welding- welding rod

[M1CDQ]

Ive got a load of old sifsteel welding rods.what I want to try and do is make some small candle holders with it but trying to weld the stuff together with a smaller dia welding rod all i end up doing is melting the lot.Ive even got the tig down to 10 amps.
I am asuming I need a different filler that has a lower melt point.I did try soldering it using a small plubers blow torch but its conduting the heat so must that the prev joint is melting.I have even used some grips to heat sink between the joins but that fails as well

 

[simon718]

how about clamping some sort of copper to the rods with your grips? as copper will conduct a lot more heat away

 

[Drains]

M1CDQ, have you tried using a bit of mig wire as filler?

 

[M1CDQ]

thats the next thing Im going to try just need to get a small amount of mig wire

 

[chunkolini]

I have just Tig welded up another cobewb out of 3mm stainless steel bar. What a pain.
In the end I found a technique that worked, I used the same sized bar as filler and startrd the arc on the filler rod with it resting on the joint to be made so it melts first, acting as a bit of a heat sink then flows into the join. I was using HF start and around 25/30 amps. You have to work fast, the joints either take around 4 seconds or five minutes to make. A bloody fiddle and I forgot to photograph it.

This kind of gauge wire is easy peasy to braze with Oxy/acetylene gear, again low heat and work fast.

Good luck. It always works out in the end. Photo's please.

Chunko.

 

[runnach]

Why don't you just fuse the ends together?

 

[hotrodder]

Why don't you just fuse the ends together?

Ditto. Closest example i've got is this...



the button hoop is just a short length of 316L filler, very short arc length and a quick burst of amps. No harder to join two or more lengths of filler together but you need a short burst at higher amps rather than trying to build the heat slowly with low amps