Reflecting on a few other metals
Good chefs know food, good carpenters know wood, and any good welder really knows metal. I know that sounds painfully obvious, but I’m sometimes surprised to learn that many seasoned welders aren’t all that familiar with the metals they work with on a daily basis. I think having a nice, rounded understanding of the metals you weld is important, and that’s what this chapter is all about.
If I had to pick three metals that most new welders want to begin working on as soon as possible, I’d have to go with steel, stainless steel, and aluminum. If you can familiarize yourself with those three metals and understand their characteristics as they pertain to the various types of welding, you’re well on your way to figuring out how to work with three of the most common, versatile metals out there. With that in mind, I start this chapter by devoting individual sections to each of those three metals. After that, I close the chapter with a quick look at some of the other metals that you may want to consider welding, just to clue you in on some basics and give you a feel for what’s possible beyond the old standbys.
Steeling Yourself for Using Steel
Steel is an extremely common metal. It’s all around you – chances are, you’re probably not more than a few feet away from something made of steel. For that reason alone, it’s a very important metal for welding.
Steel is an alloy that’s made up primarily of iron, along with less than 2 percent of another material. That material is usually carbon, and the amount of carbon present in the steel is an important feature. Here’s a quick look at the three different levels of carbon steel:
❯❯ Low carbon or mild steel has less than .2 percent carbon. This category of steel is extremely easy to work with; you can cut and form low carbon or mild steel a lot easier than many other metals. Lots of objects, including screws, bolts, nuts, and washers, for starters, are made of low carbon steel. Sheets of low carbon or mild steel are often used to make automobile bodies and other familiar products.
❯❯ Medium carbon steel has .25 percent to .55 percent carbon, and it’s more difficult to work with and form than low carbon steel. You can find medium carbon steel in some of the same products made of low carbon steel, but the medium carbon versions are stronger. Machine parts (gears, axles, levers, and so on) are also often made out of medium carbon steel because of its strength and durability.
❯❯ High carbon steel is the really tough stuff. More precisely, it contains between .55 percent and 2 percent carbon. It’s the hardest and strongest type of steel, but it can be a real pain to cut and form. Manufacturers use high carbon steel to make things like cutting tools, files, and hammers because those items need to be strong enough to keep their shapes and integrity through years of heavy abuse.
Steel is manufactured in many different forms, and each form has its own use for welding projects. Here are a few of the more common forms that you’re likely to run into as you weld:
❯❯ Flat steel is exactly what it sounds like – a flat piece of steel. It’s also called sheet steel. It comes in a range of thicknesses and sizes, but when it’s larger than 12 inches wide, it’s called plate steel.
❯❯ Steel bars are made in an array of shapes, but the most common are round, square, or flat. You can see some examples of steel bar shapes in Figure 2-1.
FIGURE 2-1: Square (a), flat (b), and round (c) steel bar shapes.
❯❯ Rolled steel comes in two forms.
● Hot rolled steel is made to its finished size while the steel is still red hot. Iron oxide forms on the hot steel after it’s rolled. It’s a grayish-black coating that helps protect the steel from rusting. Hot rolled steel is used for piping, tubing, tanks, and other products.
● Cold rolled steel is made by rolling the steel to its finished size after it’s cooled to room temperature. It doesn’t get the iron oxide that hot rolled steel gets, so cold rolled steel is smooth and bright looking. It’s used for making things like nails and screws.
Steel is such a ubiquitous metal that it’s hard to imagine life without it. It has become an important part of everyone’s life, and the ways you live, play, and travel certainly wouldn’t be the same if steel was no longer available.
You can use steel for a wide variety of welding projects; it’s cheap, readily available, and pretty easy to weld. If you’re looking to weld objects such as farm equipment, tools, cars, automotive equipment, specialty containers (drums, pipes, and boilers), or even bridges and parts of buildings, you should strongly consider steel as your metal of choice.
When is steel not appropriate for welding? Well, if you’re working on or repairing a piece of metal that’s definitely not made of steel, such as repairing an aluminum piece on a boat, using steel won’t work for that project.
If you’re starting a new welding project from scratch and really need to end up with a lightweight product, steer away from steel. Steel is durable and cheap, but it’s also pretty heavy compared to many other metals. Steel also doesn’t work if you’re welding something to be used for any sort of food service application; food almost always involves water of some sort, and water rusts steel, creating an unsanitary environment. For the same reasons, using steel for anything in a medical setting is also a bad idea.
It’s a little hard to believe how many different kinds of metals are out there. Metals run the gamut from tungsten, which is one of the hardest materials on Earth, to mercury, which is a liquid at room temperature. Here are a few of the physical properties of metals that combine in different ways to make metals unique.
● Strength: How much external force the metal can take without breaking.
● Ductility: The ability to change shape without breaking.
● Magnetism: Some metals (like steel) are magnetic; others (like aluminum) aren’t.
● Hardness: The resistance of a metal to being damaged when another metal is applied to it.
● Resistance to oxidization: When metals combine with oxygen, they become oxidized. That’s what causes steel to rust, for example. Some metals – tungsten, for instance – are very resistant to oxidization.
● Electrical conductivity: Some metals conduct electricity much more efficiently than others. For example, silver is an incredible conductor of electricity, but stainless steel doesn’t conduct
