all about welding

[Phil Waterman]

To produce a crack free weld in cast iron is an art. And is really all about pre-heating from my limited experience. The question is how much pre-heating and to what temperature.

Once watch and old timer weld up a Model A Fords head that had cracks in the water jacket from freezing. He cleaned it up, dumped 20-25 lbs of charcoal in the barbecue grill put the head on the grill and lit the charcoal. He let the whole thing sit their until the coals were all nice a hot then with the thing still on the grill he took a stick welder, with what I suppose were the correct rods for cast iron, and started to weld up all the cracks. As he weld a few new ones showed up and he welded those as well. Then he said just leave it on the grill until its cold. My brother had that Model A for about 20 years after that no leaks, people would ask about the funny looking welds on the head.

Cheers