Help with copper I am new!!!

tankerhoosen - Monday, September 28, 2009 - 11:57am

So I am BRAND NEW to metal smithing, as in just yesterday I pulled out my fathers anvil, got a good hot fire going and played around with some old scrap copper pipe. I was wondering, how do you get copper to fuse to itself when you fold it over? I know with iron they would sprinkle something like borax, but what about copper? (I realize my fire was probably no where near hot enough) Just looking for some advice, I had a blast playing around with it, made a neat cuff thats about 2 inches wide and heavy as hell lol. Bit too wide though. Thanks for any input!

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Welcome

warren - Monday, September 28, 2009 - 6:20pm

Good that you got a fire goinig but really can not use that much for copper except to anneal. Sorry but copper will not weld itself together in a forge like steel.

www Metalrecipes -- heat and beat to the desired shape, repeat as necessary.
warren

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Cool thanks, thats what I

visitor - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 9:55pm

Cool thanks, thats what I was looking for, I ordered some copper stock online, figure I can work that to what I want better than old scrap pipe.

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Also since copper is very

visitor - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 9:58pm

Also since copper is very soft, do I need to worry about fire temps? I dont have the resources at the moment to buy torches or a real forge, experimenting for now :)

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Yep, you need to be careful

Rich Waugh - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 3:34pm

Yep, you need to be careful about how hot you get the copper. You can easily melt it in any forge if you are not paying close attention. Once you see it glowing red hot, do not heat it further. It will turn to liquid at about a medium orange heat.

You can forge copper hot, and it moves like butter, compared to steel. You can forge it right down to room temperature, but be sensitive to how hard it is getting - if you overwork it at room temp you will work harden it to the point it cracks. Every time you re-heat it, it will anneal it and it will be soft again, so you want to try to finish up your hammering with it cold so it work hardens for durability in use.

I suggest you take a small piece of the stock you plan to use and forge it until it cracks so you learn how hard it is when that happens, and then take the cracked piece and heat it until it melts so you see where than happens. Armed with this experience you can make your pieces with less danger of disaster.

Rich

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Thanks Rich! At the moment

tankerhoosen - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 10:48pm

Thanks Rich! At the moment my forge is just a wood fire basically. :)

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forge welding copper

bigfootnampa - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 10:07am

I have not done this but I have read reliable reports that it is easy to do (compared with forge welding steel). I HAVE fusion welded copper with my torch though it is much more difficult than silver (especially fine silver). Copper will oxidize quickly so some sort of flux is called for.. otherwise you are likely to have so much oxide on the surfaces that there will be little chance for fusion. Copper and silver will fuse rather easily as they form a softer alloy at the joins... sort of an automatic solder. This effect is exploited by granulation artists.

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