Nice job, thanks! A few things that might be worth adding: I MIG welded my entire car and will never do it again. The huge amount of porosity and just plain missed gaps between tack welds made it a daunting task to prep the metal for body work. I've sworn to myself that my next car will be gas or TIG welded. Gene Winfield hammer welds a lot but is not scared to MIG something when he needs to. It just means you will be spending some quality time with the angle grinder and you have a lesser quality weld joint when you are done. On the contrary, I spoke with Faye Butler (who is more of a mad scientist when it comes to metal) and he recommends TIG only. He told me that gas and MIG are both "dirty" welds and will have impurities in the metal. Keep in mind that Faye literally thinks on a molecular level when working metal. So there you have it, opinions from two masters at either end of the metal-working spectrum.
I'm using ER70 S2-- my Dad hooked me up with a stash of the uncoated kind, but I've used the copper coated stuff as well. You just gotta keep the uncoated in a sealed container.
I made an adjustable "hook" of sorts out of scrap to hang my torch on when hammer welding, it works great, quicker than trying to lay it in a certain position and you don't have to worry about bumping the knobs or catching anything on fire either. Nice video, thanks!
Brings back memeries. When I was a wee lad I used to help my Dad with body work using the same process. I usually got to hold the dolly on the inside. If I was lucky I would even get to run and fetch him a fresh beer
Thanks everyone! I run about 5psi on both. When I light the torch, I try to get the outer flame as long as possible -- about 10 inches on my setup. The inner cone I try to get the least amount of "feather" at the tip as possible while still actually having that feather.
Hey, Most of the larger journeyman sized oxy/acc. regulators don't read very accuratly at low pressures. You may set them for 10 & 5 pounds but they may well be much higher. Some trial adjustment will be necessary to get a nice netural flame. What you don't want is a oxidizing flame (oxygen rich) as this makes for a brittle weld/join. A carborizing flame (acetylene rich) makes for a cool flame and a poor weld, as well. '' Life ain't no Disney movie "
When I've tried using a flatter crown dolly, a convex surface seems to want to pull down more... it's more of a struggle to keep it from doing that. I'm also working a pretty high-crown area in that video. I'd probably use a lower-crown in the middle of a door skin or something. With the higher crown dolly, it's easier to keep the hot area from pulling down. If you've ever used a torch to do some spot-shrinking you've probably used a very low-crown dolly or even a flat one. (Or at least one that closely matches the crown of the surface you're shrinking). So, to over-simplify big-time: low-crown dolly for shrinking; high-crown dolly for stretching. (Of course there's all kinds of exceptions, but hopefully I'm getting my point across?)
Really nice video!! I don't use gas welding as often as I'd like to and probably mig more then I'd like to. I'm actually going to attempt to gas weld a break in an aluminum hood within the next few days, as i don't have a tig welder. This video has me psyched to get out the torch again! Thanks!!
Makes sense....the larger contact area would draw more heat from the weld area = shrinkage. Thanks again.
Nice vedio, thank you Slide for taking the time to make it, hope it inspires some to try hammer welding. Remember every Classic body built in the 1920' and 1930's was gas and hammer welded.
Very cool Mike. Hat was a nice refresher for a whole lot of hammer welding I plan on doing very very soon. It was a real treat to watch Gene go at it. I thought he was going to smash my roof to bits!!! He can sure hit hard for an old timer!!
thanks for taking the time to make and post this. this is the same method i have been using while working on my '41, but there are some things i see in your video that will help improve how i am doing it.
Awesome, thanks for taking the time to make the video and share with some of us who would like to learn how to do this. Inspiring, I think I will give it a try.
Great video slide. Yes your right about gas welding Alum it is much harder to do. Because it does not glow It just gets shinner. I have done some But that was Many !!!! yrs past/ago. But anyway Great Vid.
Great video, I self tought myself many many years ago how to hammer weld, now that I have seen your video I know I have been doing it right. The only thing I used to do was cool it with water but that seems to leave the weld hard so I stopped doing that and let it cool on its own.
I think I mentioned earlier that seeing how hard Gene was hitting was what really made me start to "get it". I know my arm sure isn't used to doing that!
The Jalopy Journal
