I had to move the work piece and blow out the fire! I've got all kinds of interesting looking brands in the wood. Just another laughable bubba technique that didn't help my focus.

 

I like Z's idea about a class, I'll have to look into it. Thanks again for the encouragment.

 

 

[z1r]

I think the time you spent reflecting on the situation was well worth it. You have identified several very important points.

 

I have found that without failures one cannot learn. I have no doubt that you will soon be producing nice bolts. Hang in there, you are off to a good start.

[fritz]

"When welding a bolt handle, how hot do you need to pre-heat the parts?"

 

 

Not real hot, and it depends on the temperature in the room where you are welding. In S. Texas it gets so hot in the summer that pre-heating is not necessary. You want to lessen the change in the temp of the part before welding and the temp it will get to when welding starts.

 

In cold climates, this requires pre-heat. A metal part at 32 degrees will need to be pre-heated. A metal part at 100 degrees will not.

 

fritz

[Doble Troble]

Learning hurts (but is worth it)!

 

I'm still in the pain phase with bolt handle welding. I wonder when its going to become worth it. As long as I don't give up (or die) success is inevitable.