Silicon Bronze Tig Brazing / Welding ft. Holohan's Hot Rod Shop

hey folks alemannic the hot rod hippie here coming to you from Houlihan's hot rod shop in Mooresville North Carolina today we're gonna be doing a little demonstration on TIG welding here we're gonna do silicon bronze welding dan Houlihan's gonna demonstrate that for us and show us how he uses it when he built high-end custom cars so let's check it out [Music] you're my workshops that I have once a month here at my shop we concentrated on TIG welding and some mild fabrication a lot of questions I get at the workshop and car building itself through guys that have come to the open house or just stopped in for a visit they look at my welds and they wonder what the shiny bronze looking color weld is a lot of guys think it's brazing the novice not really introduced to this type of welding its silica bronze fill rot sure I've been using this stuff for years growing up through my dad HVAC shop all the way through working the rad rides the Detroit speed to now to my own shop it's strictly lap welds only inside corner welds it's low lower heat easier to grind it's rust friendly it's great for filling little pinholes little rust pinholes and like in window beds or whatever it's a little unique welding with it it's different than steel rod it's a combination of steel rod and maybe aluminum mixed together it's kind of what I call mushy it's a mushy type feel don't do a lot of metal finishing on it it's not for butt welding just for example if you but welder the seam and metal finish that seen what the silicon bronze that seems gonna break does have some tensile strength to it but not like steel rod it's just a good overall general type rod that I use for left well name like especially on unibody cars you're relying on a 50 year old spot weld versus about well so it's always good I use it for a lot of lap joints and again it's it's a real easy friendly rod but a lot of guys really don't know what it is so I use it I use it here in my workshops this is an inside this is a mock up inside corner weld I made these two pieces and I just turned a little flange here and tacked it on the backside now I can if I wanted to I can go back and tack that inside weld depending on the application see the silica bronze or I can tackle with steel rod too and the silica bronze will floor over that [Music] this gives you a good example of the heat zone on each side of the weld because it doesn't choir doesn't require as much heat I think I'm running about 45 amps on this and this is 18 gauge but you can see the heat zone on each side if that was steeled I think the heat zone would would increase on each side of that weld and you can kind of tell if you're set at the right amperage just by how the TIG rod flows in as you're welding and the color of the weld when you're done if it's essentially the same color as your silica Bronzeville rod you're you're doing a good job otherwise if it starts turning gray or kind of crusty looking or a greyish blackish looking color you're way too hot and you can always tell that to by your heat zone we got a lot of heat in it that heat zones going to increase on each side typically the unibody cars will have factory spot welds through this area here again they're 50 year old plus spot welds that you're relying on not breaking at some point if you ever get a chance to use the silica bronze on a joint it strengthens that weld I call it tightening up the car and it gets well it gets rid of any seam sealer you may need for that time again that's a good that's a good amp setting because of the color of the weld that's a good indicator and you know the heat zone I actually could have probably picked up the pace a little bit on this one because the heat zone is a little wider but that's I think that's the nature of the beast of the scene now when you're welding a lot of lap joint type welds on these unibody cars you need to scrape out that seam sealer as much as you can because if you don't you're gonna play hell and I do it all the time and it seems to me like even if you think you got it all out I compared it to soldering copper pipe that you think you got all the water out of it is out of it and as soon as you strike the arc it seems like that seam sealer what's ever left under that joint will come to the edge and blow out your weld and that in that scenario you just got to deal with it you got a well that sometimes you got to weld it my welds on a joint like that or they look like they're garbage but they're not so I'll weld it and I'll grind it down a little bit and knock out a lot of the impurities and wire brush it and I'll wash over it again and opinion on where the welds at you really nothing you don't necessarily need to metal finish it or grind it on a well that's that's you know pretty clean weld like that depending on where it's at by time you primer it epoxy primer and go over with primer it's it fills in and it's nice a lot of these seem welds that I do are on Camaros or where the firewall laps underneath the call now weld them seems I'll tack it really good then I weld them seams with silica bronze and then I'll grind them down yeah it's gonna take a little finger swipe a body filler to get that nice consistent seam but what a neat what what it does is it eliminates the seam sealer strengthens the weld and eliminates that seam sealer which is the best thing especially when you're going with a nice finish inside engine bay satin finish color I gotta be really light on the touch with the grinder need a fresh disc I use the 3m 50 grit disc best disc out there for the money you grind in the well you concentrate on the weld but once you if you start seeing sparks that you're into the base material so the silica bronze is essentially acting like a guide coat so once you see sparks then you're kind of you're getting to the point where actually grinding too much of the weld away with the silica bronze is so nice that you could actually dry most of the world with these brown scotch brite roll lock discs [Music] but that just kind of gives you an idea what the Finnish granny would look like again this is a perfect case scenario shear break bench weld rind you're not upside down and everything else trying to grind that stuff it was brought to my attention through my son to actually think about offering workshops I kind of struck a nerve with me and that was a few years ago and ever since then I've been doing some planning and I actually law last year in January of 18 I launched my my workshop weekend workshop program it's once a month here at the shop I'd say it's a beginner introduction to TIG welding and to some what I consider mild custom fabrication it's geared towards the guy or a girl that's interested in TIG welding and fabricating maybe think about this is what he wants he or she wants to do or for a guy that's building this car in his garage and he's got a MIG welder and he's used to MIG welding but he's thinking about TIG welding because he sees it on TV or he sees it on social media but he wants to try it but he doesn't wanna make the investment in the machine well you can come here and and then spend a day with me and a few other guys and get your hands on that's the only way you're going to get a little bit of experience you know through the day it leads into fabrication metal finishing and so on now we will start in a nineteen I will advance my workshops into a right now it's a one-day workshop I think eventually probably towards the spring it's going to be a two-day workshop the first day will be beginner and for the traveler that comes in to the workshop for Saturday he can stay a Sunday you can stay Sunday as well and going right into either alternate welding instruction for aluminum or stainless or an intermediate type fabrication experience which is a little bit more advanced from the day before thank you to Dan Houlihan for having us here and demonstrating silicon bronze welding to us today it's technique that I was familiar with but personally I don't really integrate into my workflow I think I'm gonna be giving it a try in the future here on some upcoming projects do you think this is something might be interested in learning or checking out you can find links in the description below to Dan's website you could come here and take a workshop class with him and learn hands-on doing actually trying things out for yourself if you're not familiar with TIG welding like he mentioned before this could be a great way for you to come and try it out before you invest in a machine that's gonna cost you a bunch of money and find out maybe it's not for you I really recommend it it's what I use on almost everything so maybe it's something you want to check out go ahead and check out that link in the description down below drop a video a like if you found it interesting let me know in the comments down below what do you think is video what do you think of this demonstration the shop stuff maybe you are interested in taking class let me know what you're thinking in the comments down below subscribe to the channel for more content like this every week thanks for coming around folks [Music] you [Music]

Channel: HotRodHippie

Views: 35,856

Rating: 4.956923 out of 5

Keywords: tig brazing, tig welding, silicon bronze, silicon bronze tig welding, tig welding tips, welding, brazing, sheet metal, torch, gtaw welding, gtaw, tig, metal shaping tricks, metal shaping, custom cars, custom car building, car repair, rust repair, auto restoration, car restoration, track car, drag racing, autocross, road racing, race car, seam welding, butt welding, lap weld, spot welding, spot welder, camaro, firebird, mustang, unibody car, how to, diy, holohan's hot rod shop

Id: EYst1fkmPGs

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 29 2018