SomeBody wrote:

I'm attempted to do some brazing, never done it before, although I have
soldered some copper pipes before!

I have a piece of 1/4" plate with a hole drilled in it, I have a piece
of 3/4" black iron pipe threaded into a 3/4" ell (elbow?). This pipe will
pass through the hole in the plate and needs to be brazed to seal it up. I
need it to be leak free.

To get some practice, I tried to see if I could braze the threaded pipe
to the 3/4" ell (elbow?), I cleaned the pipe threads and the ell with
acetone and I screwed the pipe into the ell. I got out my small propane
cylinder with a hand held torch tip. I heated the part till it was a light
colored red and try as I may, could not get the brazing rod to flow
worth a dam. Figured I wasn't getting enough heat, so I got out my #20
cylinder of propane and my torch head from my aluminum melting furnace. I
fired it up and blasted the pipe fitting for quite sometime. The brazing
rod was getting soft and would melt, but in globs and would not stick to
the pipe fittings.

Any tips, comments, suggestions?

This is all the equipment I have, no O/A torch kit, don't know nobody
who has one and don't want to pay someone to do this for me. I want to
learn how to do it.

All surfaces to be brazed need to be ground or sanded to bare metal.
Must be clean! No oil or scale. Also flux must be used. Mix a little
powdered flux in water to a thick paste and apply with a small brush
where you want your brazing metal to adhere. Thirdly, I don't think
your torch is hot enough. I always oxy-acetylene for brazing, never had
luck with propane.

Gary Brady
Austin, TX