On Jan 30, 9:27*pm, beauvine wrote:
Hi, *I do soldering associated with my stained-glass work. *What I'm
wondering is, what's the difference between soldering and welding, especially
in terms of strength...? *I'd like to make some stained-glass-topped metal
tables, but what relatively-little I've seen about welding makes it seem
super-expensive, dangerous, and generally daunting.

Apologies if this is a stupid question, but what can I say, "Inquiring minds
want to know" *LOL!

Thanks for your patience, and whatever info you might wish to share with me *
=:-)

You probably aren't going to solder the substrate of the table
together and definitely won't be welding your glass. I've seen some
tables done like stained glass, they were either cast in plastic with
a glass top all laid on a bent wrought-iron type support or had a
glass backer and a glass top with metal edging. Can be done and done
attractively They were very small, not quite plant stand but smaller
than a bar table. The bases could be welded, riveted or bolted
together.

As far as your original question about soldering, this is a low
temperature process that uses a melted filler metal to bond metals
together, the pieces don't melt themselves. With welding, your
workpieces melt and either furnish the material themselves for the
joint or a similar metal is added as filler and melted along with the
work pieces. Generally much higher temperature than soldering, the
exception would be lead-burning where lead's melting point is so low
that it's more like soldering..

Your stained glasswork isn't going to be self-supporting when laid
horizontally, at least if joined with copper foil or lead cane, and
will need some sort of base under it to take the weight. Can be wood,
too. If a guy was an ace welder and sheetmetal guy, I suppose he
could bend up, cut and weld up a design from small steel T-bar, then
put cut glass in the pockets and grout it all down. Would be a lot of
work, but could be done if a guy was talented enough and motivated.
TIG would probably be the process of choice for that. Designed
correctly, that could be self-supporting. You'd probably still want a
sheet of glass over the top.

There are probably several members here that have machines that could
CNC plasma cut the top out of solid plate, then CNC mill the glass
pockets, too. Or plasma cut the design into three plates, make a
sandwich and skip the milling, two thin plates on top and bottom with
smaller holes and the main one to hold the glass in-between. Lotsa
ways of doing it, the design is the thing.

Stan