Steve, I am sure you are probably right and given the nature of the piece it could have been done in a Mom and Pop shop where they were dropping whatever scrap they could find into the pot. With hind sight brazing would have been the route to go down, my mistake of course was thinking 'simple job' :...

Toady what should have been a simple job turned into a pain in the ass. My wife found a curtain tie back finial had broken off it's mounting collet. I take a look and say simple job to weld it back on. So I grind the components back to clean bright metal as the parts have been painted. The grind tel...