Welding Tips and Tricks

I was going to try to make a rose for a special someone out of some 18ga 304 scrap. Anyone know if work hardening will be a problem? I'm going to give it a shot and learn a thing or two, but any advise would be rad. I've actually never really cold worked stainless at all, just tig'd it up as needed.

Everything will work harden to some extent, but for your application I can't imagine what problems it would cause. I'd say if you're worried this girl is gonna fidget with that welded up ss rose to such an extent the metal will fail, I'd say you need a less nervous girl.

Hah nice..

I was thinking along the lines of working with copper. With repeated bending and hammering the copper will crack unless periodically annealed. So something along the lines of will stainless work harden and crack while I am building the thing.

I would think 18 ga will be easy to shape and unlikely to crack in the amount you're looking to move it. I'd say stainless is less finicky about how far it moves and more about how many times. It really depends on how much you need to move it and what properties the stuff has to begin with. 304 comes in a broad range of mechanical properties. I"ve seen it really soft and I've seen it hard'er'n hell.

Stainless can be pretty malleable. That series stainless will work harden if allowed to get too hot while machining.

What technique are you planning to use for forming? That will allow me to better answer your questions.

William Payne wrote:Stainless can be pretty malleable. That series stainless will work harden if allowed to get too hot while machining.

What technique are you planning to use for forming? That will allow me to better answer your questions.

Cutting with tin snips, cold forming, clamping, hammering, then welded, and additional tweaking/bending etc.

bap_ wrote:

William Payne wrote:Stainless can be pretty malleable. That series stainless will work harden if allowed to get too hot while machining.

What technique are you planning to use for forming? That will allow me to better answer your questions.

Cutting with tin snips, cold forming, clamping, hammering, then welded, and additional tweaking/bending etc.

I’d like to say that you shouldn’t have a big problem doing that.