Brass is filled with brass wire when in small castings and sheets. For general work with brass castings, manganese bronze or Tobin bronze may be used.
Bronze is welded with manganese bronze or Tobin bronze, while copper is filled with copper wire.
These welding rods should always be used to fill the weld when the thickness of material makes their employment necessary, and additional metal should always be added at the weld when possible as the joint cannot have the same strength as the original piece if made or dressed off flush with the surfaces around the weld. This is true because the metal welded into the joint is a casting and will never have more strength than a casting of the material used for filling.
Great care should be exercised when adding metal from welding rods to make sure that no metal is added at a point that is not itself melted and molten when the addition is made. When molten metal is placed upon cooler surfaces the result is not a weld but merely a sticking together of the two parts without any strength in the joint.
FLUXES
Difficulty would be experienced in welding with only the metal and rod to work with because of the scale that forms on many materials under heat, the oxides of other metals and the impurities found in almost all metals. These things tend to prevent a perfect joining of the metals and some means are necessary to prevent their action.
Various chemicals, usually in powder form, are used to accomplish the result of cleaning the weld and making the work of the operator less difficult. They are called fluxes.
A flux is used to float off physical impurities from the molten metal; to furnish a protecting coating around the weld; to assist in the removal of any objectionable oxide of the metals being handled; to lower the temperature at which the materials flow; to make a cleaner weld and to produce a better quality of metal in the finished work.
The flux must be of such composition that it will accomplish the desired result without introducing new difficulties. They may be prepared by the operator in many cases or may be secured from the makers of welding apparatus, the same remarks applying to their quality as were made regarding the welding rods, that is, only the best should be considered.
The flux used for cast iron should have a softening effect and should prevent burning of the metal. In many cases it is possible and even preferable to weld cast iron without the use of a flux, and in any event the smaller the quantity used the better the result should be. Flux should not be added just before the completion of the work because the heat will not have time to drive the added elements out of the metal or to incorporate them with the metal properly.