Viability of Ultra Fine welding on 1.2mm wire

[Noel.C]

Hi guys another question if you don't mind. One of my interests in life
is medieval chainmaile craft. I make suits of butted chainmaile and also
riveted chainmaile.

This is an example of one of my butted maile items and I want to talk
about how I can upgrade my butted chainmaile to become welded
chainmaile.

Is it possible to put a tiny spot using mig welding under magnification
if necessary on a ring that is 6mm in diameter and 1.2mm in gauge?
Assuming that the ring was a 304 17/7PH carbon steel ring, will the
spot weld hold up during the tempering process, this would involve
heating the ring to in access of 500 degrees for 60 minutes or more,
than allowing to air cool.

I am not a welder, just a computer geek wanting to become a welder,
I have no idea about the viability of this but if it's do-able, it's going to
accelerate my pursuit of welding skills significantly.

Cheers
Noel

 

[rtbcomp]

Personally I think you wouldn't have enough control over MIG, TIG may be the better way to go. That aside, any chance of a thread in the Projects section about making that chainmaille?

 

[cumbriasteve]

It's not something I would like to try with MIG but I am just a normal welder, some of the guys here are highly skilled, I still doubt it's the way to go.

TIG, which I don't do may be possible, once again there are some wizards here who can weld coke tins with TIG so it probably will have the fine enough detail.

A fair learning curve though to become that good.

 

[chunkolini]

Might be possible but be prepared for potential failure and lots of burned fingers.
The hanging rings on these are made of 1.6mm(?) gas welding rods mig welded onto the pennies. I reckon you could make individual rings but welding them closed when linked sounds unlikely.

I would reckon that rings would weld themselves together.
This sounds an interesting project, how was it done originally?

Are you not leaving it a bit late bearing in mind the coming Zombie holocaust on 21 12 12. An armouror would be a rich man post this date.

 

[Angusdog]

I have in mind some sort of foot operated spot welder, low voltage which just melts the ends together. Presumably you'd need to work fast and the maille would sort of knit itself as you went. To be useful, you're going to need some sort of custom rig rather than a MIG or TIG welder, although you could start with some sort of welder for the power supply etc. Being a computer geezer, you may have some clues when it comes to circuitry.

This is just to get some ideas going on here. It sounds like a fascinating project and I'm sure someone else will have more to contribute.

 

[jinjahbiscuit]

How do jewellers join chains?

 

[rich r]

How do jewellers join chains?

They're soldered. In fact soldering would appear to be common in chainmaking in general where the links are small.

 

[ps_bond]

PUK3 I think would be an answer for this.

And while precious metal chain is generally soldered, laser welding and spot welding are becoming increasingly common as the costs of the machines comes down.

 

[Noel.C]

I'm guessing the biggest factor here will not be with the
welding kit but with my own ability to control the kit and
to get roughly the same result 45~60 thousand times over.

The PUK welding gear looks perfect but I'll never afford it.

I could try taking some of the human element out of it. I
could take a bit of steel plate, grind out the shape of a
jump ring using a dremel and a tungsten carbide burr.

Placing the jumping into this holder then attaching the
mig to a half ton arbour press, using the press to keep
the mig aligned, then all I would need to do would be
to pull the trigger. That's about the only thing that
springs to my mind at the moment

In any case, this was a curiosity more than anything, I will be
learning to use mig effectively long before trying this stuff out.
As for tutorials lads, not a great deal to it really, better to look
at 4 into 1 chainmaile on YouTube. Riveted chainmaile is considerably
more challenging :-)

 

[Wozzaaah]

I'm sat here bored with my leg in plaster so my brain is thinking silly thoughts....or maybe not so silly.
Someone will probably shoot me down in flames for this but tbh, if you can source the items cheaply enough it's worth giving it a go.

Here's my idea.
Get the cheapest smallish mig welder you can possibly find, even one with a broken wire feed unit or no wire feed unit at all would do as you won't be using wire.
Drill out a contact tip so it'll take a short piece of tig tungsten and place said tungsten snugly inside the contact tip.
Use your 'die' idea but use copper instead of steel so the steel ring won't fuse to it and have the earth clamp connected to it.
Put the welder on a highish power setting, place the tip of the tungsten firmly on the gap in the ring and pull the trigger.

Daft idea or might it work?

Other than that, how about making a microwave oven transformer spot welder?

 

[madkayaker]

Can see that working watched a program on quest about making handcuffs and they did something like that for welding chain. There was a block on bench with rig like torch on a arm that hinged down with foot movement that started gas and current. The woman could do 40 links a minuet

 

[Wozzaaah]

Hehe, maybe it's not such a daft idea then?
My theory is that as the wire is fairly small it would only need the briefest of zaps to fuse the joint.
You could still use the arbor press idea with it too and even modify the torch so instead of having to press the trigger you use a remote switch instead.

 

[madkayaker]

The video I watched the torch seamed to start auto as the arm was pushed down by a foot peddle and there was a screen on the back for the operator to look through. Since your doing nowt wozz have a search on YouTube

 

[ps_bond]

The PUK welding gear looks perfect but I'll never afford it.

*An* answer - didn't say it was a good one
It's got some gucci features like the scope & auto filter as part of the system.

I could try taking some of the human element out of it. I
could take a bit of steel plate, grind out the shape of a
jump ring using a dremel and a tungsten carbide burr.

Good idea on the jigging, but that's just for one ring and you want to be able to join rings while they're in the weave. Maybe something like crosslock tweezers so you can isolate the one ring from the rest? That and rigging something like an Optivisor in conjunction with an auto helmet so you can see the rings. Or just braze it.

I've got a bunch of jumprings cut and waiting for me to join them up as a bracelet (4 in 1, old faithful!) once I've got a clasp design I'm happy with. I'll be using silver solder paste for this and the whole thing will need hallmarking once I'm done.

 

[Noel.C]

Yeh my idea and wozzaaah's only solves one part of the problem. In that
assuming it did work, I could only weld 4 out of the 5 rings
because obviously the 4 rings need to go inside the 5th so the 5th cant
be welded, unless I did become proficient at spot welding it by hand.

I do have a solution for it. I could design the 5th ring as a flattened
wedge riveted ring. This would still improve over an all butted
maile design but not as historically correct as a full wedge riveted
design, not as expensive either, the workload for full riveted is
shocking.

 

[backpurge]

If you could ensure the ends of were butted up tight together with no gap you could fuse the ends together with plasma, have seen some very delicate work done with this

 

[Paul G]

Hi Noel,

I used to belong to an archery club and one of the members was into the acting out of battles and used to make his own armour.
He brought his chain mail down to show us and discussed how he made it.

He wound the rings around a rod on his lathe to form what I can only describe as a spring, then cut into rings with side cutters that had shortened jaws.

To hold them while TIG welding them he had a modified pair of wire strippers, the sort that have a stop screw that can be adjusted so you don't cut through the wire.
The jaws were two blocks that had keyways in them so the ring when held could be closed up and kept in line.
While held under a little pressure the ends were welded and the ring would close up until the stop screw met the other jaw.
This produced a slightly bulbous weld without using filler rod.
The return lead (earth) was bolted to the handle of the pliers with a lug.

I remember how we all chuckled when he took it off.
It was a sort of long tee shirt shape that pulled tight to the body when worn, but to remove it he had to go down on all fours and his mate had to pull it up his back.

HTH
Paul G

edit to add:- His was made from 1.5mm wire

 

[Noel.C]

Sounds like a Hauberk Paul.
Here is me in a 12kg steel one I made a while back.
The Coif or Hood ended up a fair bit longer than shown here
but yes, a right proper nightmare to get off. My second one
will have leather straps and buckles to help rectify that problem.

This was about 350~370m's of 1.5mm mild steel. My
second one will be about 700m of 1.2mm 5052 Aluminium.

 

[Angusdog]

To hold them while TIG welding them he had a modified pair of wire strippers, the sort that have a stop screw that can be adjusted so you don't cut through the wire.
The jaws were two blocks that had keyways in them so the ring when held could be closed up and kept in line.
While held under a little pressure the ends were welded and the ring would close up until the stop screw met the other jaw.
This produced a slightly bulbous weld without using filler rod.
The return lead (earth) was bolted to the handle of the pliers with a lug.

Aha, that sounds solid. I reckon a pair of hog ring pliers (see pic), attach earth to them & el cheapo TIG and you're away. At my age, I'd add a magnifying lens like jewellers use (mounted on an arm unless you have three hands), modify the TIG torch for a foot activated switch and you're done.

 

[Paul G]

Sounds like a Hauberk Paul.
Here is me in a 12kg steel one I made a while back.
The Coif or Hood ended up a fair bit longer than shown here
but yes, a right proper nightmare to get off. My second one
will have leather straps and buckles to help rectify that problem.



This was about 350~370m's of 1.5mm mild steel. My
second one will be about 700m of 1.2mm 5052 Aluminium.

By the look of that you already have it sussed. Very nice.

I do have a question though. If it's mild steel how do you keep it from going rusty?

Cheers,
Paul G