Welding Tips and Tricks

I made a pair of third hands, tig welded with copper wire as a filler. It took a lot of heat before I could get a puddle. Welded really nice after that. It was almost entirely glowing red when I was finished. 3/8 round .I made a bronze weight on one of them.

I'm still learning how to upload photos. Lol

Very nice! I like the adjustability.

Thank you. The copper is sooo soft after the heating from welding I swear you could almost tie it in a Knott!
Holding a razor photo

Notapro wrote:Thank you. The copper is sooo soft after the heating from welding I swear you could almost tie it in a Knott!
Holding a razor photo

Now that's what I call a thick to thin setup!!

Lol. That's funny!!

I am thinking of copying this but silver soldering instead to hopefully avoid annealing the copper.

It a real work of art. I have a chunk of Buss Bar that maybe would make nice one on the Lincoln style. Still nicely done and it look so cool.

Thanks Bumblebee. I would like to see yours when you get it finished. Sounds like it would be cool

Copper sure is interesting to weld. Very pretty 3 hand. I built one similar to yours out of stainless but alas, I needed the rod for something else and had to cannibalize the poor thing. Another one of my little gifts to myself that is missing some part of its anatomy sitting outside in that cold scrap pile.

Thanks exnailpounder, a stainless one would be nice, you gave me an idea to make one.

Where do you guys find the copper to make things like this?

I bought at an auction, They thought it was steel rod, but it was three 12 foot lengths of 3/8" copper in a cardboard tube. Lucky day at the auction.

Jakedaawg wrote:Where do you guys find the copper to make things like this?

jake
You don't specify in your profile where your located, if you're in the US and happen to be near a Alro Metals drop shop, that is one source.
There are online metals suppliers, but it won't be cheap. Example, onlinemetals.com if you sign up for their newsletter you'll receive monthly discounts

Those were probably grounding rods. You could get them at any Home Depot or major chain stores for electrical supply shop.

Poland308 wrote:Those were probably grounding rods. You could get them at any Home Depot or major chain stores for electrical supply shop.

Josh, I thought that the copper grounding rods from HD were solid copper too but at the store I was at they were only copper plated. I even remarked about it to my electrician friend about how dangerous it would be to have a grounding rod decay after a few years and he told me to get pure copper you need to go to an electrical supply house. By coincidence I have to go to HD today, I will check the rods out and update. My friend told me they were copper plated .

Update...I didn't go to HD but went to Lowe's and their grounding rods are, in fact, copper plated steel alloy.

All the grounding rods I've ever run across (including 12 years as an electrician) have been copper plated steel.

Guess they cheap out sometimes. They usually keep both kinds on hand here. We have Menards around here too I've gotten them there before as well. I used some for a project I had to make a grate I cut the bars out of a couple and brazed them up with oxy.

It was a machine shop auction I got them from. I have also seen grounding rods, typically they are copper coated steel.