Repairing cast BRASS (I hate this nasty stuff!)

SO my wife found a cute little damaged lamp on Fleabay. Advertised as bronze and it came with an artist name. Other works by TITZE show as being bronze so figured it was safe. Cut a deal with the seller and it shows up today. Art Nouveau, turn of the century and priced well considering the damage. It shows up today and it sure looked pretty yellow to me. Maybe it's the patina I thought so in the blast cabinet it went. The Austrians were well known for painted patinas. After rebuilding the girls umbrella, I moved on to it's more serious issue of the top about to snap off. Bead blasted and cleaned the crack with a burr, I light up on it and POP, HISS, SNAP! SOB it IS brass. You guys know I hate this metal. It welds like shit if it welds at all. Of course the seller is playing stupid and it's too late to try to make them eat it. It was $300 which would be fair if it was bronze, but it's not. Either way, I'd like to put her back together and keep it. She has a wonderful expression and I'm a sucker for art nouveau. I need to know, what's the best way to deal with this SHITTY metal? I thought I could get lucky and tig braze it with sil bronze, but that is proving to be very difficult. The bronze isn't wetting out and just balls up.

The top was crushed and there is a crack staring right at you here.


I lifted the top close to position and lit it up. Adorable.


Fixed her broken umbrella with a piece of bronze.
The color difference made me start to wonder.



Of course the top broke off when I looked at it sideways.


BRASS IS FOR PLUMBING, BRONZE IS FOR ART!

 

Ok stop trying to weld . brass simply does not weld, welding required melting the base metal , and because of the wide range of melting points of the elements in brass ( remember brass is a mixture not a solution ) zinc and the lead will vaporize while the Copper is still solid, and the tin is a liquid , so you will have popping... NO WELDING

you will have to Braze ,
Safety Silv 45 Silver Brazing Alloy will come very close to Matching Yellow Brass ,if buffed to a High gloss, if you intent to patina you should be able to hide any color difference.
if you try to let it patina naturally, the silver will patina MUCH slower and Quite differently , so hide it ,

I would try to pin it together , make a square piece to drop in the post and fit inside the other half (hood???) , I would (tin coat ) the pin with silver let it cool and clean it , reflux, assemble and add heat until capillary attraction draws the silver out a little , add silver on the exterior only if you must as the more you can clean away the better. silver on the exterior is wasteful. and retail it will run you as much as $60/ troy ounce . order off ebay looking for $25/ troy once


V/r HT1

P.S. if you have questions message me, and I will give you my Number and we can talk

P.P.S Brass is fine for art, your art just has to be perfect, because you cannot weld brass

 

Remind me the next time I pass through JAX to drop you off a case of your favorite beer!

Good idea about a pin, except it was only attached by the thin wall on the back. The open section is for the wire to pass through. Probably explains
why it was bent when I bought it. I've only got silfoss 15 on hand at the moment. I'll jump on fleabay and look for 45. I can't remember but we hit this
one not long ago.... It is the black or white flux for brazing this stuff?

Yes it will get some kind of patina, I'm not a high polish kind of guy. I'm more rough and course. (remember knuckle dragger f16 crew chief)
Every other word usually starts with the letter F.

 

Way back when I made my avatar I used brass to make it and used oxy acetylene to weld in some brass to fill some holes. It was hard and took a lot of heat but it filled. Eventually. There are some porosities I some spots from the zinc being burned out so it won't be perfect but it does join again.

I think I had some type of flux for brass. It's in my parents garage so I can't check the name. It was dark blackish in color.

You might also try the bronze rods that have Zn in them from the welding shop using TIG. There is a separate alloy that has high Zn % in it.

 

I do have some of that bronze rod with ZN in it. Courtesy of the clown at airgas. Imagine my surprise the first time I lit up on the volatile shit!

 

white flux is for lower temp, brass to brass or to copper,
black is for high temp applications, like brazing tungsten to steel.
as for the Pin, drill a hole in it to pass the wire thru. ,
another final and not so appealing option would be to use a wire wrap to repair the piece, and then cover that with silver , but that will change the appearance, and be a bitch on that square profile

best of luck
V/r
HT1

 

SO what is the actual sculpture??. Is the kid being abducted by a UFO??.

 

Funny you say that... Lots of Art nouveau stuff had an alien look about it. Pretty advanced stuff seeing the airplane wasnt invented yet. Maybe the whole jules vern thing had some influence?

 

In my wife's defense, she did really good with this piece she bought this week. Weighs about 10lbs.
Anyone know what it was used for? Here's a hint, there is box section on the far right. That should help you guess.
Same Artist, TITZE. See how the bottom resembles the little girl lamp? It looks exactly the same.



Interesting he wasn't cast as one piece. I'm shocked the tail didn't get bent up with the way my luck has been rolling lately.



I think he's got a good look. Amazing to see his eyes follow you.

 

Hey HT, I found this blue rod mixed in with my junk from Blowes..... Isn't this safety silv 45? I cant remember. A buddy of mine gave me a 50lb box one day loaded with tons of different rod. He was a distributor I think. I sold off the exotic stuff I knew I'd never use and hung onto the rest. The old cardboard containers were falling apart and I think that's how I ended up with this in my white tube.

 

it could be . grab a piece of scrap brass, and see how it flows, and check the color .
basically just heat up a spot on the scrap(same condition as your work piece sand blasted???) with your torch, when it is showing a bit of color ( work in a dim area), aplly blue wire keep torch on it , make a puddle use the torch to work it out from center , let it cool for a second you can quench it once the silver is solid, then go buff it to check the color

I know you probably know all that, but the Huddled masses may not


V/r HT1

 

I can use all the pointers ya got on brazing. I've only done it once before. I remember Richard saying to keep in mind you are gluing your stuff together with it. Seems to work for me.
I got a hold of some 45 today, but it has blue flux on it. 3 sticks of 1/16 for 14bucks. No luck getting white flux locally. Amazon to the rescue.

 

I'll count this as a win for now.. Let's see what happens after cleanup...

 

HT you nailed it man. 45 is a dead ringer for this yellow stuff. THANK YOU!

 

Close enough for me. IF this thing was bronze, I'd be willing to work it a little harder. I don't dare risk getting a torch near it again. More importantly, it passed QA with my wife.
The crack on the side at the top of this thread, STAYS. I'm not screwing with it.

 

It is very difficult to fix cracks in brass or bronze with out oxygen. Oxy-NG, Oxy-LP or Oxy-Ace. I have done it map gas on thin stuff, but the cone is not concentrated enough.

Practice on some scrap. I swirl first to pool and finish with small C’s.

 

I've thrown my oxy/ace torch in the trash! The only thing I've got these days is a straight acetylene turbo torch. The only brazing I care to do is on HVAC copper when I'm making the bucks.
Everything gets welded or I don't mess with it.

I've got no problems fixing cracks in bronze with tig. You are right, small c's work well for me too.

 

looks good , nice video, and you can drop My Name


V/r HT1

 

Get me a link for your bookface page and I'll add it to the description. Do you have a name? I thought HT1 was like some robot designation.