When heating a larg cast peace go to the desert at the heat of the day and let it cool. It's like a camping trip for welding. I put my how i would do it as a comment below.
My degree is in welding engineering. OK? - I do not EVER melieve in Ni Rod for anything other then a quirk camouflage job, but I think you will basically get away with it for most of what you are likely use it for,,,,, If i HAD to do it though (and didn't have a big heat treat furnace, after I got it fitted up and V grooved I'd dig a pit and put 6 or 8 inches of charcoal in the bottom and get it burning. Then out the part in it and bury it in charcoal and cover it all with fiberglass insulation (Foil not paper backed) - and leave it over night. - Then pull it out and keeo it hot with a couple of Belch-Fires and proceed to gas weld it up with real cast iron rod. (Looks like a 10 or 12 hour job so you better have 2 guys to spell each other. ==== After welding it's back into the fire, cover it and then leave it along until the fire is dead out,,,,and it's cool enough to touch. - Then off to sand blast and then to the Lucas boring mill for facing and boring the round features and grind the rest to shape........Wouldn't cost more then 10 or 12 grand.= Not over 20 large for sure. ,,,,, All of sudden Ni rod looks pretty good, Huh?🤣 I still would have done the charcoal pre-heat/slow cool though, 20 bucks worth of charcoal is not much to keep the cracking down (Maybe)
The author does like to ruclips.net/user/postUgkxkNYRBJuiJ6EwD-tQSAlxg0eFKsnR2cgz from scratch, shaping and trimming wood from large blocks into fine finished products. As another reviewer mentioned, most projects require a lot of high-dollar equipment that most of us don't have the room or budget for. But, knowing how to do these things, even if we won't be able to practice the full stack project, is still great.
So you were welding some locations inch and a half thick with two passes of nickel rod. It will look intact, but if you use any force along that same fracture line, it’s going to be a fraction of a fraction of the amount of force that originally did the damage. You need to grind in chamfers along all the cracks so that the weld can start inside the body of the cast and not just on the surface.
In my limited experience with welding cast iron (mostly engine blocks and a few bulldozer frames), I have found that preheating to a medium to a bright red hot works best. Also, the entire fracture has to be welded and not just the surface. I honestly wish you luck and favorable results with your efforts on this project. Regardless of the process, that's a really neat swage block you have. Thanks for sharing this.
Nickel rod can be tricky to use! It welds kinda like a 6010 rod! And what I found is you don’t need to have a high amperage to weld! And the porosity comes from the sand or what they use to make cast iron, that’s what I noticed in my years of welding cast iron!
I am not knowledgeable in this area of repair but if I was you I would have contacted Keith Rucker for his advice.I have watched him repair large cast parts with brazing.He said heating up and cooling down very slowly are the key to a reliable repair.I will keep my fingers crossed that your repair is also reliable.🤞
Keith Fenner is a true wizard when it comes to such repair works. He's all about wrapping up the pieces in fire-proof cloth for heating and cool-down. He also prefers silicon bronze. His videos are an excellent resource.
This would have been the ideal project for MIG brazing or gas brazing.. Nickel's one and only benefit for cast iron repair is color match, but is otherwise always crap in my experience. Braze is easier and better in every way that counts, and in this case, where a swage block is used for impact, those nickel joints will crumble after a few good blows... I have pieces of hundred year old equipment in my shop that was repaired with brazing by the original factories where they were used and they work as good as new.. They wear their golden braze repair like a veteran wears his medal of honor... If you had more access, TIG using cast iron filler would have been the perfect repair, but I don't know of any TIG handpiece or gas lens that would have let you get into those openings, but as I said, braze is better anyways... In terms of mechanical supports, there are also specialized "dog bone" type ties that you can inlay into cast iron to kind of stitch the pieces together, and if you had a fresh break with no gaps, these stitch repairs are often sufficient on their own as structural repair...
Brazing would definitely be the move here. Nickel does have a specific use-case besides color as it has a very similar coefficient of thermal expansion to cast iron or cast steels. So any application that constantly changes temperature would fail fairly quickly when brazed but remain intact if welded with Nickel. I repaired a cast burner housing on a steam generator last year and had to use Nickel since the part heats up and cools down regularly. It's still in service today and hopefully stays that way. There are special water cooled micro tig torches that can reach in there; we have one in my shop for getting into really small spaces. It's a pain to use but very handy when you need it. The torch is a little bigger than a pencil. EDIT: CK Worldwide makes one that they call the mr140 micro-torch.
Scary project, welding old cast iron swage block! Hope the welds hold so it can have a new life. As to milling the surfaces, I would recommend NOT milling it. The "top" and "bottom" are not really used. I would recommend making sure the pass-thru holes are relatively clean and the edges eased. For the edged swage shapes, make those are smooth and ease the edges (1/8" radius should be good). Hope there is a future video showing it being used!
In the end its a swage block, imperfect shapes may be what you need one day! As for the repair I think its fine, the only thing I would have done differently is more of a bevel for deeper welds and more pre heat! It may fail again and it may not, I repaired a broken vice jaw many years ago by heating it in my forge to red hot and welding it as it cooled and its not missed a beat in ten years of hard use!
Gorgeous old swage block. I think they are closer to $1500. I can’t imagine what it took to break it in the first place. Even in 2 pieces it still is useful. Very nice Frank
I have always used a 55NI rod for repairs similar to these, when ever i could i left the bead intact for a stress releiver. Great job on prep, only time will tell once how long it will hold due to the shock applied by hammering If you could use a large stump for a base it might help as a shock absorber. Thanks for a great video , well done.
I enjoyed reading all the comments.. What about polishing up the welded swage block and using it as a pattern to cast a new one I am pretty certain the original block had a bit of 'draft' to it just as the wooden pattern that was used to make the original mold in the casting sand a hundred years ago but then again a person would have to be set up to melt and pour cast iron however with a good pattern it should not be too difficult and who knows you might just end up with a cottage industry making swage blocks
There’s a million different opinions on welding cast iron, the nickel stick rods seem like the best solution for that piece. I’ll have to remember that needle scaler for peening the welds, seems like a handy use for it!
Super missle rod is the name of what I would choose. Is a cyl bronze rod that's like TIG brazing. It's really sticky and I've welded copper to bronze with it. I'd also weld prep a traditional joint and do alot of fill passes. Just wanted to join the I woulda group. Have a good one.
You need a forge big enough to heat a piece that big to do a good job. I like to completely bevel the joints, and I probably would have brazed this. This is a half day of prep, full day of work, and all-night cooling process. The bolts are a good idea, and the needle scaler is effective and efficient for peening.
The fact that you were able to stitch this thing back together is awesome. I think it’s cool that you asked others for advice when it comes to gaining knowledge on aspects you may not be an expert on, but I’d say you did just fine. It was a big paper weight before you got ahold of it. If you use it once, then Everything you did was worth it. Good work bud.
@@MakeEverything Me too man. Fear of screwing something up always kept me from tackling projects held me back for the longest time. After learning what I could from others, and simply just going after it, I never had any regrets. I really like your content, and look forward to future videos man.
Excellent video! I have to repair a broken piece on our old small tractor. The piece is an ear with a hole for a pin. I don't have the piece. It was already gone when we bought the tractor. I was planning to use mild steel to rebuild what is missing. I wanted to try some new welding rod called muggy welding. I may just use the nickel rod. But I was not sure I could weld mild steel to cast. After watching your video I think it can be done. I have only repaired cast iron by brazing it. I want something stronger for this repair.
welding cast iron is rarely a good choice, unfortunately due to the nature of your repair (crack location and intended usage) it will likely fail again. I do have nickel rod in my arsenal. but silicon bronze brazing, or brass brazing along with mechanical fasteners are my choice
For all the naysayers, I won’t say if the repair is right or wrong. But you should take pride in the fact that you did it. If it works great if not you are just out your time. It’s easy for someone to set in their chair and tell someone what to do. I’m ple asked that you made this effort no matter how it turns out. Lee Gibbs Scotts, Michigan. gunsmith,sawyer, and blacksmith
For the porosity, did you check your polarity? I believe nickel rods are DCEP, but check your rod canister. If you were using your machine for Tig Welding before this, you had it on DCEN so that might be part of your problem.
Now it's just going to crack right next to where you welded. Bronze brazing sticks a lot better and it's a lot more flexible than nickel, because nickel is so much harder than bronze you're essentially gluing two bricks together with epoxy. The epoxy will hold, and it will even hold the bricks together - but the faces will detach from the rest of the brick. It will work, but it won't hold up to being beaten like an anvil.
It will work well the way you have done it but there are some improvements you could have made to your process, where the flux started going white and pocking you needed more preheating. Cutting back the cracks to open out the weld points and make the welds deeper would strengthen the finished product. When you were done it would be helpful to heat the weld areas to anneal them and relieve stresses in the weld material because all the stress from hammering will be transferred to them by the cast iron ...You could still do that tbh. Overall a nice job you have given life back to a very useful old tool that will be an excellent addition to your shop....I wish I had one..even a broken one.
Many moons ago , I spent a wretched night while I pimped for a VERY experienced welder who was trying to repair a hinge lug on a coal boiler while it was in operation with some nickle rod. He eventually gave up and resorted to brazing it. It might not be very pretty, but the boiler is still in service some 40 years later,
I would have used some bolts to hold it better together also, that is a good thing to do on a repair job like this for sure, but I would have cleaned it much better before welding using a wire wheel, after that I would have put in into a fire pit to heat it all up and to weld it you can just use a normal welding rod wrapped in a copper wire 50/50 welding rod and copper wire or you can use a mig welder and use a copper wire as a filler with your other hand, it is very important to tap it with a hammer between welds to help relieve the internal stress to reduce micro cracks. I had to repair a large cast iron milling machine stand that had a very large part missing, had to cut some cast iron flat bar to recreate the missing section and I used the mig welder technique at about 400 amps with a thick copper wire as filler, the cast iron flat bar was about 3/4 inch thick, there were some micro cracs after the job was done, but some bondo and paint and it looked good as new. It would be also very nice to get the swage block refinished on a metal planer.
So with cast you are going to get all sorts of suggestions. That block has been Bea to death already so I see nothing wrong with learning something on it. Could you have done other options? Sure. But the old timers a hundred years ago might have done something similar to yours and I was taught don't mess with old repairs if there's nothing wrong with them. I might have done more passes on each of the breaks but I think it will hold longer than most the doubters believe . Good job and excellent content keep it up
Look into the Metabo WEF series of grinders. They are Great getting into tighter areas. Those spots where a normal 4-1/2” grinder doesn’t fit great Cuts down on dynafile and die grinder use
hmmm.... I wonder if you could pack it in sand, and "bake" it back together. Bring it just up to molten in sand, and let cool. Would the sand melt first?
@@theobserver9131 The sand would not melt first. It is actually how it was made in the first place... I guess you could try to forge weld it back together, but it would take one hell of a furnace, and the metal would expand before it shrunk back to the original size. I think you´d have to be more than a little experienced as a blacksmith to make that work if at all possible.
@@olenilsen4660 Thanks for the info! I guess maybe making a mold and melt and pour would be the best way? No doubt the forge would have to be serious. I've done some gold and silver, but I know that's small fries in comparison.
@@olenilsen4660 I know there are different kinds of sand with different properties. I imagine glass maker's sand is very different than casting sand. I know very little about that.
You destroyed that by Nickel welding it. The only way to properly weld that would be either fusion welding with cast iron filler rod or by furnace brazing. It might hold right now but it eventually will fail. I work for Lock-N-Stitch where we specialize in cast metal repair.
@@rd-ch1on the tensile strength and yield point of cast iron are both the same. It doesn't bend, it breaks. When metal is heated up, it expands. As soon as you strike any kind of electric arc, you are immediately introducing 1000°+ into the metal which will produce a confined area of expansion and contraction creating cracking and hardening of the material which renders it further unrepairable. No drama, just science. I hope that answers your question.
@@rd-ch1on I have to fix these kinds of things everyday. The area that was welded using electricity has indeed been destroyed. The only way to fix a piece of cast iron that has been welded on is to completely remove the material that has been welded, including the surrounding heat effected zone and replace it with a new casting via either fusion welding, furnace brazing or metal stitching. My comments have been educational and it is my hope that you and others may learn something from them. Using the words, "kerplode, gazillion, Silverback gorilla, etc." I have no doubt that you indeed are an expert in the field of drama and I respect your intellect on the subject. After all, it is people like you who keep me employed 🙂
@Lucas Edwards fantastic mate well said, stitching would be be my choice, but thats really just holding the 2 pieces together, giving its primary function, I would have no doubt that it would fail in short order
My local transmission and axle gears rebuilding, case rebuilding, Machine work and welding shop...use a old electric stove oven to PREHEAT the CASE IRON before welding.
You might try contacting the Edison Welding Institute (EWI) for information on welding cast iron. I always found them a good source for information. If they can't answer your questions, they usually can point you in the right direction. Bob
If you're in counting porosity on old metal. You need to cook out the impurities at the weld zone. Heated up until it's glowing hot. Let it cool down halfway and then make a pass. Everything should work out fine after that. 👌
The nickel rod is sensitive to sand in the casting/casting skin scale, it must be ground off clean. Also they should be dry , from a new pack or kept in an oven over 200 deg F min. I have done heavy castings like that in industry and we always used E7018 from a new box or oven. E7018 heavy slag floats out the sand and inpurities well. ENCI nickel 99 has a tensile of 38-40K psi. E7018 is 72-80k psi...a much stronger filler metal. Second choice is ENCI 55 ,the 45% steel ads more strength. Full 99% nickel is only used when it must be machined or drilled, it is soft as welded but strength is less. Keep in mind that your repair should stand up to regular use but if it doesn't , try E7018 better results IMHO.
You need heavier bevels for more thorough adhesion. Old cast iron tends to be porous and will absorb hydrocarbons from solvents like a sponge which is why you're getting such rough beads initially. It looks like you needed a higher, more consistent pre-heat. I try to get the whole casting up to at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I have had better success with higher nickel alloy rod. Try cast 55 or cast 60 if you can find it. Your peening with a needle scaler helps a lot. Also, you need to control the cooling by post heating the whole part again and wrapping it in insulation. In the end, it depends on the quality of the cast iron. If the metallurgy was right it will accept the weld. If the silicon is too high there isn't much you can do to keep it welded.
You need to preheat it and maintain a constant heat on it while welding. Usually, in my experience, with this old of cast iron, and the blends made back then, a very high temp (1000-1100°f) is required for the nickel to fuse properly. Even then, there is no guarantee it won't crack. Also, one or two surface passes won't be enough to fuse any of it. One or two good whacks of a hammer will crack it.
To be honest there is no easy way to repair that. You could have done with beveling all the way so you have complete fusion, pre heating to at least 50 Celsius and peining with a hammer to compact the weld whist hot so it doesn't break apart from shrinkage. 7018 is better or even 309, 316L. If you could get a big enough gas forge you could have braised soldered it together. It's a lot of work and to be honest it won't take the punishment it was originally designed for however you fix it. For your time and expense it would probably be worth buying a new one. Well done for the effort though. Cheers J
Pre heat always and post heating, and peening 👍the porosity is a result of the cast iron itself. Braze welding is best as the brass gets right into the course grain of the cast and locks it together. The rods you chose are the right ones for that job, it's just way too thick and complicated a pattern to weld as you need to cut an angle right back into the block to get the weld right through for the strength it needs. Braze welding would have gotten deeper penetration in the grain with the minimal preparation you did and provided better strength....given you couldn't cut the block right back for a full thickness weld. Very challenging job even for experienced welders.
Sometimes you need to weld, grind out the porosity, weld again, etc, until you get a good weld. 3 or 4 welds may be needed if the material has soaked in a lot of gear oil over the years.
You did a good repair.. Ni99 is a solid rod and often times contaminated flux(getting the rod dirty) can cause porosity with nickle rods. oxygen contamination as well..Your repair looks good ans Im sure it will hold very well Just to add Ni rods are good and I still use them too but nickle rods are not the best for cast anymore. There are several rods out there that do a lot better job on cast.. Like Certanium 889, it wont crack and dosnt even require peening. Magna 770 is another rod thats fantastic for cast. The only downside of these rods is the cost.They are pretty expensive.. Otherwise they are amazing and made specifically for cast.
A 'really high-tech' method, would be using Electron Beam Welding. Clean the pieces, clamp together and weld the seam. The electron beam will penetrate all the way through, melting and fusing it back into a whole block. In one demonstration, the sawed an engine block in half and welded it back together in a single pass, all 20" in depth. (50 Mev electron beam).
Outstanding video, period. Your narration is spot on with information, procedure, tool selection, expectations, and results. YOU TUBES DON'T GET BETTER THAN THIS! Thanks for your careful filming, incisive editing, and respectful restoration of a piece of blacksmithing history that has soul. It shall endure, thanks to your efforts.
Cast iron is kind of like cast aluminum in terms of welding: you clean it perfectly, then you clean it again, and finally, you clean it. Anything sunk into an old porosity or crack will come back to haunt you.
typically I'd say it's gonna be contaminated material giving you that porosity. I'd guess inclusions of slag and possibly sand from the casting process. Probably wasn't fluxed or drossed prior to being poured and all that crap wound up in the mold with the iron which I would bet is why it broke in the first place. If the drifting operation involved any amount of taper in the tool that block probably saw a couple tons of tension across what looks to be a fairly thin section of the block where it broke.
Doesn't this thing need way more preheat? Watching folks weld cast iron turbo housings involve going in the oven for awhile to heat the whole thing up… and those are way thinner compared to this huge lump. And then moving it back into a less-hot oven or a barrel full of sand to let it cool down slowly.
Especially with cast iron, when welding thick metal, you need enough of a v-groove to be able to weld from each side to have a 100% penetration weld. Your mechanical fasteners may hold it, otherwise, the cracks will come back if you are using it as it was intended. Good luck. Your porosity was possibly caused by debris, but most likely it was in the cast iron. Good luck.
when you first picked it up you should have had a small campfire, chucked it on top and burnt off most of the gunk from it before the rust soak. Fire fixes everything
That will be a nice decorator piece, but it will never hold up to any real abuse. As stated before, with the lack of full penetration in a lot of areas, it will be quite easily broke. Again.
If you were melting through the piece its a combination of amps,speed,and the type of rod your using like for a 6010 rod on 70 or 80 amps you can burn through almost a quarter inch of steel with that not what the rod was intended for but its possible
Wow that's crazy. Very nice repair. Can't wait to see more videos soon. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work my friend. Forge On. Fab On. Weld On. Keep forge lit. Keep Making. God Bless.
I´ve only heard of Magnesium rods being used for cast iron welding, with a lot of hammering done in between welds to release tension. Is that scaler doing the hammering job in this case? Does anyone know the difference between Mg and Ni rods for this application? Anywhoo, I love this piece - never seen anything like it, but now I want one, if nothing else, just for decoration. Lovely piece of smithing history! And it looks like it took a ton of abuse - the surface is hardened enough that most of the holes have pretty bad chipping around the edges. I think this might have been why it broke in the end. Imagine forcing a rod into that big square hole that´s already abused to its limits, maybe the piece is also a little colder than it should. That could finally blow out a piece like that half inch that´s missing. Nice video as well, thanks! I don´t think you should mill it down, better keep it as original as possible. All the wear and tear is a huge part of the piece in my opinion.
I nickel rodded my cement mixer 20 years ago. Multiple cracks. Gouged them out, Half ass heated with cutting torch. Welded up . Slow cooled it with torch for way to short of time...Everyone said it would recrack worse. Guess I got lucky
Probably the only 'right' way to repair this would be with furnace brazing. I think it's the only way you could reasonably get a full contact braze on such an enormous part. But of course, you need an oven large enough and hot enough. In the 1000-1500F range.
I was about to critique your decisions but then I saw the many welders who commented below and I feel the point had been made, can I just ask: Why not just soak and pressure wash it when you cleaned it?
Man, you opened a can of worms asking for opinions because they’re like assholes, everybody has one. I think you did a good job with the repair and as long as the block is on a flat base it shouldn’t have any problems. I’ve had the same problem using nickel rods with the welds being porous. I’m using them on smaller jobs like vices so I don’t get the opportunity to run a decent bead. Striking and keeping the arc going can be difficult so i up the amps and then the base metal gets burned away. It’s tricky for guys like me and you that don’t weld cast iron very often. Ignore the nay sayers, they’re the ones that won’t even try. I love proving them wrong and if it does fail at least you tried and then you can try a different repair method. I’d love to see it milled. Cheers mate, Stuart 🇦🇺
I think this is more of a patch than a repair. Some of those cracks you only surface welded. No full penetration. They should have been ground to a bevel nearly to a point. It'll hold. For a while. But it's likely going to crack again right at those welds.
Gee. Swage block repair. I personally don’t think this will hold. Despite your prep and care. Worth a grand now? I wouldn’t pay the original price for it. I’m not a wanna be. I have two powerhammers and one press in my shop. I love vintage stuff cause I myself am vintage. Don’t get me wrong! I applaud your efforts and I hope the block will serve you well. I kinda know what I am doing and I would have passed. That’s just one old bastards feeling however. I sincerely hope I am wrong. I often am.
Nickel rod i.e. Tech-Rod 55 is, and has been for decades, the recommended rod for multi-pass welding cast iron. Tech-Rod 99 for single pass. If it were cast steel, E7018 would be recommended. Preheat is preferred for both materials and a final heat soak after repair, then burial in sand or vermiculite to cool slowly. My only concern is you didn't bevel deep enough and the penetration was minimal. Probably 60% of each crack is still there under the beads. The mechanical reinforcement definitely helped. If it breaks again in the future, you can address the weld depth issue for a more solid result. Regardless, congratulations on your find and having the testicular fortitude to tackle the job!
Isn’t this just like wallpapering over the cracks? You didn’t grind anywhere near deep enough bevels to weld and then you ground most of the weld away. It is not worth anywhere near a grand, it’s probably worth a little less than you paid, or it’s weigh in scrap, whichever is higher.
Working with this kind of metal like this again I saw them melt something and welded to railroad ties together by pouring a liquid metal top of some railroad ties welded together check out those videos that might give you some insight
I would never dare touch this thing with a 3kg hammer. It might survive a couple hits with a 1,25kg hammer but by using it in the way it was initially made for (eg two smiths, one with a 3kg hammer) it will split right apart again. Welding something that thick with a rod that thin will never yield any sort of weld penetration.
Did I ruin this? Or will it survive? Leave a comment down below!
When heating a larg cast peace go to the desert at the heat of the day and let it cool. It's like a camping trip for welding. I put my how i would do it as a comment below.
.... Is it broken if you build a stand to use it broken and hold it together.... ????
When you re-repair it, tig braze it with silicon bronze next time.
i think you did a good job
My degree is in welding engineering. OK? - I do not EVER melieve in Ni Rod for anything other then a quirk camouflage job, but I think you will basically get away with it for most of what you are likely use it for,,,,,
If i HAD to do it though (and didn't have a big heat treat furnace, after I got it fitted up and V grooved I'd dig a pit and put 6 or 8 inches of charcoal in the bottom and get it burning. Then out the part in it and bury it in charcoal and cover it all with fiberglass insulation (Foil not paper backed) - and leave it over night. - Then pull it out and keeo it hot with a couple of Belch-Fires and proceed to gas weld it up with real cast iron rod. (Looks like a 10 or 12 hour job so you better have 2 guys to spell each other. ==== After welding it's back into the fire, cover it and then leave it along until the fire is dead out,,,,and it's cool enough to touch. - Then off to sand blast and then to the Lucas boring mill for facing and boring the round features and grind the rest to shape........Wouldn't cost more then 10 or 12 grand.= Not over 20 large for sure. ,,,,, All of sudden Ni rod looks pretty good, Huh?🤣
I still would have done the charcoal pre-heat/slow cool though, 20 bucks worth of charcoal is not much to keep the cracking down (Maybe)
The author does like to ruclips.net/user/postUgkxkNYRBJuiJ6EwD-tQSAlxg0eFKsnR2cgz from scratch, shaping and trimming wood from large blocks into fine finished products. As another reviewer mentioned, most projects require a lot of high-dollar equipment that most of us don't have the room or budget for. But, knowing how to do these things, even if we won't be able to practice the full stack project, is still great.
So you were welding some locations inch and a half thick with two passes of nickel rod. It will look intact, but if you use any force along that same fracture line, it’s going to be a fraction of a fraction of the amount of force that originally did the damage. You need to grind in chamfers along all the cracks so that the weld can start inside the body of the cast and not just on the surface.
I seen that too! I never said it because he bolting it together! That should help it from braking off!
Didn't he do that at 5:10?
@@patrickcorcoran4828 he did yes, but ideally it needs to be deeper and even full thickness if possible.
*100 years ago: "Sure it will hold up one corner of that bridge, that thing is 4" thick!"*
*Swage block: "Owee"*
@@GTL77 I sawed it also.
In my limited experience with welding cast iron (mostly engine blocks and a few bulldozer frames), I have found that preheating to a medium to a bright red hot works best. Also, the entire fracture has to be welded and not just the surface. I honestly wish you luck and favorable results with your efforts on this project. Regardless of the process, that's a really neat swage block you have. Thanks for sharing this.
Nickel rod can be tricky to use! It welds kinda like a 6010 rod! And what I found is you don’t need to have a high amperage to weld! And the porosity comes from the sand or what they use to make cast iron, that’s what I noticed in my years of welding cast iron!
Ditto on the porosity, the original cast iron likely had pores & sand inclusions that are now rust pockets you are melting into
Truly amazing and well done, always learning from you! Thanks again
I am not knowledgeable in this area of repair but if I was you I would have contacted Keith Rucker for his advice.I have watched him repair large cast parts with brazing.He said heating up and cooling down very slowly are the key to a reliable repair.I will keep my fingers crossed that your repair is also reliable.🤞
Keith Fenner is a true wizard when it comes to such repair works. He's all about wrapping up the pieces in fire-proof cloth for heating and cool-down. He also prefers silicon bronze. His videos are an excellent resource.
This would have been the ideal project for MIG brazing or gas brazing.. Nickel's one and only benefit for cast iron repair is color match, but is otherwise always crap in my experience. Braze is easier and better in every way that counts, and in this case, where a swage block is used for impact, those nickel joints will crumble after a few good blows... I have pieces of hundred year old equipment in my shop that was repaired with brazing by the original factories where they were used and they work as good as new.. They wear their golden braze repair like a veteran wears his medal of honor...
If you had more access, TIG using cast iron filler would have been the perfect repair, but I don't know of any TIG handpiece or gas lens that would have let you get into those openings, but as I said, braze is better anyways...
In terms of mechanical supports, there are also specialized "dog bone" type ties that you can inlay into cast iron to kind of stitch the pieces together, and if you had a fresh break with no gaps, these stitch repairs are often sufficient on their own as structural repair...
Brazing would definitely be the move here. Nickel does have a specific use-case besides color as it has a very similar coefficient of thermal expansion to cast iron or cast steels. So any application that constantly changes temperature would fail fairly quickly when brazed but remain intact if welded with Nickel. I repaired a cast burner housing on a steam generator last year and had to use Nickel since the part heats up and cools down regularly. It's still in service today and hopefully stays that way.
There are special water cooled micro tig torches that can reach in there; we have one in my shop for getting into really small spaces. It's a pain to use but very handy when you need it. The torch is a little bigger than a pencil.
EDIT: CK Worldwide makes one that they call the mr140 micro-torch.
Scary project, welding old cast iron swage block! Hope the welds hold so it can have a new life. As to milling the surfaces, I would recommend NOT milling it. The "top" and "bottom" are not really used. I would recommend making sure the pass-thru holes are relatively clean and the edges eased. For the edged swage shapes, make those are smooth and ease the edges (1/8" radius should be good). Hope there is a future video showing it being used!
In the end its a swage block, imperfect shapes may be what you need one day! As for the repair I think its fine, the only thing I would have done differently is more of a bevel for deeper welds and more pre heat! It may fail again and it may not, I repaired a broken vice jaw many years ago by heating it in my forge to red hot and welding it as it cooled and its not missed a beat in ten years of hard use!
I use Evaporust and it does pretty well. Thanks for the tip of using water bottles. Never considered that in this application.
Gorgeous old swage block. I think they are closer to $1500.
I can’t imagine what it took to break it in the first place. Even in 2 pieces it still is useful.
Very nice
Frank
I look forward to seeing it milled. You're right that it won't ever look perfect, but a few light passes should spruce it up and keep some character.
I have always used a 55NI rod for repairs similar to these, when ever i could i left the bead intact for a stress releiver.
Great job on prep, only time will tell once how long it will hold due to the shock applied by hammering
If you could use a large stump for a base it might help as a shock absorber.
Thanks for a great video , well done.
A large stump covered with heavy rubber mat or 3 layers of asphalt shingles.
I enjoyed reading all the comments.. What about polishing up the welded swage block and using it as a pattern to cast a new one I am pretty certain the original block had a bit of 'draft' to it just as the wooden pattern that was used to make the original mold in the casting sand a hundred years ago but then again a person would have to be set up to melt and pour cast iron however with a good pattern it should not be too difficult and who knows you might just end up with a cottage industry making swage blocks
There’s a million different opinions on welding cast iron, the nickel stick rods seem like the best solution for that piece. I’ll have to remember that needle scaler for peening the welds, seems like a handy use for it!
Super missle rod is the name of what I would choose. Is a cyl bronze rod that's like TIG brazing. It's really sticky and I've welded copper to bronze with it. I'd also weld prep a traditional joint and do alot of fill passes. Just wanted to join the I woulda group. Have a good one.
You need a forge big enough to heat a piece that big to do a good job. I like to completely bevel the joints, and I probably would have brazed this. This is a half day of prep, full day of work, and all-night cooling process. The bolts are a good idea, and the needle scaler is effective and efficient for peening.
The fact that you were able to stitch this thing back together is awesome. I think it’s cool that you asked others for advice when it comes to gaining knowledge on aspects you may not be an expert on, but I’d say you did just fine. It was a big paper weight before you got ahold of it. If you use it once, then Everything you did was worth it. Good work bud.
Thanks for watching! I’m always trying to learn and the best way I’ve found is to experiment!
@@MakeEverything Me too man. Fear of screwing something up always kept me from tackling projects held me back for the longest time. After learning what I could from others, and simply just going after it, I never had any regrets. I really like your content, and look forward to future videos man.
Excellent video! I have to repair a broken piece on our old small tractor. The piece is an ear with a hole for a pin. I don't have the piece. It was already gone when we bought the tractor. I was planning to use mild steel to rebuild what is missing. I wanted to try some new welding rod called muggy welding. I may just use the nickel rod. But I was not sure I could weld mild steel to cast. After watching your video I think it can be done. I have only repaired cast iron by brazing it. I want something stronger for this repair.
Best of luck to your repair. Don’t be disappointed when it breaks again.
Never disappointed! Always learning!
welding cast iron is rarely a good choice, unfortunately due to the nature of your repair (crack location and intended usage) it will likely fail again. I do have nickel rod in my arsenal. but silicon bronze brazing, or brass brazing along with mechanical fasteners are my choice
I've always preheated when welding cast. Up to at least 500 degrees has given me the best results.
Nice job - I've heard cast is extremely hard to weld! Great find at the flea market.
For all the naysayers, I won’t say if the repair is right or wrong. But you should take pride in the fact that you did it. If it works great if not you are just out your time. It’s easy for someone to set in their chair and tell someone what to do. I’m ple asked that you made this effort no matter how it turns out.
Lee Gibbs Scotts, Michigan. gunsmith,sawyer, and blacksmith
For the porosity, did you check your polarity? I believe nickel rods are DCEP, but check your rod canister. If you were using your machine for Tig Welding before this, you had it on DCEN so that might be part of your problem.
Now it's just going to crack right next to where you welded. Bronze brazing sticks a lot better and it's a lot more flexible than nickel, because nickel is so much harder than bronze you're essentially gluing two bricks together with epoxy. The epoxy will hold, and it will even hold the bricks together - but the faces will detach from the rest of the brick.
It will work, but it won't hold up to being beaten like an anvil.
It will work well the way you have done it but there are some improvements you could have made to your process, where the flux started going white and pocking you needed more preheating. Cutting back the cracks to open out the weld points and make the welds deeper would strengthen the finished product.
When you were done it would be helpful to heat the weld areas to anneal them and relieve stresses in the weld material because all the stress from hammering will be transferred to them by the cast iron ...You could still do that tbh.
Overall a nice job you have given life back to a very useful old tool that will be an excellent addition to your shop....I wish I had one..even a broken one.
Many moons ago , I spent a wretched night while I pimped for a VERY experienced welder who was trying to repair a hinge lug on a coal boiler while it was in operation with some nickle rod. He eventually gave up and resorted to brazing it. It might not be very pretty, but the boiler is still in service some 40 years later,
I would have used some bolts to hold it better together also, that is a good thing to do on a repair job like this for sure, but I would have cleaned it much better before welding using a wire wheel, after that I would have put in into a fire pit to heat it all up and to weld it you can just use a normal welding rod wrapped in a copper wire 50/50 welding rod and copper wire or you can use a mig welder and use a copper wire as a filler with your other hand, it is very important to tap it with a hammer between welds to help relieve the internal stress to reduce micro cracks. I had to repair a large cast iron milling machine stand that had a very large part missing, had to cut some cast iron flat bar to recreate the missing section and I used the mig welder technique at about 400 amps with a thick copper wire as filler, the cast iron flat bar was about 3/4 inch thick, there were some micro cracs after the job was done, but some bondo and paint and it looked good as new. It would be also very nice to get the swage block refinished on a metal planer.
AvE did an amazing video going over welding cast iron and such. Its worth a whach.
Nice work,i had one many years ago and really wish i hung on to it.
So with cast you are going to get all sorts of suggestions. That block has been Bea to death already so I see nothing wrong with learning something on it. Could you have done other options? Sure. But the old timers a hundred years ago might have done something similar to yours and I was taught don't mess with old repairs if there's nothing wrong with them. I might have done more passes on each of the breaks but I think it will hold longer than most the doubters believe . Good job and excellent content keep it up
Well if a heavy door stopper was the goal, you made it. But, taking it to a machine shop and having it resurfaced, that would look extra pretty.
Look into the Metabo WEF series of grinders. They are Great getting into tighter areas. Those spots where a normal 4-1/2” grinder doesn’t fit great Cuts down on dynafile and die grinder use
Make mold, melt down, pour. Perfect repair!
Sand casting might work for this.
hmmm.... I wonder if you could pack it in sand, and "bake" it back together. Bring it just up to molten in sand, and let cool. Would the sand melt first?
@@theobserver9131 The sand would not melt first. It is actually how it was made in the first place... I guess you could try to forge weld it back together, but it would take one hell of a furnace, and the metal would expand before it shrunk back to the original size. I think you´d have to be more than a little experienced as a blacksmith to make that work if at all possible.
@@olenilsen4660 Thanks for the info! I guess maybe making a mold and melt and pour would be the best way? No doubt the forge would have to be serious. I've done some gold and silver, but I know that's small fries in comparison.
@@olenilsen4660 I know there are different kinds of sand with different properties. I imagine glass maker's sand is very different than casting sand. I know very little about that.
You destroyed that by Nickel welding it. The only way to properly weld that would be either fusion welding with cast iron filler rod or by furnace brazing. It might hold right now but it eventually will fail. I work for Lock-N-Stitch where we specialize in cast metal repair.
Someone else destroyed it by breaking it in half
@@rd-ch1on the tensile strength and yield point of cast iron are both the same. It doesn't bend, it breaks. When metal is heated up, it expands. As soon as you strike any kind of electric arc, you are immediately introducing 1000°+ into the metal which will produce a confined area of expansion and contraction creating cracking and hardening of the material which renders it further unrepairable. No drama, just science. I hope that answers your question.
@@rd-ch1on I have to fix these kinds of things everyday. The area that was welded using electricity has indeed been destroyed. The only way to fix a piece of cast iron that has been welded on is to completely remove the material that has been welded, including the surrounding heat effected zone and replace it with a new casting via either fusion welding, furnace brazing or metal stitching. My comments have been educational and it is my hope that you and others may learn something from them. Using the words, "kerplode, gazillion, Silverback gorilla, etc." I have no doubt that you indeed are an expert in the field of drama and I respect your intellect on the subject. After all, it is people like you who keep me employed 🙂
@Lucas Edwards fantastic mate well said, stitching would be be my choice, but thats really just holding the 2 pieces together, giving its primary function, I would have no doubt that it would fail in short order
@Make Everything bro, you asked for expert input. You got it and turns out you don't have the $1k object you thought you had. Bummer.
My local transmission and axle gears rebuilding, case rebuilding, Machine work and welding shop...use a old electric stove oven to PREHEAT the CASE IRON before welding.
You might try contacting the Edison Welding Institute (EWI) for information on welding cast iron. I always found them a good source for information. If they can't answer your questions, they usually can point you in the right direction.
Bob
If you're in counting porosity on old metal. You need to cook out the impurities at the weld zone. Heated up until it's glowing hot. Let it cool down halfway and then make a pass. Everything should work out fine after that. 👌
The nickel rod is sensitive to sand in the casting/casting skin scale, it must be ground off clean. Also they should be dry , from a new pack or kept in an oven over 200 deg F min. I have done heavy castings like that in industry and we always used E7018 from a new box or oven. E7018 heavy slag floats out the sand and inpurities well. ENCI nickel 99 has a tensile of 38-40K psi. E7018 is 72-80k psi...a much stronger filler metal. Second choice is ENCI 55 ,the 45% steel ads more strength. Full 99% nickel is only used when it must be machined or drilled, it is soft as welded but strength is less. Keep in mind that your repair should stand up to regular use but if it doesn't , try E7018 better results IMHO.
You need heavier bevels for more thorough adhesion. Old cast iron tends to be porous and will absorb hydrocarbons from solvents like a sponge which is why you're getting such rough beads initially. It looks like you needed a higher, more consistent pre-heat. I try to get the whole casting up to at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I have had better success with higher nickel alloy rod. Try cast 55 or cast 60 if you can find it. Your peening with a needle scaler helps a lot. Also, you need to control the cooling by post heating the whole part again and wrapping it in insulation. In the end, it depends on the quality of the cast iron. If the metallurgy was right it will accept the weld. If the silicon is too high there isn't much you can do to keep it welded.
Powder facing attachment for an oxy acetylene torch can repair cast iron with nical based powders , just I haven't done any thing this big
You need to preheat it and maintain a constant heat on it while welding. Usually, in my experience, with this old of cast iron, and the blends made back then, a very high temp (1000-1100°f) is required for the nickel to fuse properly. Even then, there is no guarantee it won't crack. Also, one or two surface passes won't be enough to fuse any of it. One or two good whacks of a hammer will crack it.
To be honest there is no easy way to repair that. You could have done with beveling all the way so you have complete fusion, pre heating to at least 50 Celsius and peining with a hammer to compact the weld whist hot so it doesn't break apart from shrinkage. 7018 is better or even 309, 316L. If you could get a big enough gas forge you could have braised soldered it together. It's a lot of work and to be honest it won't take the punishment it was originally designed for however you fix it. For your time and expense it would probably be worth buying a new one. Well done for the effort though. Cheers J
Ya man fix if you like but it lighter and good enough for me, big smiles
Pre heat always and post heating, and peening 👍the porosity is a result of the cast iron itself. Braze welding is best as the brass gets right into the course grain of the cast and locks it together.
The rods you chose are the right ones for that job, it's just way too thick and complicated a pattern to weld as you need to cut an angle right back into the block to get the weld right through for the strength it needs.
Braze welding would have gotten deeper penetration in the grain with the minimal preparation you did and provided better strength....given you couldn't cut the block right back for a full thickness weld.
Very challenging job even for experienced welders.
You did just fine. Looks great. Would love to see it after milling
Sometimes you need to weld, grind out the porosity, weld again, etc, until you get a good weld. 3 or 4 welds may be needed if the material has soaked in a lot of gear oil over the years.
You did a good repair.. Ni99 is a solid rod and often times contaminated flux(getting the rod dirty) can cause porosity with nickle rods. oxygen contamination as well..Your repair looks good ans Im sure it will hold very well Just to add Ni rods are good and I still use them too but nickle rods are not the best for cast anymore. There are several rods out there that do a lot better job on cast.. Like Certanium 889, it wont crack and dosnt even require peening. Magna 770 is another rod thats fantastic for cast. The only downside of these rods is the cost.They are pretty expensive.. Otherwise they are amazing and made specifically for cast.
A 'really high-tech' method, would be using Electron Beam Welding. Clean the pieces, clamp together and weld the seam. The electron beam will penetrate all the way through, melting and fusing it back into a whole block. In one demonstration, the sawed an engine block in half and welded it back together in a single pass, all 20" in depth. (50 Mev electron beam).
Outstanding video, period. Your narration is spot on with information, procedure, tool selection, expectations, and results. YOU TUBES DON'T GET BETTER THAN THIS! Thanks for your careful filming, incisive editing, and respectful restoration of a piece of blacksmithing history that has soul. It shall endure, thanks to your efforts.
Well thank you very much for the comment!!
Cast iron is kind of like cast aluminum in terms of welding: you clean it perfectly, then you clean it again, and finally, you clean it. Anything sunk into an old porosity or crack will come back to haunt you.
Being it was broke should tell you the quality of the cast iron. It appears to have been beat up quite a bit.
typically I'd say it's gonna be contaminated material giving you that porosity. I'd guess inclusions of slag and possibly sand from the casting process. Probably wasn't fluxed or drossed prior to being poured and all that crap wound up in the mold with the iron which I would bet is why it broke in the first place. If the drifting operation involved any amount of taper in the tool that block probably saw a couple tons of tension across what looks to be a fairly thin section of the block where it broke.
Doesn't this thing need way more preheat? Watching folks weld cast iron turbo housings involve going in the oven for awhile to heat the whole thing up… and those are way thinner compared to this huge lump. And then moving it back into a less-hot oven or a barrel full of sand to let it cool down slowly.
I did preheat it for a long while before welding, but cut it down for the video. So far no cracks but time will tell…
old timers told me to use the same rod that i was using for mild steel and it will work much better.
Especially with cast iron, when welding thick metal, you need enough of a v-groove to be able to weld from each side to have a 100% penetration weld. Your mechanical fasteners may hold it, otherwise, the cracks will come back if you are using it as it was intended. Good luck. Your porosity was possibly caused by debris, but most likely it was in the cast iron. Good luck.
Nice work.
when you first picked it up you should have had a small campfire, chucked it on top and burnt off most of the gunk from it before the rust soak. Fire fixes everything
Must use AC or DCEP, you probably arc welded with the tig polarity DCEN
Good job
That will be a nice decorator piece, but it will never hold up to any real abuse. As stated before, with the lack of full penetration in a lot of areas, it will be quite easily broke. Again.
If you were melting through the piece its a combination of amps,speed,and the type of rod your using like for a 6010 rod on 70 or 80 amps you can burn through almost a quarter inch of steel with that not what the rod was intended for but its possible
I made a medieval helmet for my cat out of an old farriers rasp using a swage block about that size. I just wish he wanted to wear it 😩
Wow that's crazy. Very nice repair. Can't wait to see more videos soon. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work my friend. Forge On. Fab On. Weld On. Keep forge lit. Keep Making. God Bless.
I´ve only heard of Magnesium rods being used for cast iron welding, with a lot of hammering done in between welds to release tension. Is that scaler doing the hammering job in this case? Does anyone know the difference between Mg and Ni rods for this application?
Anywhoo, I love this piece - never seen anything like it, but now I want one, if nothing else, just for decoration. Lovely piece of smithing history! And it looks like it took a ton of abuse - the surface is hardened enough that most of the holes have pretty bad chipping around the edges. I think this might have been why it broke in the end. Imagine forcing a rod into that big square hole that´s already abused to its limits, maybe the piece is also a little colder than it should. That could finally blow out a piece like that half inch that´s missing.
Nice video as well, thanks! I don´t think you should mill it down, better keep it as original as possible. All the wear and tear is a huge part of the piece in my opinion.
Wouldn't it be possible to make a sand form and re-melt it ? Maybe using induction heating.
I nickel rodded my cement mixer 20 years ago. Multiple cracks. Gouged them out, Half ass heated with cutting torch. Welded up . Slow cooled it with torch for way to short of time...Everyone said it would recrack worse. Guess I got lucky
Probably the only 'right' way to repair this would be with furnace brazing. I think it's the only way you could reasonably get a full contact braze on such an enormous part. But of course, you need an oven large enough and hot enough. In the 1000-1500F range.
I was about to critique your decisions but then I saw the many welders who commented below and I feel the point had been made, can I just ask: Why not just soak and pressure wash it when you cleaned it?
I wonder if a power washer would have helped with the deep dirt? a decent gas powered power washer can cut through most crud
What is this ,and what is it used for ,thank you
Was the downdraft table sucking the sheilding gas away
Was there any preheating done?
LOTS! I just sped it up for the video
Man, you opened a can of worms asking for opinions because they’re like assholes, everybody has one. I think you did a good job with the repair and as long as the block is on a flat base it shouldn’t have any problems. I’ve had the same problem using nickel rods with the welds being porous. I’m using them on smaller jobs like vices so I don’t get the opportunity to run a decent bead. Striking and keeping the arc going can be difficult so i up the amps and then the base metal gets burned away. It’s tricky for guys like me and you that don’t weld cast iron very often. Ignore the nay sayers, they’re the ones that won’t even try. I love proving them wrong and if it does fail at least you tried and then you can try a different repair method. I’d love to see it milled. Cheers mate, Stuart 🇦🇺
It looks like a large swage block!
Подскажите, что это за вещь? Для чего она? Спасибо.
I think this is more of a patch than a repair. Some of those cracks you only surface welded. No full penetration. They should have been ground to a bevel nearly to a point. It'll hold. For a while. But it's likely going to crack again right at those welds.
At what point, do you just use it as. Pattern for a new one? Can't it be remade easier than repair?
you should take that piece and get it recast have a few made
Out of curiosity, what did this cost you at the flea market?
He said $150.
Early Casting. Alot of silicon inpregnation also carbon migration.
Im pretty sure these Fisher Swage blocks were cast steel not cast iron.
Thanks for restoring it or it would end up in the scrap
Gee. Swage block repair. I personally don’t think this will hold. Despite your prep and care. Worth a grand now? I wouldn’t pay the original price for it. I’m not a wanna be. I have two powerhammers and one press in my shop. I love vintage stuff cause I myself am vintage. Don’t get me wrong! I applaud your efforts and I hope the block will serve you well. I kinda know what I am doing and I would have passed. That’s just one old bastards feeling however. I sincerely hope I am wrong. I often am.
Nickel rod i.e. Tech-Rod 55 is, and has been for decades, the recommended rod for multi-pass welding cast iron. Tech-Rod 99 for single pass. If it were cast steel, E7018 would be recommended. Preheat is preferred for both materials and a final heat soak after repair, then burial in sand or vermiculite to cool slowly. My only concern is you didn't bevel deep enough and the penetration was minimal. Probably 60% of each crack is still there under the beads. The mechanical reinforcement definitely helped. If it breaks again in the future, you can address the weld depth issue for a more solid result. Regardless, congratulations on your find and having the testicular fortitude to tackle the job!
I want to see this thing milled flat!
I'd hang it on the wall as a show piece because it's only gonna break when you use it.
Isn’t this just like wallpapering over the cracks? You didn’t grind anywhere near deep enough bevels to weld and then you ground most of the weld away. It is not worth anywhere near a grand, it’s probably worth a little less than you paid, or it’s weigh in scrap, whichever is higher.
Worthless, or just worth less?
@@MakeEverything yes.
Price a used one that size- very pricey
Pressure washing would have made quick work of the big debris.
Did you consider JB weld? Or Krazy Glue? 😅😅😅
There is no way a welded swage is suddenly worth the same as a whole one.
Probably worth even more
Well a long long time ago a brazed cast iron together and it has lasted for 40 years getting struck and bangged into by high schoolers
👍👍👍👍👍👍
Working with this kind of metal like this again I saw them melt something and welded to railroad ties together by pouring a liquid metal top of some railroad ties welded together check out those videos that might give you some insight
CadWeld Cast???? Never heard of it but sounds feasible.....It would be like an automatic gas cast iron weld.
I feel sorry for the blacksmith that broke it
Repaired.? Yes it can. Now, Used again, that is another question.
I would never dare touch this thing with a 3kg hammer. It might survive a couple hits with a 1,25kg hammer but by using it in the way it was initially made for (eg two smiths, one with a 3kg hammer) it will split right apart again.
Welding something that thick with a rod that thin will never yield any sort of weld penetration.
Preheat a lot let normalize, let weld heat sink weld a bit at a time cool slowly