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Braking Aluminum
"Bruce" wrote in message
... On Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:13:20 -0700, "Bob La Londe" wrote: "Bob La Londe" wrote in message ... We are getting a little off topic aren't we... LOL. To bring it back on topic, I just welded in a patch on that boat. Had a buddy that bid on a job to repair some rental boats; lot of welding. Got the bid and went out and stick welded them all, at a rate that others had bid for TIG welding. Said the owner got made about it :-) I didn't know it was possible/practical to stick weld aluminum. I do it with a MIG machine and straight argon gas. One of my buddies has a more expensive pulse MIG, and he can weld about twice as efficiently with it. Certainly its faster than TIG. I really hate welding flat aluminum as it warps so bad. There are tricks. I'm just a hack metal sprayer, but the big one is to make lots of spaced tack welds when joining sheets and then work back and forth fill between the tacks, so you aren't building to much heat in any one area. A pulse MIG is more forgiving in this area, but alas I just have a regular MIG. Another trick for some problem spots is to stack tack welds. It looks like it was welded with a TIG that way. The big thing though is brushing off the oxidized coating with a stainless brush and cleaning any oil off the metal with alcohol or acetone. Getting back to Pollard. Lots of people will weld aluminum on a backing of some kind, but I don't know anybody who welds, back chips, and back welds like he suggests except on some odd positioning of thicker plate. Back chipping and back welding some of the thinner stuff commonly used in small boats just isn't practical. I think it would do more damage than good. |
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