Salvaged bronze casting

[ghart3]

Bronze smoke stack casting for a Coles American La France fire engine had this big gas pocket flaw.

Milled out a pocket that got rid of most of it and used small burr and cleaned the deeper pockets.

Made a plug from some bearing bronze that looked like a color match. Tried for a good fit at top mating surface and loose fit below for more room for the silver solder.

Stacked some fire bricks and some ceramic fiber for a roof. Used a home made propane torch to preheat and then a oxy-acetylene torch for doing the silver brazing.

Plug silver soldered (brazed) in.

Put in lathe and re-machined radius. Looks like it might be OK.

 

[Twmaster]

Nice work. Heck of a hunk of metal there.

 

[steamer]

Good save!.....you put some work into that part.

Dave

 

[Deanofid]

Man, that's quite a runner in that casting. Nice repair job!

Dean

 

[JMI]

Very nice - a good save.

Jim

 

[4156df]

Gary,
That's a very professional repair job. I'd like to see more of the engine it goes on. Is this something your building?
Regards,
Dennis

 

[ghart3]

Thanks for kind works. Am feeling lucky that this repair might work. It has been bugging me for a long time.

The air dome casting, light bulb shaped air chamber was full of gas holes. Trying to turn the defects out of that was a failure when flaws from inside the chamber met the flaws from the outside. Ended up making new air dome by doing in two parts and silver soldering the two halves together. It is brass colored instead of bronze but can live with that. Had fears the smoke stack would be same problem of chasing flaws but think lucked out. Polishing will tell the story.

Dennis this is a model of an American La France horse drawn fire steamer. I started this over 10 years ago but quit years ago when it came to the boiler. GWR's offer of advice on this board is giving me confidence to get going again on this.

After retiring from the local fire dept., I finished a 1/6 scale model of a 1854 Hunneman hand pumper. The original full size hand pumper is at the fire dept. My son now works for the fire dept and I would feel good to have these two models done so he could have them some day.

 

[rake60]

Beautiful recovery Gary.
I have seen many bad bronze castings structurally repaired by brazing brass into
the effected areas. It works but the cosmetic effect is less then desirable.
Your "dutchmen" patch approach was a perfect choice!

Very nicely done! :bow:

Rick