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Joining dissimilar metals…. copper and steel

21K views 41 replies 24 participants last post by  Equilibrium  
I've been brazing with my Oxy Acetylene lately. I'm not very good yet. : )

This is pretty informative: http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/soldering_brazing_explained.html

Maybe you can braze with BCuP (I think this is the std rod I have), but you'll need to be careful because the melting temp of Cu looks damn close to the point that steel starts to sweat. I bet someone good with a torch could do it, but I bet I would inadvertently melt the Cu base.

Check out stained glass soldering, there's tons of info on it. What the modern people do is actually wrap the glass edges in copper and then solder the panes together using an electric soldering iron. They use Silver / Tin mixtures for solder, nothing fancy. I've off and on tried to find an open flame method of stained glass, but so far haven't found anything. Trying to find what they did 'back in the day'.

The only difference in brazing and soldering is temp. Brazing is above 840 F or so. Below that it is considered soldering.