Brazing removal?

[chris vickery]

Being that it is applied to sheet metal, removing it without warping things is difficult. Personally if you can grind away with a sanding disc to reveal the hole, I would just drill out the remainder. Otherwise you can try to reheat the area and hope the brazing material will drop out of the hole.
Back in the day it was the best way to weld up sheet metal over Stick welding and was simple enough Bubba could do it at home with nothing more than a set of torches.
It is effective for items like casting etc that need to be rebuilt.

[rob love]

Chris: Yes, bubba could do it, but at the same time buba always made an irreversible mess. He was, after all, using braze because he couldn't control the heat when he welded.

Personally, I have always preferred steel for steel. If you are decent at the torches, and use the right tip with the right heat, you can usually make it work. If you have access to a MIG, even one of those Canadian tire ones that use common house voltage, you can take all your brazing rods and toss them in the garbage where they belong.

[Jordan Baker]

So if I were to use a torch, would that work for simply hearing it up until it melted out? I've never brazed before so I'm not sure how it all works.

[rob love]

Likely not. Brazing it kind of like properly tinned solder....it leeches into the metal. You will get rid of about 80% or more of it by reasonable heating, but you won't get it all. When you try to weld over it with steel, either by gas or by mig, it will spit like water in boiling cooking oil.

Did I mention I hate brazing?

[Lynn Eades]

Jordan don't be blinded completely by Rob.
I have come across a number of bad and failed brazing repairs over the years, so I know exactly where he is coming from.
Brazing was a regular method of repair a few years back, used in many different ways on many and varied materials.
I'm not skilled in this area but here are a few uses that might be of interest.
"Silfos" for welding copper.
Various types of "Easy flow" for sweating components together with next to no extra material showing used to join copper to brass, steel to brass etc. used in refridgeration(high silver to prevent vibration cracking) lower silver content (cheaper) in plumbing use.
Wear brazing. We used to use it all the time for repairing cracked and chaffed hydraulic pipes.(not what it was made for)
The ordinary type of brazing Rob refers to covers the whole spectrum of materials. Results can be very good, but where for instance a crack in cast iron is brazed, the results might not be so good.
The success of this type of repair is often hit or miss and I tend to run with Rob in this area. It usually requires a skilled welder along with some good knowledge of just what the cast is.
(many types and problems)
I think brazing has faded from use because;
We are a more throw away society.
Because alternative welding methods have evolved.
The cost of labour has tended to do away with "we'll try and fix it first"

[cletrac (RIP)]

If you get the brass molten then use a hand wire brush to wipe it away you'll get rid of most of it.

[rob love]

Lynn

I will bow to your points about it having it's uses. But where it does not belong is on huge door and fender patches, or trying to join two halves of a cast hand-crank together. These are the kinds of jack-ass repairs I have had to deal with over the years. I never could figure out how these baboons managed to get the torches to light, besides not burn down the shop.