@@willlatham7878 Well, I didn't say automatic or assisted... :Ρ Under 3 inches any manual folder is legal to carry and I don't think there is a restriction for home ownership.
Funny story you reminded me of: For many years I emptied hoarder homes and true story I happened to build a 100 pound sledgehammer that resembled a Thor's hammer toy my kid has-completely accidentally. So the story goes I drove the big truck and we threw away 5-10 tons every day of contents of homes, farms, barns, and businesses that had been foreclosed (seized) but had left large amounts of contents the banks had to have removed. We took everything, and a lot of it was collections of all manner of things and about 10% of everything ended up being scrap metal. We dumped a lot of trash in landfills, metal in scrapyards, and kept a lot too. This required us to break everything we could to fit the massive loads in my box truck. Well one of these houses (actually many) had this amateur fabrication shop and in the dusty forgotten corner of one I found a 12" x12" x 20" cube of steel with beveled edges and a hole in the center across the width. Obviously I kept it, but I rocked it in the back corner of the truck where I stored steel over 3" thick that I kept for me personally. One day I found a solid steel bar about 5ft long that was the exact diameter of the hole in said giant block of steel; and I instantly knew what had to be done. I stood on the truck and the guys helped me on the ground by holding the bar in position and we bashed the tight fitting solid pipe and block with our biggest sledge into a seamless non welded "world's largest sledgehammer" as we christened it. It was so heavy that over the years as we burned through over 100 guys on my crews, only 1 guy could swing it. His name was Josh, and he was built like the green hulk and was a round faced country boy with a literal chip on his shoulder, he was the most powerful physical human being I've ever encountered. The strength and other "competitions" we came up with on the job were always fun-especially in that time and particular type of work where demolition and destruction was a daily requirement-but this guy literally destroyed everyone at every single thing x 10 usually 😆. I still remember him swinging that 100lb sledge at dressers, chests, walls, floors, metal desks, even a car. Those were the times of my working life, but now I'm old. Thank you for joining me for a little while on memory lane.
@@Sualin Funny story: he was much younger than me and played a game called FInal Fantasy online 11.. and talked me into playing it-I subsequently went through a severe downward spiral of addiction to that game for 9 months. I actually quit playing online and all games basically because of it 😆
Probably just get deleted but I made a ton of videos back then and have them on my channel on a playlist called "Extreme Hoarder cleanup to music" or something like that... They unfortunately were made using my "hat cam" and ancient cellphone cameras 😆
Little bit of advice, learned through bitter experience and countless disasters, when you’re doing a big silver soldering job with multiple runs of solder use different grades of silver solder by grades I mean the percentage of silver in the solder sticks varies and with it the melting point. The lower the percentage of silver the higher the melting point the higher the percentage of silver the lower the melting point. So for a job like this start with a higher melting point with lower percentage of silver say 18 or 24% with a high melting point and work your way up the percentage of silver in steps with last one being the lowest melting point at 55% silver. The difference in melting point means it won’t disturb any existing joints. Use copious amounts of silver soldering flux like Easy flo or Tenacity 5 especially the latter for prolonged heatings as it has a much longer life than Easy Flo and keep periodically adding it to existing joints. Also ease off with the torch flame to a really soft or carburising flame (excessive fuel gas) its easier to control the amount of heat put into the work piece and direct the solder where you want it flow Love the channel content and the enthusiasm for your craft 👌👌👌
When "breaking" a silver solder joint that long, you don't, you heat it back up and pull it apart while under fire. I would've used some wire to twist around it to keep it from opening up, or some third hands to keep it from moving. You worked through the problem well though! I really suggest taking a jewelry class that focuses on copper and brass work if you keep working in those materials. They don't work at all like steel.
I would like to know how long he came to using the silver solder in a syringe. I know plenty of guys who felt stupid for doing years of work before thinking about it.
@@neithertwosturrr3016 I wonder what the melting point of his original solder was. We classify them as hard, medium, and soft to denote how easy they are to melt. He might've need a soft and been using a hard.
@@Kate_Fyria he was probably just using whatever he had laying around. I doubt he would be used to the difference being he mainly uses steel/aluminum. Also did you see how cranked that torch was?
something I learned in jewelry class was when making an assembly it is important to use different grades of silver solder for different steps in the process so that the later soldering steps don't need to get hot enough to melt the solder from the previous steps.
Something I never noticed but that hammer is named after the hammer Hrothgar uses in Eragon, and styled after it too, it's cool that the ES series took inspiration from current fantasy works and wanted to credit it. :)
@@xentionX are you able to direct me to a source? I don't see that being the case when I googled it the only reference to 1995 being that the elder scrolls wiki is that old
Looks amazing! Only thing I would have done differently (I mean, other than making it altogether, cause... you know... I'm no blacksmith) is that I would have filled the void in the head with an expanding foam or epoxy, something to deaden the hollow noise.
Alec, some things about soldering brass. First off, you appear to be using an oxy torch as heat source which is far to powerful for both the solder and the material you are using. A medium sized blow torch would be much better. Brass has a very high thermal conductivity ratio which is why everything was melting. Secondly, jewelers solder was the better choice as silver solder is really more designed for soldering copper to brass in plumbing and in small steam boilers. Great work though!
Agreed. Propane would have been a better choice. It only burns at 2000 C. Oxy acetylene burns at 3600 C. Much less aggressive for materials with lower melting points.
He may have also been more successful using a reducing flame I don't remember what the type oxycutting uses is called but it is hotter and he was also using a hotter section of the flame.
Hey Alec I have been watching you since, your first wooden, shed, workshop, back in England. I just want to say, that I appreciate you and what you do and go through to make this content for us :)
Awesome job fabbing something that cool that fast! Jesse is a long-time fave of mine and a right good egg in the game reviewing / gaming infosphere, I've been following his stuff from way back in the days of Co-Optional Podcast. He also does a daily(ish?) 5-minute gaming news segment nowadays. I'm sure he'll be absolutely thrilled to smash open the loot with that massive meat tenderizer you made!
Silver solder comes in different grades. High temp to low temp. You start with the high temp on the first joints making your way down the grades for following joins. Meaning subsequent heats wont unstick your first joints. Flux is also your friend when using silver solder rods, it allows solder to flow and helps prevent oxidation. Also also you're using too much heat, use a much smaller blow torch. 😀
What an absolutely beautiful piece. The petina looks perfect; just looking at it you'd honestly think it's a high grade plastic molded prop with how authentic it looks.
if you are solding brass. you must clean the area and use flux. and use little heat around the joint not on the joint. and you can use soap, by rubbing little of soap near the joint, and the heat the area when the soap mark turns black the brass it is ready for solding.
Soap like... a bar? dish soap? hand soap? shampoo? I would presume a bar, but best to make sure! I also wonder if it'd work on copper as well... Great tip though, thanks! 🍻
FYI Alec you can braze brass and bronze and even cast iron. Which is essentially what you're doing. Instead of using a TIG torch you use oxy acetylene or oxy propane. I'm a welder/fabricator for a living. Let me know if you have any questions.
Awesome video. As for the solder issue - as others have likely stated, there was just too much heat, both direct and residual. even after the solder had melted and spread out it was far too hot to freeze before the joints just gave way. Indirect heat and a small blow torch work best for it typically.
I’ve been dealing with soldering brass and copper and trying silver solder for about 4 months before I found out about silver solder in a syringe, it’s a life saver
Tig welding brass is signifigantly easier with more preflow and the right gas both are very important as the stuff is stupidly easy to contaminate by heating without enough shield gas. You can also heat too much and burn zinc out if your mix has any in it. Brass is quite a pesky material but fun to weld once you get the setup right. Bronze filler was absolutely the right option here. As for the jewelry silver solder it tends to let go all at once when you heat up the base metal enough to melt the entire edge when it's not clamped and brass having a lot of copper has a tendancy to spread heat like that. Try adding a large mass of heatsink metal between the flame and anywhere you dont want melting. I use a copper half inch plate or quarter inch plate when i need to do that.
Key to noticing this if there is any soot you didn't shield properly. If there is yellow dust you are burning zinc. Since your weld had black around it there had to be a shielding gas issue.
Jesse Cox.....now that is a blast from the past.....One of the very very first people i ever subscribed to on youtube. Must've been 10 years ago since I watched anything from him.
Man you are so amazing. The first part where you were soldering everything is just a masterpiece. The music fits perfectly with your editing style. Its been a pleasure watching your video!
you can pulse weld brass at a high frequency DC current but youll have to throttle the foot pedal to find the right amperage to get it to tack together once you get it goinng you gotta run along the seam. this will prevent the zinc from burning... or you can use silicon bronze rods to tig braze them
Next time you want to make something that looks like brass, a suggestion I have is maybe you can use thin steel and then use a brass wire wheel on a rotary tool to color it like brass. It's a technique I have seen on a few channels and it works great.
Hard, medium, and soft solder, Alex. Start with hard solder (melts at a higher temp), then flow medium, and finally soft, which melts at the lowest temp.
Jewelers have the same problem when soldering. The solution is to use different temp solder. Start with high temp solder and work your way down to low temp solder.
kinda sad the handle is so short but that is the game's design, not mine. it looks like you went through your monitor and took it straight out of the game!! Amazing work
Alec, NEVER cool metal after soldering using water. It cools to fast and can form a crack in the solder joint. For the same reason you allow copper pipes to air-cool and not using sth like wet cloath, cause you can have big leak if it is your main water supply. That could be a reason why your hammer had fallen apart in 4:00
I love how you successfully made a piece of steel and brass look like a foam cosplay prop with all the cartoony weathering. Super successful build, just ironic after personally spending tons of time trying to make foam props look like brass and steel.
I’m an amateur jeweler and I find it really helpful to hold things I’m trying to solder together with some steel wire. It hold its shape pretty well and doesn’t melt so for me it works very well
*A 50 pound hollow box? Somewhere out there, a bearded crazy person that answers to Micheal Cthulhu is likely bashing his head against a boulder and vomiting blood and cursing the gods between sips of tea.*
What I like about your channel is you could rest on your laurels and just keep making “The Perfect Knife” over and over, but you are instead constantly trying to expand your skill set and comfort zone. I admire that.
When silver soldering, warm up the whole thing to just below the melting point of the SS and use a localized torch with a small flame to actually solder.
I hope the connection between the handle and the head holds up. When I saw the holes in the top and bottom I assumed it would go all the way through, but like that the connection is going to have a ton of moment on it. Good luck.
Yeah, if a solder joint is done well, the joined material will break before the join will (even if it is annealed brass). You could have reheated/liquified the solder seam but given the time pressure, beanding/beating it into place was the best route. The pain of soldering large/thick bits of any metal is that they hold heat for so long that the heat from working on a "cold" section can travel to a completed section and loosen (or separate) the finished sections. A prof I worked under had a class use solder on steel "because it's the same principle as welding" (despite being told, no, no it is not) then wondered why the class was burning through solder (which the program supplied from material costs) to the point that he had to pump the students for more material costs to buy more solder. Those projects were more solder than steel at the end. As a Warhammer fantasy fan I'm surprised you didn't go with the iconic "Hammer of Sigmar" though admittedly, it's a bit plain. Awesome result nonetheless!
I think you need a much tighter flame and do smaller brazes, it's like welding with solder. It's not meant to take wide flames. Also the fact that you're not using the same material as the base means you're not getting a true fuse, just a soldered joint. Think of like soldering joints of copper, unless it's copper-based solder then when it heats up it will start moving.
Alec, next time you’re tig welding thin metal. Start on each end and end in the middle. Just so the heat that has built up the entire length of the joint is now vastly greater at the end than at the start. Hence the hole which is tricky to patch
Im a jeweler and for items that have multiple pieces that need soldering together we use different grade solders, like easy, med, hard all with slightly different melting points. You'd start with hard (highest melting temp) then work down never getting the peice as hot as the previous section. oooooorrrrrr can use clay to holder it together while doing them all at once (is fiddly to set up but less so than having pieces fall apart hahaha) hope this helps for next time.
Your content is so honest, funny and entertaining that I feel like an addict whenever you release a new video 😂 I see the video and it’s instant pleasure and comfort for at least 10 minutes and when it ends, I’m always like “WHY IS IT OVER YET?!”
I binge watched your channel when I discovered it and when there were no new videos left for me to watch, I’m left here feeling really happy every video you release 😂😂 thanks for the dedication and for the content!
For silver solder, you really need to use flux to help it run. Set up your joint, add some flux, slight preheat, and THEN add your solder. That should help things stick a bit better ^_^
@Corey Morse Yeah I noticed that but I wonder if it's a different type of flux from what I've used in the past. We used a white paste and a powder flux, dipping the silver solder into the powder before feeding it in
If you're going to veer into michaelcthulhu's turf, you might try his tricks when faced with large "brass" pieces. Heat a piece of steel and go at it with a brass wire brush (solid brass wire, not brass-plated steel)- the brass deposits on the steel. For thick pieces that have to take wear he uses lots of bright brazing filler rod in a cavity with undercut edges so it won't pop out.
It would be interesting to see you attemp a canister Damascus using the shavings from the brass collar for the handle. Possibly using shavings from copper?
5:36 Alec - Couldn't you have made a compacted sand mould like what is used for casting metals? Wouldn't that allow you to melt the solder without parts coming loose again?
You know I bet your hollow hammer idea is actually pretty accurate cause I would imagine the inside of the game is actually wood and the spike is just carved off from that meanwhile the whole wooden block is wrapped in that steel.
If Alex continues to experiment with brass, I think he needs to get some tips from Clickspring for design and a brass musical instrument maker like Roth trombones for soldering and bending. Roth Trombones is in the UK, so I know travel would be easier. :-) would love to see either of these too!!!!
Could you have used pottery clay to hold the shape together temporarily? It might crack but so long as it holds it should have worked? Maybe it's something that you could try for a future project.
You need a welding (brazing) torch that allows for a much smaller and more directed flame. Also solders that melt at different temps (this is how jewelers do it- starting with a higher melting point and working down as needed). Might be a good idea to clamp on some steel heat sinks between joints, or find some heat sink paste to do the same thing (if they still make that- I used it forty years ago). Cutting torch is definitely the wrong tool for this job.
As a plumber who regularly works with softer metal soldering. You're using to much heat. With the piece you're working on, targeted high heat instead of lots of blanket heat is the way to do it. The way you heated the brass to make it all cherry red gave it away.
Actually reminded me of a dwarven battle hammer. The look , style and was absolutely brilliant. The only thing missing was some runes etched on the head but hey bloody brilliant
That was awesome, I love seeing all the challenges you face working with different materials. With the world we live in being full of items of many different materials you don't appreciate just how hard it can be to work with some materials.
Wooow! That's a beast of a war hammer! Turned out epically beautiful as well. Great work from a great craftsman! I thoroughly enjoyed watching you work through all the challenges. Any gamer would love to display that in their game room!
After all the mechanical stuff you've made, I think a flip knife would be a great build.
*whispers* *seductively* "benchmade 42"
*whispers* *seductively* "benchmade 42"
Illegal in the UK!!!
@@willlatham7878 Well, I didn't say automatic or assisted... :Ρ Under 3 inches any manual folder is legal to carry and I don't think there is a restriction for home ownership.
Yesssss. A Swiss Army knife would be super cool too.
Funny story you reminded me of: For many years I emptied hoarder homes and true story I happened to build a 100 pound sledgehammer that resembled a Thor's hammer toy my kid has-completely accidentally. So the story goes I drove the big truck and we threw away 5-10 tons every day of contents of homes, farms, barns, and businesses that had been foreclosed (seized) but had left large amounts of contents the banks had to have removed. We took everything, and a lot of it was collections of all manner of things and about 10% of everything ended up being scrap metal. We dumped a lot of trash in landfills, metal in scrapyards, and kept a lot too. This required us to break everything we could to fit the massive loads in my box truck. Well one of these houses (actually many) had this amateur fabrication shop and in the dusty forgotten corner of one I found a 12" x12" x 20" cube of steel with beveled edges and a hole in the center across the width. Obviously I kept it, but I rocked it in the back corner of the truck where I stored steel over 3" thick that I kept for me personally. One day I found a solid steel bar about 5ft long that was the exact diameter of the hole in said giant block of steel; and I instantly knew what had to be done. I stood on the truck and the guys helped me on the ground by holding the bar in position and we bashed the tight fitting solid pipe and block with our biggest sledge into a seamless non welded "world's largest sledgehammer" as we christened it. It was so heavy that over the years as we burned through over 100 guys on my crews, only 1 guy could swing it. His name was Josh, and he was built like the green hulk and was a round faced country boy with a literal chip on his shoulder, he was the most powerful physical human being I've ever encountered. The strength and other "competitions" we came up with on the job were always fun-especially in that time and particular type of work where demolition and destruction was a daily requirement-but this guy literally destroyed everyone at every single thing x 10 usually 😆. I still remember him swinging that 100lb sledge at dressers, chests, walls, floors, metal desks, even a car. Those were the times of my working life, but now I'm old. Thank you for joining me for a little while on memory lane.
Thankyou for sharing dude, I actually really enjoyed that story. Sounds like a good time!
Josh was worthy
"Big Lad Josh" was a user i encountered while playing games with my friends, this sounds like the kind of guy i imagined.
@@Sualin Funny story: he was much younger than me and played a game called FInal Fantasy online 11.. and talked me into playing it-I subsequently went through a severe downward spiral of addiction to that game for 9 months. I actually quit playing online and all games basically because of it 😆
Probably just get deleted but I made a ton of videos back then and have them on my channel on a playlist called "Extreme Hoarder cleanup to music" or something like that... They unfortunately were made using my "hat cam" and ancient cellphone cameras 😆
Little bit of advice, learned through bitter experience and countless disasters, when you’re doing a big silver soldering job with multiple runs of solder use different grades of silver solder by grades I mean the percentage of silver in the solder sticks varies and with it the melting point. The lower the percentage of silver the higher the melting point the higher the percentage of silver the lower the melting point. So for a job like this start with a higher melting point with lower percentage of silver say 18 or 24% with a high melting point and work your way up the percentage of silver in steps with last one being the lowest melting point at 55% silver. The difference in melting point means it won’t disturb any existing joints. Use copious amounts of silver soldering flux like Easy flo or Tenacity 5 especially the latter for prolonged heatings as it has a much longer life than Easy Flo and keep periodically adding it to existing joints. Also ease off with the torch flame to a really soft or carburising flame (excessive fuel gas) its easier to control the amount of heat put into the work piece and direct the solder where you want it flow
Love the channel content and the enthusiasm for your craft 👌👌👌
I can honestly say Jesse Cox / Alec Steele is one crossover I never would have guessed
I know right I did not expect that at all it's awesome.
They really crossed the streams with this one.
Unexpected, but amazing!
I know right? I was subscribed to both both never expected this crossover
Is Jesse Cox putting out a video on this?
I really love the way you show You're errors and failures not just the perfect scenes
I like the light irony of the phrase "you're errors"
The grammar nazis are still here in 2022
@@gorpazorp7309 Grammar Nazi? Ah yes. I remember that famous line at the Nuremburg address, when Hitler said "I like those Jews."
@@MrJimmyWalsh hehe sorry if it's wrong but I won't change it cause of my statement and it's the autocorrects fault
@@BEAST-ot2tu hey there's nothing to apologize for. I was just saying I enjoy the irony :P
When "breaking" a silver solder joint that long, you don't, you heat it back up and pull it apart while under fire. I would've used some wire to twist around it to keep it from opening up, or some third hands to keep it from moving. You worked through the problem well though! I really suggest taking a jewelry class that focuses on copper and brass work if you keep working in those materials. They don't work at all like steel.
I would like to know how long he came to using the silver solder in a syringe. I know plenty of guys who felt stupid for doing years of work before thinking about it.
@@neithertwosturrr3016 I wonder what the melting point of his original solder was. We classify them as hard, medium, and soft to denote how easy they are to melt. He might've need a soft and been using a hard.
@@Kate_Fyria he was probably just using whatever he had laying around. I doubt he would be used to the difference being he mainly uses steel/aluminum. Also did you see how cranked that torch was?
@@neithertwosturrr3016 that’s what I saw. That was so much heat.
@@neithertwosturrr3016 yeah! Way too big and hot too solder with! No wonder he was melting it!
something I learned in jewelry class was when making an assembly it is important to use different grades of silver solder for different steps in the process so that the later soldering steps don't need to get hot enough to melt the solder from the previous steps.
I want to see Alec remake something he made years ago but with all the skills and knowledge he has now. Like the samurai or fall dagger.
My dream is to have Alec build the Volendrung from Skyrim. That would be sick and I bet nearly impossible!
Something I never noticed but that hammer is named after the hammer Hrothgar uses in Eragon, and styled after it too, it's cool that the ES series took inspiration from current fantasy works and wanted to credit it. :)
@@PapaBear_Gaming but its not named after the one in Eragon.. Volendrung dates back to 1995 and wheres Volund dates to 2002-2011
@@xentionX are you able to direct me to a source? I don't see that being the case when I googled it
the only reference to 1995 being that the elder scrolls wiki is that old
@@PapaBear_Gaming The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Release date: 1994.
So its even before 1995 :)
@@PapaBear_Gaming other way around, tes is. Let than eragon by a substantial margin
As a metalhead, i gotta say, the music you use is so badass, very fitting for when your beating things with a hammer lol
I agree. Fellow metal head. I just love how industrial and raw it fits. And then the clean vocals on top give it an ethereal feel.
@@richardmchale3097hell yeah
You're a scientist, mechanic, mathematician, teacher, and so much more. You're awesome. A real 🐐 of the industry.
Looks amazing! Only thing I would have done differently (I mean, other than making it altogether, cause... you know... I'm no blacksmith) is that I would have filled the void in the head with an expanding foam or epoxy, something to deaden the hollow noise.
That's amazing! Can we get a copy 😂
It might actually look fairly normal in proportion with you guys...
A weapon fit for giants
OMG FIRST ALEC STEELE AND JESSE COX AND NOW THE STOLTMANS ARE IN THE COMMENTS?!?
if anyone needs a hammer this size its defiantly you guys..... i'll take a little one though!
You guys would one hand that thing LOL. Can someone say dual wield!?
I suggest cleaning steel before welding. And using pusle mode for welding. Less mess and easy grinding
Alec, some things about soldering brass. First off, you appear to be using an oxy torch as heat source which is far to powerful for both the solder and the material you are using. A medium sized blow torch would be much better. Brass has a very high thermal conductivity ratio which is why everything was melting. Secondly, jewelers solder was the better choice as silver solder is really more designed for soldering copper to brass in plumbing and in small steam boilers. Great work though!
I’m pretty sure he only has a propane/oxy torch in his UK shop
Agreed. Propane would have been a better choice. It only burns at 2000 C. Oxy acetylene burns at 3600 C. Much less aggressive for materials with lower melting points.
I feel like the 1week making time was the limit for all the improvement Alec could have made
@@terdfergeson23 Nope 07:00
He may have also been more successful using a reducing flame I don't remember what the type oxycutting uses is called but it is hotter and he was also using a hotter section of the flame.
Always good that the description still ends with "Alec Steele Blacksmith 2019". Never lets me down
Hey Alec
I have been watching you since, your first wooden, shed, workshop, back in England.
I just want to say, that I appreciate you and what you do and go through to make this content for us :)
Awesome job fabbing something that cool that fast! Jesse is a long-time fave of mine and a right good egg in the game reviewing / gaming infosphere, I've been following his stuff from way back in the days of Co-Optional Podcast. He also does a daily(ish?) 5-minute gaming news segment nowadays.
I'm sure he'll be absolutely thrilled to smash open the loot with that massive meat tenderizer you made!
Silver solder comes in different grades. High temp to low temp. You start with the high temp on the first joints making your way down the grades for following joins. Meaning subsequent heats wont unstick your first joints. Flux is also your friend when using silver solder rods, it allows solder to flow and helps prevent oxidation. Also also you're using too much heat, use a much smaller blow torch. 😀
Jesse Cox and Alec Steele is the collaboration i didn't know I needed!! How amazing is this!
You did well assembling the brass parts, and I think you learned why generations of smiths have cast it
The music really goes with the video.
amazing work guys.
Master Jamie delivers as always:)
@@edkovac8978 yeah he is the best.
What an absolutely beautiful piece. The petina looks perfect; just looking at it you'd honestly think it's a high grade plastic molded prop with how authentic it looks.
At 3:15 the brass was annealed from the heat, making it really soft and bendable
if you are solding brass. you must clean the area and use flux. and use little heat around the joint not on the joint. and you can use soap, by rubbing little of soap near the joint, and the heat the area when the soap mark turns black the brass it is ready for solding.
Soap like... a bar? dish soap? hand soap? shampoo?
I would presume a bar, but best to make sure!
I also wonder if it'd work on copper as well... Great tip though, thanks! 🍻
FYI Alec you can braze brass and bronze and even cast iron. Which is essentially what you're doing. Instead of using a TIG torch you use oxy acetylene or oxy propane. I'm a welder/fabricator for a living. Let me know if you have any questions.
Jamie, the shot of the welder close up in slow mo was *exquisite*.
And use soldering/ welding tips. They give you a lot more focused heat control. An acetylene plumber's torch works great.
It's amazing how faithfully you captured the look of a video game object. It looks like it was shaded in a render engine. Nicely done!
Awesome video. As for the solder issue - as others have likely stated, there was just too much heat, both direct and residual. even after the solder had melted and spread out it was far too hot to freeze before the joints just gave way. Indirect heat and a small blow torch work best for it typically.
I’ve been dealing with soldering brass and copper and trying silver solder for about 4 months before I found out about silver solder in a syringe, it’s a life saver
Looks like a fun little project that one, I love the texturing and aging of new metals to get that battered effect.
Tig welding brass is signifigantly easier with more preflow and the right gas both are very important as the stuff is stupidly easy to contaminate by heating without enough shield gas. You can also heat too much and burn zinc out if your mix has any in it. Brass is quite a pesky material but fun to weld once you get the setup right. Bronze filler was absolutely the right option here. As for the jewelry silver solder it tends to let go all at once when you heat up the base metal enough to melt the entire edge when it's not clamped and brass having a lot of copper has a tendancy to spread heat like that. Try adding a large mass of heatsink metal between the flame and anywhere you dont want melting. I use a copper half inch plate or quarter inch plate when i need to do that.
Key to noticing this if there is any soot you didn't shield properly. If there is yellow dust you are burning zinc. Since your weld had black around it there had to be a shielding gas issue.
Awesome build! Microsoft should hire you to do game replicas for special events and other stuff!
Well, I don't know, he's pretty good but there are actual prop builders that would probably do the weathering a bit better.
Two videos in a week?!? Yes! Aleck, thank you!
I can only imagine Alec at Halloween or a convention: authentic forged weapon and shield... plastic armor from a bargain bin knight's costume.
most places dont allow live steel tho. he wouldnt even be able to get through the door let alone bring forged items lol
Something about this videos videography and editing really hits the bulls eye! Nice one guys!
Not the corssover we ever knew we wanted.... but we are very happpy it came
Jesse Cox.....now that is a blast from the past.....One of the very very first people i ever subscribed to on youtube. Must've been 10 years ago since I watched anything from him.
Man you are so amazing. The first part where you were soldering everything is just a masterpiece. The music fits perfectly with your editing style. Its been a pleasure watching your video!
you can pulse weld brass at a high frequency DC current but youll have to throttle the foot pedal to find the right amperage to get it to tack together once you get it goinng you gotta run along the seam. this will prevent the zinc from burning... or you can use silicon bronze rods to tig braze them
Bro I haven’t watched you in years I’m so glad I found you again 😭😭😭
Alec, next time you can just use a brass wire brush wheel on hot steel to plate it with brass instead.
Next time you want to make something that looks like brass, a suggestion I have is maybe you can use thin steel and then use a brass wire wheel on a rotary tool to color it like brass. It's a technique I have seen on a few channels and it works great.
Hard, medium, and soft solder, Alex. Start with hard solder (melts at a higher temp), then flow medium, and finally soft, which melts at the lowest temp.
Jesse was the very first youtuber I ever subscribed to, and this is exactly what I would expect him to commission from Alec
Jewelers have the same problem when soldering. The solution is to use different temp solder. Start with high temp solder and work your way down to low temp solder.
kinda sad the handle is so short but that is the game's design, not mine. it looks like you went through your monitor and took it straight out of the game!! Amazing work
Alec, NEVER cool metal after soldering using water. It cools to fast and can form a crack in the solder joint. For the same reason you allow copper pipes to air-cool and not using sth like wet cloath, cause you can have big leak if it is your main water supply. That could be a reason why your hammer had fallen apart in 4:00
Jamie is always coming in clutch with those b-roll shots. Definitely keep him around!
I absolutely love the way he matches his montages with the music!!!
I love how you successfully made a piece of steel and brass look like a foam cosplay prop with all the cartoony weathering. Super successful build, just ironic after personally spending tons of time trying to make foam props look like brass and steel.
I’m an amateur jeweler and I find it really helpful to hold things I’m trying to solder together with some steel wire. It hold its shape pretty well and doesn’t melt so for me it works very well
*A 50 pound hollow box? Somewhere out there, a bearded crazy person that answers to Micheal Cthulhu is likely bashing his head against a boulder and vomiting blood and cursing the gods between sips of tea.*
Where's the unboxing video? Or was this released without a delay?
What I like about your channel is you could rest on your laurels and just keep making “The Perfect Knife” over and over, but you are instead constantly trying to expand your skill set and comfort zone. I admire that.
When silver soldering, warm up the whole thing to just below the melting point of the SS and use a localized torch with a small flame to actually solder.
Also if you had used Monel or silicon bronze instead of brass then you could have TIG welded it with ease and it is a lot stronger.
I hope the connection between the handle and the head holds up. When I saw the holes in the top and bottom I assumed it would go all the way through, but like that the connection is going to have a ton of moment on it. Good luck.
Yeah, if a solder joint is done well, the joined material will break before the join will (even if it is annealed brass). You could have reheated/liquified the solder seam but given the time pressure, beanding/beating it into place was the best route. The pain of soldering large/thick bits of any metal is that they hold heat for so long that the heat from working on a "cold" section can travel to a completed section and loosen (or separate) the finished sections. A prof I worked under had a class use solder on steel "because it's the same principle as welding" (despite being told, no, no it is not) then wondered why the class was burning through solder (which the program supplied from material costs) to the point that he had to pump the students for more material costs to buy more solder.
Those projects were more solder than steel at the end.
As a Warhammer fantasy fan I'm surprised you didn't go with the iconic "Hammer of Sigmar" though admittedly, it's a bit plain. Awesome result nonetheless!
Super cool! I would love to see some more ridiculous fantasy builds in the future aswell!
I think you need a much tighter flame and do smaller brazes, it's like welding with solder. It's not meant to take wide flames. Also the fact that you're not using the same material as the base means you're not getting a true fuse, just a soldered joint. Think of like soldering joints of copper, unless it's copper-based solder then when it heats up it will start moving.
Alec, next time you’re tig welding thin metal. Start on each end and end in the middle. Just so the heat that has built up the entire length of the joint is now vastly greater at the end than at the start. Hence the hole which is tricky to patch
Im a jeweler and for items that have multiple pieces that need soldering together we use different grade solders, like easy, med, hard all with slightly different melting points. You'd start with hard (highest melting temp) then work down never getting the peice as hot as the previous section. oooooorrrrrr can use clay to holder it together while doing them all at once (is fiddly to set up but less so than having pieces fall apart hahaha) hope this helps for next time.
I half expected Alex to just run away while the video call was still on, to get the materials.
What an epic build! So impressive to see Alec match the rendering so accurately 🤯 skills !
Your content is so honest, funny and entertaining that I feel like an addict whenever you release a new video 😂
I see the video and it’s instant pleasure and comfort for at least 10 minutes and when it ends, I’m always like “WHY IS IT OVER YET?!”
I binge watched your channel when I discovered it and when there were no new videos left for me to watch, I’m left here feeling really happy every video you release 😂😂 thanks for the dedication and for the content!
It’s cool to see you back at your dads wood shop using the lathe! Brings back memories of some old videos!!
For silver solder, you really need to use flux to help it run. Set up your joint, add some flux, slight preheat, and THEN add your solder. That should help things stick a bit better ^_^
Using flux was about the only thing he did right... He was drenching the thing in it with a paint brush.
@Corey Morse Yeah I noticed that but I wonder if it's a different type of flux from what I've used in the past. We used a white paste and a powder flux, dipping the silver solder into the powder before feeding it in
If you're going to veer into michaelcthulhu's turf, you might try his tricks when faced with large "brass" pieces. Heat a piece of steel and go at it with a brass wire brush (solid brass wire, not brass-plated steel)- the brass deposits on the steel. For thick pieces that have to take wear he uses lots of bright brazing filler rod in a cavity with undercut edges so it won't pop out.
The crossover we didn't know we needed. Love Jesse.
It would be interesting to see you attemp a canister Damascus using the shavings from the brass collar for the handle.
Possibly using shavings from copper?
Was not expecting to see Jessie Cox on this channel ever really. A welcomed surprise.
I’m not sure why I’m continually surprised by your creative genius? You would think by now I’d just appreciate and respect it. Cool stuff.
1 week? That's a pretty tight timeline.
The weathering on the fantasy hammer was AWESOME!!
As a Canadian..finishing off the handle with hockey tape was a nice touch 😂
I'd love to see a filmmaking class by Jamie, that would be awesome!
5:36 Alec - Couldn't you have made a compacted sand mould like what is used for casting metals? Wouldn't that allow you to melt the solder without parts coming loose again?
Alec great work. Jamie, that b roll and music at the end of the video was stunning! It really showed off Alec’s talent
I haven't heard of Jesse going to prison for war crimes, so I don't know if he used that hammer properly.
You know I bet your hollow hammer idea is actually pretty accurate cause I would imagine the inside of the game is actually wood and the spike is just carved off from that meanwhile the whole wooden block is wrapped in that steel.
If a man at arms; reforged episode was all done by one person. Looks great!
If Alex continues to experiment with brass, I think he needs to get some tips from Clickspring for design and a brass musical instrument maker like Roth trombones for soldering and bending. Roth Trombones is in the UK, so I know travel would be easier. :-) would love to see either of these too!!!!
I honestly never thought we’d see an Alec Steele/Jesse Cox crossover
Could you have used pottery clay to hold the shape together temporarily? It might crack but so long as it holds it should have worked? Maybe it's something that you could try for a future project.
I love music like this in your videos, it really pairs well
Perhaps another challenge, making damascus steel cover plates for all the electrical outlets and light switches in either your home or the shop
Anyone got a link to Jesse's video of it being used. I can't find the video
You need a welding (brazing) torch that allows for a much smaller and more directed flame. Also solders that melt at different temps (this is how jewelers do it- starting with a higher melting point and working down as needed). Might be a good idea to clamp on some steel heat sinks between joints, or find some heat sink paste to do the same thing (if they still make that- I used it forty years ago). Cutting torch is definitely the wrong tool for this job.
One of my favorite gamers and my favorite blacksmith.
Hey Alec, if you save as much of your brass chips as you can you could use them as pilling material in a heat bluing container!
As a plumber who regularly works with softer metal soldering. You're using to much heat. With the piece you're working on, targeted high heat instead of lots of blanket heat is the way to do it. The way you heated the brass to make it all cherry red gave it away.
"get some successful joints"
I'm in!
I was very pleasantly surprised to see Alec doing some woodturning haha
I hope there is a video posted showing it being used to get at the loot.
Actually reminded me of a dwarven battle hammer. The look , style and was absolutely brilliant. The only thing missing was some runes etched on the head but hey bloody brilliant
When brazing copper, we wrapped the areas we didn't want to heat up in wet kaowool. I imagine that would work on bronze.
That was awesome, I love seeing all the challenges you face working with different materials. With the world we live in being full of items of many different materials you don't appreciate just how hard it can be to work with some materials.
Wooow! That's a beast of a war hammer! Turned out epically beautiful as well. Great work from a great craftsman! I thoroughly enjoyed watching you work through all the challenges. Any gamer would love to display that in their game room!
if you had access to a sand blaster, you could get a more worn look to the wood....erode the softer growth ring sections. makes for a more worn look.
This build gave me some ideas for future projects. Like Robert Baratheon war hammer. Or a Destiny Titan Solar hammer