Soldering a Brass Grill
Alan Young
I am working on Art Deco Bookcase with a Brass Grill.
Here is the piece I am working on.
This week my wife and and I took the door frame and the brass pieces for the grill on a road trip from Michigan to see my Dad-Roland Young and his shop in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Dad just turned 89 a couple of weeks ago--Dad made a special jig to hold the pieces in place and he did all the Silver Soldering of this grill . We had a great time working together on this project.
Fabrication began with the main carcass framing including the door. Then I moved on to the brass grill for the upper portion of the door. I started by cutting 1/4 inch brass stock to slightly longer lengths.
Then I bent one piece around an 8" round piece of plywood. This began the arched section of the grill. It would later get bent around smaller radi.
At this point I took the door frame and the brass on a road trip to my Dad-Roland Young and his shop in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Here are pictures of the process-Including a band saw he modified with a pivoting fence to cut the strange angles need for the brass. He also made a special jig to hold the pieces in place for most of the Silver soldering.
Dad retrofit this small band saw with a pivoting fence so we could cut the various angles required for these brass pieces.
Here is a 45 degree cut for one of the outside pieces.
The first outside pieces were silver soldered on Dad's welding bench.
Then we moved to a special jig Dad designed and built to clamp and solder the main four outside grill sections to a rectangle form.
After soldering the main rectangle-we moved to the arch at the bottom of the grill. After bending the brass around a plywood form We found the perfect radius was the cast cap to CO2 tank for Dad 's mig welder. We bent the brass to this tighter radius. (No pictures) then placed the arch in the milling machine to mill the ends flat
We clamped the arch in the jig and Dad soldered it in place.
From there we cut, clamped and soldered the rest of the pieces one at a time
When we got to the point of soldering close joints on the arch-we clamped aluminum close to the joints to act as a heat sink so previous joints wouldn't possibly seperate.
The last two pieces were soldered with the grill clamped back on Dad's bench.
After Dad completed the soldering I filed and sanded the joints and created a form fitting molding to hold it in the main door frame.
We had a great time working together and I have a new design element to ponder for future projects.
