TIG welding bronze vs MIG or oxy-acet. brazing

[Coop]

A little background: I am a life long professional metal worker from steel erection to aircraft structures welding, hand and machine forging and all points in between. I just accepted a new position in and art/sculpture foundry, casting in bronze, lost wax and some sand casting.

They primarily TIG weld for repair and construction of larger pieces. I'm comfortable with the TIG but am curious if it is the best process for the task. I'm also looking for everyones tricks/secrets (smile).

Coop

[iron ant]

hey what is the scale of your castings.Mig will not penetrate like a tig,but it would be good for voids and holes.I never mig welded that much bronze,but using the right rods for tiging is the key for color match,as you probally know.Hey I hope you get some tips,but experimenting always seems like a good start to me.

[JAZ]

I don't have a TIG, but have used one and it seems to me that if you have one, that would be the thing for bronze. I've just completed my first fabricated silicon bronze piece and the MIG I used was fine, but life would be simpler with less MIG spatter. I also found that there seemed to be more discrepancy or irregularity in the way bronze welds than you get with mild steel. But who cares? Bronze is just such a beautiful medium. I wish I could afford to just switch to bronze altogether.
JAZ

[oddist]

Coop,

I may be coming out of left field on this but I did a little research and all I could find seems to lead to the same conclusion..and since you have a good welding background I'm sure you will get the drift of the benefits TIG welding has for sculpture bronzes from this article (http://www.millerwelds.com/education/tech_articles/articles51.php) from Millerweld.

Small bead, precision welding, no spatter, no cracking, low heat distortion...

The integrety of the final surface of a sculpture, whether smooth or textured, is important to the sculptor and of course the least amount of rework to reach the appearance of the master model would be desierable.

Good luck in your new endeavors...

[Coop]

Thanks you all for your info, it's all helpful. We have a couple life size human sculptures we're working on the molds are starting to degrade. That leaves us with some larger than normal gaps to fill. In the past on other metals, skip welding with the MIG has been more efficient. I'm going to give the TIG a try on the bronze and see what my results are. Heat builds up which ever welding process you use, skip welding techniques are a must.

Thanks again!

Coop