rimcanyon
Diamond
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2002
- Location
- Salinas, CA USA
I am doing an overhaul on my Monarch lathe. One of the iron end covers had been cracked, probably for decades. I ground a vee along the cracks then I tried oxy-acetylene brazing it with some Uniweld silicon bronze rod (UNI 1800FC and UNI 1000, tried both), and had problems getting it to wet the surface of the iron. The rods have different fluxes, one is green blue the other dark grey. The rod is 15 years old, but is stored in the original plastic tubes in a dry shop. So then I tried fluxing the rod with standard Borate flux, and got it to wet the iron quite well. So, I am wondering if the flux was bad, or I just needed a different flux for the iron cover. I have used both brazing rods for other projects (brazing steel and brazing bronze) recently with no issues, so I am leaning towards the second possibility, but there are smarter welders than I am reading this, so I would appreciate some advice.