The Armour Archive

WMA,

That is precisely why I take my SCA helms to a professional welder.
I have a small oxy/acetylene and a 110V wire welder; however I am no welder.

When designing for human interaction, the engineering rule of thumb is:

"The components shall be rated at five times the expected load"

Hal

Huh???

WMA?? Weapons of mass accuracy???

I think I missed something....

White Mountain Armoury? Adam I believe.

Pad

What happened?

You lost me , maybe, i made a refrence on another post wondering if you welded, recalling that you did not, or did not feel confident with your current setup, is this correct.
Regardless you have certainly found a way around it, i like you cut grills.
Welding is not needed, i do it because i have the ability and a nice mig.

AB

Oops.... this was to be on another thread, about SCA helm construction.

My bad.

Hal

You should get to the point where you can trust your welds. It will save a lot of time and money if you can do it yourself (and its not that hard). Also dont worry about a few tiny inclusions left in an o/a weld thats normal.

I've made up a welding theory that may be of any value.

I've done a several helmets now by MIG welding and did it by placing the halves close together, than tack them and than weld it up, but this doesn't seem the best way. Cause you weld on TOP of the butted halves, and therefore weaken them and also not penetrating the gap between the halves.

You also are risk making holes.

last time I had to cut open the last 10 cm of my sallet bowl at the back with angle grinder disk, cause I made a bit of a welding mess there.

I use Flexofit Thin Cut (1mm !) disks in the grinder so I had to close a straight 10 cm line with a 1- 1,5 mm gap.

I put a copper plate behind the gap (advice by a car repairman) to support the weld an started to fill up.

The weld came out perfect, cause the 1mm gap was filled all trough.

So next helmet, I will separate the 2 helmet halves with 1mm spacers and then make tack welds and make the closing weld...

Hi Duco,

That is the way it is done with ASME pressure vessels.
It insures 100% penetration. A spacer is placed between the beveled plates to be welded.

The copper back up bar is a good idea for the thin sheet we work with too.

Hal

_____________
Happy welding

copper bars are only needed for an unskilled welder. I agree it makes the job easier, but it also adds impurites to the weld. if you feel you need a copper bar, your temperature is tooo high

I was talking to Glendour about this just today. He does some pretty good welding, and he uses a bar on occasion. The copper added to the weld isn't enough to cause discoloration, or any weakness. Welding wire is often plated (a VERY thin layer) to prevent it from rusting on the spool.

He also tends to weld it twice (outside first, I think), and then come back from the inside, so that there is no doubt about the penetration.

One of my jobs was to supervise the construction of 20ga. stainless steel cabinets. A 2" X 2" copper bar was used as the 90 degree back up to fuse the thin panels together. The only filler rod was the start and end of the welds.

Sanding blocks matched the grain of the brushed stainless steel.

Looked really nice upon finishing. No visible weld seam.....

Thank God for good welders.

Hal

Lord Ogier wrote:Huh???

WMA?? Weapons of mass accuracy???

I think I missed something....

WMA= Western Marshal Arts, or live weapons fighting. It focuses on historical fighting manuals, but that is about as much of it as I know.

Sorry for the derail, thought that I would just answer that question.

Sorry, I'm a spelling Nazi sometimes. Martial, not Marshal.

NightDaemon wrote:Sorry, I'm a spelling Nazi sometimes. Martial, not Marshal.

But your comment looses it's value on the populous.

House of the Wolf wrote:

Lord Ogier wrote:Huh???

WMA?? Weapons of mass accuracy???

I think I missed something....

WMA= Western Marshal Arts, or live weapons fighting. It focuses on historical fighting manuals, but that is about as much of it as I know.

Sorry for the derail, thought that I would just answer that question.

In this instance, WMA would be White Mountain Armory.

The confusion caused by using acronyms

GKK

Halberds wrote:A 2" X 2" copper bar was used as the 90 degree back

If you can get it, carbon blocks are ideal for this same purpose. So is brass.

Rae

you do not need to leave a gap in the thin metals we use in armor a gap is for thicker metal if you learn to control your heat and use proper wire or rod you can get full pin with a butt weld i say this having had 15yrs as a professional welder welds donot normally break it is the base metal around the weld that breaks or fatuiges