TIG Welding with TOOL STEEL filler?!

before we even get started it's really good to see you i like what you did with your hair i realize i may have sounded a bit frantic when i called but so glad you were able to make some time what i have in this little box for those of you who may have never heard of it is just going to blow your mind i've been playing with it for about a week now this stuff i mean and mind blown i know some of you may be upset right now you had to get up off your couch rushed over in your pajamas and for what some tig welding filler rod but hear me out granted this might look like your run-of-the-mill 330 seconds rod just like the regular stuff but this my friends has a trick up its sleeve and let me just get rid of this stuff pronto before i get it all mixed up this video is going to be about putting this rod to work we'll see well probably stupid examples of what it can do but to criminally oversimplify things this is basically tool steel let me say that again with my hands out of the way so i have room for text tool steel out of the box it's tender well it's a little harder than regular er 70 stuff but it's soft once you weld with it get some good heat in it it hardens to around 55-ish rockwell that is very hard tool steel hard it's very similar i guess to hard facing rods if you know what those are but hard facing is just a little different i think it's formulated more for like abrasion resistance than hardness let's say since we're both already here let's clear one or two things up before we get into screwing around this is mild steel quarter inch thick six millimeter flat bar nothing fancy and it cannot be hardened if you try it'll just get hot cool down and be exactly the same now although you might feel differently if you've ever tried to hacksaw through it mild steel is not really very hard in fact it's so soft it doesn't even make it onto the rockwell c scale if you try to do a hardness test the probe i don't know would probably just push right through it without even registering a number so not very hard in the context of tool steels in terms of strength mild steel has a yield strength of about 36 000 psi if you put anything over 36 000 pounds per square inch on it it'll bend and not come back so why the heck am i even going on about strength well you often hear that welds are stronger than the base metal you hear words thrown around like harder tougher stronger etc and although everybody except that one guy gets what you mean regular welds are not harder they are stronger if you did it right but technically they aren't harder your usual er 70 rod the stuff you use day in and day out 70 000 psi versus 36 ish but it's just as soft i went to all the trouble to say that because i was just going to compare a tool steel edge built up with this welding rod to a mild steel edge but maybe we'll compare it to a regular welded edge with this er 70 stuff so no one calls me out on it if this stuff is as cool as they say it is let's build up a tool steel edge sharpen it and see if we can cold chisel some steel for comparison i'm gonna make a second one with the er-70s rod as far as i know nothing particularly fancy about welding with these things dc tig 100 argon i've got it set to about 125 amps foot controllers attached i'll probably start off there 125 120 and then just sort of salt to taste i want the weld material to stick but i'm not really trying to drive it in there trying to build up an edge and there it is that's the tool steel and this is hometown classic not my best work but it's not like i'm putting this out in front of a million people you're looking at three beads on the mild steel and four i think on the tool steel four and a half depending how hard you sink the bead you'll get base metal and filler dissolving into each other so i put an extra bead on top so we know we have pure unadulterated tool steel or whatever it is they put in that stuff i am a little worried that i may have overcooked this weld a bit subsequent passes making it hotter and hotter i've never been very good at waiting for welds to dry hopefully i didn't destroy its magic properties by the way if you're curious read up on inter-pass temperature let's take these over to the i can already tell a miracle has happened the tool steel one as you expect is harder to grind and look at the difference between the sparks on the tool steel and that of the mild steel i think case closed but we'll see how these things work i don't remember which one is which anymore but there should be an easy way to find out [Music] well here's hoping that was the mild steel one or this old tony's got some egg on his face [Music] all right not so much as a dent okay maybe a tiny dent that's probably because i made this way too sharp for a cold chisel but man that is amazing pretty nice for the record this is eighth inch mild steel three millimeters all right so it's too sharp for a cold chisel not sharp enough for a wood chisel now i'll be honest i've mortised some hinges with much worse not usually the type to be prone to whimsy but it might just be safe to say i'm quite thoroughly stoked let's talk about this some more but first [Music] so fudge took the ear clean off that clamp pardon me just one moment but i have an axe to grind [Music] it's a little too light but holy smokes is this thing sharp if you can tell this stick is green it's tool steel all right so the edge did chip a little bit and granted these aren't the hardest nails in the world but still this is my manual bender a hospital clone built this myself gets a ton of use the frame has been heat treated most of the pins are pre-hardened stock but one of the accessories i use the most and you know what you call this little bending dog of some kind is not this is just mild steel i think i can't swing this all the way around because of the tripod but you get the idea over the years i've repeatedly built up the edge the forces on this are high and it just gets deformed this should have been or this should be a piece of hardened tooling this video has been a mishmash of me trying to just figure this stuff out but i've made a little list let's talk about some important stuff this is called weld mold 958 this isn't an ad or an endorsement for weld mold just telling you the facts buy it if you want don't buy it if you don't check with your local wealth supplier maybe they have the same stuff from somebody else i'm just trying to share the cool stuff i come across second don't chew with your mouth open third and this is important if you decide to play with this stuff be smart this could be dangerous for example your lawnmower blade is soft metal for a reason don't go giving it a tool steel edge and turn it into a shrapnel grenade four it's expensive not inaccessible but 150 times more than old coat hanger wire and three or four times more than the regular tig filler five i think are we up to five what number are we although this stuff's been laying down great good tie-in like zero porosity sometimes when these filler materials have strange additives they can bubble or whatever if you don't have the process dead on but despite this stuff going down pretty smooth just messing around here in the garage be careful with shock loads on tool steels i mean that's just general life advice right there careful with shock loads on tool steels frankly i'm surprised the hardened edges haven't just peeled off the mild steel base metal according to the little sales blurb cut sheet this 958 is for dies and punches stuff like that i check their website and they have a hundred variants of this rod for molds tools shears forged parts stainless copper i mean there's a million of them make sure you talk to your guy frank whoever they are be sure you've got the right filler for the job that goes for anything welding of course but probably less margin for error on this fancy stuff anyway that's it for my list and i think all i've got for this video i'm going to go pack this away save it for those special occasions hope you like that thanks for watching

Channel: This Old Tony

Views: 627,577

Rating: 4.9784532 out of 5

Keywords: tig welding, hardfacing, hard facing, tool steel welding, weld mold, weld mold 958, cold chisel, cnc axe, cnc milling, maho

Id: qUzHFLV4IyQ

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/barry99705]

Love how he pulls full sized rods out of a six inch long tube.

[u/take-dap]

Basically a filler rod to weld on tool steel edge on every scrap piece of steel you have laying around. Very interesting stuff and loads of applications for home gamers and toolmakers.

You can find links on youtube comments for SMAW sticks to achieve the same without TIG. Haven't yet searched brand names or suppliers for this stuff, maybe someone here already knows. Preferably european suppliers, getting stuff mailed across the pond is pretty expensive.

E: Clarification