Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi guys,

I recently bought a great vise- Reed 4C. However, the base is missing an ear. I don't have the ear to weld back on, so I will have to make one and weld it on.

Questions:

What kind of steel can I make the ear out of? What welds well to cast iron?

What practices must I use to achieve good results i.e. no cracking? Preheat? Post heat?

What type of wire is best (fits with the steel to weld on)?

I attached a picture of the vise, you can see where the ear is broken off from the base.

The weld doesn't need to be super strong or anything, I just need to be able to grind it off and have a nice clean surface to paint over. This base has 3 ears remaining, which will be plenty strength-wise.

ritzblitz wrote:Hi guys,
I recently bought a great vise- Reed 4C. However, the base is missing an ear. I don't have the ear to weld back on, so I will have to make one and weld it on. Questions:
What kind of steel can I make the ear out of? What welds well to cast iron?
What practices must I use to achieve good results i.e. no cracking? Preheat? Post heat?
What type of wire is best (fits with the steel to weld on)?
I attached a picture of the vise, you can see where the ear is broken off from the base.
The weld doesn't need to be super strong or anything, I just need to be able to grind it off and have a nice clean surface to paint over. This base has 3 ears remaining, which will be plenty strength-wise.

=====

Ritablitz.

My guess without looking anything up, is to make the ear from mild carbon steel.

Clean the surface on the vise well.
Butter the broken surface of the vise with nickel stick electrodes depositing from an 1/8 to a 1/4" of weld metal.
Let it cool.

Prepare a X (double vee groove) on the mild steel ear.
Tack it up with nickel rod while on a flat surface to ensure a flat fit-up.
Deposit single passes of nickel rod.
Alternate sides while welding passes to avoid distortion (and check it between passes).
Grind down flat the underside to ensure the new ear's flat and true towards the other three ears.

Tanks.
Alexa

ps: how is the condition of the threads on the male and female parts?

Hi - I agree in principal with the previous post ( Alexa ) on using nickel rods if you have them , though I was taught that pure nickel is for cast to cast welds but for cast to steel welds use nickel / iron rods - also I would stand the casting in an enclosure of fire bricks to preheat with a propane torch, do all the weld hot then bury the thing in a bucket of dry silver sand to cool off very slowly - this is just a personal opinnion based on what worked for me in the past - I mean no disrespect to others who may have achieved good results by other methods.

Type of steel you use for the ear I don't think is critical for this application - I'd just cut out a suitable shape from any plate off cut I got with a plasma or oxy /acetylene torch.

If you don't keep nickel rods they are quite expensive & for this application you could probably get away with using regular Mig or even 7018 rod at a push -only difference is to " peen " the weld after each run - probably should'nt promote other peoples channels here - but " ChuckE2009 " has done this exact repair - you may want to have a look as his seemed to work OK. - I do find alot of pre-heat is needed - considerably more than the nickel due to the much lower ductility of steel.

Another way which usually works on cast is alot of pre heat and braze the joint with oxy / acetylene - the greater the surface area the better - so V prep right through the thickness on both sides - if alot of heat has built up in the area you repair but the rest has cooled off - put the thing back on the fire bricks & heat the rest as evenly as possible - then bury in sand to allow a slow cool - I did a repair to a gearbox casting where a bearing split & caused a crack & this method worked fine.

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to tackle this - ( there is probably a best way ) but it depends more on what equipement you own & what your happy or experienced doing - it's not like it's part of a nuclear power plant or the space shuttle. good luck - be nice to see it all done & painted.

Old 'piston rings' work reasonably well as a filler rod.
http://www.jockeyjournal.com/forum/show ... hp?t=83954

Noddybrian had some interesting additions concerning the stick welding.

It is correct about the cost of nickel rods. The 99% nickel rods are considerably more expensive than the half&half Ni/Fe rods. The advantage of rods is that you can buy only a few that are necessary to do the job. Probably only three or four Ni99 rods for the buttering and a dozen of Ni55 for the butt joint.

Slightly peening between the passes of the butt joint may help a little, to minimize the shrinkage. But the weld shrinkage is a risk when it is being welded to cast iron which is brittle. Instead, in this case, the butt joint will essentially be a dissimilar weld between the buttered nickel on one side, and the mild carbon steel on the other. The cheaper nickel rod (Ni55) should do fine for the butt joint.

My guess is that preheating is not needed while stick welding as described above. (Instead for oxy-actylene welding or brazing of cast iron, it is a very different approach.)

Alexa

ritzblitz,

Since you suggested replacing the ear is more for stability than strength, I think noddybrian's brazing suggestion is the way to go, with the least odds of further damage. This might prove to be "stronger", actually, as the built-in stress of a weld makes such a repair to a tool that sees as much abuse as a vice succeptible to cracking later in life even if it welds successfully, and the next crack may split the base ring.

For the ultimate in ease, cut a cast iron ear off a junk transmission case or some other cast scrap, or just use any low-carbon steel. Grind both surface to a very coarse finish for maximum wetted area, but a good tight fit for the lowest amount of filler metal. With the base removed from the vise, flux, fit, and clamp both parts, perhaps to a thin concrete or slate paver, and heat the whole works for a bit. Gas grill, rosebud, whatever. Then braze it up. Then pour garden center vermiculite over the whole works, and let it cool overnight.

Let us know what you decide to do, and how it goes for you.

Steve S

Thank you all for the excellent replies.

I knew that repairing cast iron can be a tough job, but wow, now I really know how much care you have to take.

Being that I have NEVER stick welded before, I'm not sure about going that route. I can TIG weld at an above average level, but I'm not sure if TIG is ok for a repair like this.

Brazing sounds like a very nice alternative, but I have also never brazed before... But if I can TIG weld I assume I should be able to braze. What type of brazing rod should I use? I am basically clueless to brazing :/

Maybe I will have my uncle help me out with this, he is a welder at a construction company so he repairs heavy machinery and has a ton of welding experience. This job is right up his alley.

Thanks,
Alex

ritzblitz wrote:Thank you all for the excellent replies.

I knew that repairing cast iron can be a tough job, but wow, now I really know how much care you have to take.

Being that I have NEVER stick welded before, I'm not sure about going that route. I can TIG weld at an above average level, but I'm not sure if TIG is ok for a repair like this.

Brazing sounds like a very nice alternative, but I have also never brazed before... But if I can TIG weld I assume I should be able to braze. What type of brazing rod should I use? I am basically clueless to brazing :/

Maybe I will have my uncle help me out with this, he is a welder at a construction company so he repairs heavy machinery and has a ton of welding experience. This job is right up his alley.

Thanks,
Alex

=====

Ritzblitz.

The two welds (the buttering and the butt joints) are very straight forward. They are not difficult.

Buttering is recommended in order to deposit a welding-friend surface, which is a mix of the vise's cast iron and the electrodes nickel. This avoids welding the very brittle cast iron which does not 'give' when the weld shrinks. Buttering is nothing more than depositing some metal on a surface.

Then the joint, between the ear and the buttered surface of the vise, is a very straight forward weld. You run a single pass o one side, then follow with a pass on the opposite side, with a little light peening with the pointed end of your slag hammer as you clean the slag off.

Your biggest difficulty is making sure that the fit-up of the ear is precise. So fitting it up on a flat surface is important. You do not want an uneven surface when you later bolt down the ear.

Anyways ... let us know how you and/or your Uncle end up doing it.
Alexa

Shouldn't have to preheat the part with an exterior edge or an appendage repair, being there is somewhere for the stress to escape. It's been my experience, that is only needed on trapped damage where the cast is under tension, say, in the middle of a gear casing or something like that, by default of the process of it's manufacture. Same with cast aluminum.

Also, can/should oversize the part on the business side and machine to size later to save from compensating for distortion where it matters.