Hey all,

I'm contemplating a sculpture that will involve one component
fabricated from sheet Silicon Bronze... for those not in the know,
this particular bronze usually comes in 24" x 120", although I HEAR
that I can order it from time to time in a 4' wide dimension.

This piece may have a total dimension of 15' high by 5 or 6 feet wide
and I don't see doing it without seams. The trouble is, Silicon
Bronze distorts like nobody's business when under the torch (even
Pulse TIG). I'm afraid that even if I stitch weld it together using
1/4" length welds and let it cool between passes, it's STILL going to
warp.

If I DO make this in the size I want, I can go with 3/16 or 1/4 inch
material, if the total cost doesn't scare the client away.

Any suggestions on keeping this sculpture from twisting into a knot
when I weld it up?

Thanks,

James, Seattle

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In article , RainLover
wrote:

Hey all,

I'm contemplating a sculpture that will involve one component
fabricated from sheet Silicon Bronze... for those not in the know,
this particular bronze usually comes in 24" x 120", although I HEAR
that I can order it from time to time in a 4' wide dimension.




James
Silicon Bronze comes in 4'x8' sheets, just maybe not from Alaskan
Copper.

When I did the 4' x 4' x 34' tall bronze monolith in the house on Queen
Anne I used 12 sheets, 4' x 8', of 1/8" bronze.
The 12 sheets we used added up to almost exactly 2000 lbs of Silicon
Bronze.
Alaskan Copper said I COULDN"T have them.
Not "it will cost XXX much more, because we don't have them in stock",
just NO.

I ordered them from Atlas Metals in Denver for a lower price than
Alaskan was asking, and they had plenty in stock.

http://www.atlasmetal.com/

Atlas is the largest distributor of Revere Silicon Bronze in the US.
Alaskan Copper is number 2.
Revere is the only maker of 1/8" and thicker silicon bronze in the US.

Normally I praise Alaskan copper, but this once they really dropped the
ball.

This piece may have a total dimension of 15' high by 5 or 6 feet wide
and I don't see doing it without seams. The trouble is, Silicon
Bronze distorts like nobody's business when under the torch (even
Pulse TIG). I'm afraid that even if I stitch weld it together using
1/4" length welds and let it cool between passes, it's STILL going to
warp.

If I DO make this in the size I want, I can go with 3/16 or 1/4 inch
material, if the total cost doesn't scare the client away.

Any suggestions on keeping this sculpture from twisting into a knot
when I weld it up?

Thanks,

James, Seattle

email me direct and we can chat.
I can show you how to seam weld the stuff with no distortion.

The hardest problem we had was color matching panel to panel.

RainLover wrote:

Any suggestions on keeping this sculpture from twisting into a knot
when I weld it up?

I've seen a report recently of a company welding broken/worn bells. Huge
old bells from churches.
They have built an "oven" and heated it up in there for 24 hours (gas
flame), made a small opening, welded with O/A, closed the opening and
let it cool down slowly for several days.
Now to the "oven", the "hi-tech" part of the process: Go get some wire
mesh, build some kind of cylinder/dome/shape of it and wrap the whole
thing with rock wool. Looked uggly. But they did the job that way for
generations. And if a bell doesnt suffer*) and sounds like new ...


*) All this happened in Germany. You have to know that church bells
aren't just bells, but _church_ bells. There are specialy trained people
from the church that come with tuning forks, stopwatches, whatever and
test the bell all over.


HTH,
Nick
--
WDR Fernsehen:
"Ein Computer arbeitet so lange Befehle ab,
bis keine mehr vorhanden sind."
Muss ich die dann irgendwie nachfüllen?