Hi all One of our CCS mates asked if I might be able to revive a heavily pitted roarer burner. Sorry about so many photos. Here they are to show the process. This shows the condition of the burner as received. It is deeply pitted, the flame ring gallery is off the burner and there is a sizable crack in one feed tube. (you can see it in the fourth picture) Powder cleaning the burner revealed the extent of the pitting and showed that the crack was bigger than perceived once the dirt and unsound metal was removed. Another potential crack in the burner head was revealed by cleaning. It was my thought that it might be possible to fill the pitting if the burner were very clean by using silver brazing filler to filler the pits. This actually turned out to be a successful idea. Before After filling I choose to do the brazing/filling before cleaning the inside of the burner tubes. The burner tubes were very well packed with carbon. The act of bringing the tubes up to brazing temps initiated the burning of the coke (carbon deposits) inside the tubes. While I was filling the pits I had flames and smoke coming out of the burner opening and the jet hole. The heat of the decoking did not help the size of the crack on the burner feed tube and removed additional metal from the opening. (Flames were coming out the crack, too.) This was a problem. Here is how I dealt with the problem. Two wraps of fine brass mesh secured with fine brass wire. Fluxed well and... I spent some time with needle files and strips of sandpaper to even out the brazing and remove the wire securing the wire mesh. Then it was time to try to secure the gallery back on the burner. These pictures show the outcome of some of the sanding/filing. I've taken a flame ring and masked it with india ink and will use it to support the gallery while brazing. But, I'll have to show you that in a second post as I'm out of picture room. Stay tuned.
Welcome back. Set up to braze and after brazing on the gallery ring to the burner. After some more sanding, filing and then some polishing with 0000 steel wool to return some luster. Hey! Whaddya know? It works, too. The jet is maybe a tad oversize, but it was continuing to blue up the whole time it burned so perhaps it'll stabilize to all blue eventually. Probably could use a new jet though. How it blends after the burn. It's not perfect. If a feller wanted to do some more filing and sanding he could make it look even better by blending in the seams a bit more. Anyway, that's the show. I thought the brass mesh idea worked really well. I probably didn't invent the idea, I probably saw somebody here do it already and have just forgotten. If it helps anyone out there with a similar issue, great. That's the point I reckon. Cheers, Gary
Wow Gary, you have outdone yourself again Impressive restoration The skills of a master fettler indeed. Give yourself a pat in the back and pop open a good beer or steak or whatever you think would be something for that special occassion. Ron
Amazing Gary. Such a poor condition burner in my hands would have been written off for sure. With skills like yours, there's hope yet for the rarer ones that we thought would never burn blue again. John
Another fab job by the "Bluewater Fettlemeister" 8) This will give hope to others that all is not lost even when the problems look insurmountable. Tasty work Dawgmeister 8) 8) 8) Stu
Thanks everyone. I can tell you with complete candor that no one was more surprised it worked than myself! A huge "Thanks!" goes out to CCS mod Christer Carlsson who was kind enough to straighten out my self-mangled post above. It looks great now and is as I intended before I messed it up. I reckon I'm out of practice on the posting. Now. Do you suppose this technique with the mesh "bandage/graft" might allow me to fix this one? (And, no, I've not tried it yet.) If I try it and it works, I'll let you know. Cheers, Gary
BernieDawg Ive got a 71 vaporizer I'll send you if you want practice. The rest of the parts are on my new stove, but the vaporizer tube is useless to me. Alexander from Acme auctions sent me a replacement (and a HUGE thank you, Alexander) and I was thinking that the broken one was headed to the scrap heap. If you want it, PT me your address and I'll ship it to you. You seem to be able to work miracles and I don't think this one needs a miracle, just someone that knows how to fix it. Cheers, Woodsy
Gary, what else can I add, very well done! I would think the bandage/graft should work on the other burner.
Hi Gary, A very nice job. I always wondered about those dimples on the side of burners top plate. I mean the female part where tubes are brazed into. Someone told me those are clean-out plugs. to be drilled out and then replaced. Could you shed some light? Daryoush P.S. What kind of silver solder did you use? And what was the ink used for?
Ohmigosh! Lots of questions. OK. Let's see what I can do. First off... an update on that completely broken burner I pictured above. I started a bit of cleaning on it and found that the brass of the burner is very granular. This is hard for me to explain as I am not a metallurgist. I suspect CCS resident metalurgist kerophile might be able to fill in the details. But, what I'm seeing is that the burner is really riddled with micro-cracks through most of it's structure. It is consistent with what I have seen brass do when exposed to strong ammonia for an extended period of time. Point is, it was pretty much crumbling into grains of brass as I worked with it this morning, so, sadly, I've given that one up. The granulation of the burner tubes is probably why it broke with little trouble in the first place. RIP burner, I say. Sparky asks about spray metalizing. I'm going to guess that most folks here don't have a clue what spray metalizing is. I visited a shop where they did this process many years ago. Basically, and Sparky you can correct me if I've got it wrong, it is a process where a spray of hot molten metal is applied to a prepared metal surface to bond with and build up the surface. In the shop I saw it used, they were adding metal to hydraulic pistons that had worn to below specs. The pistons were for large heavy equipment (bulldozer, cranes, graders, etc) and were slowly turning on a 14-foot lathe as the operator applied the molten metal. After the metal was applied the pistons were then turned down to spec on the lathe. It was quite the operation and was very impressive. To address Sparky's question... I don't know! I've only seen it used for really big stuff. Do they make little units? Does it spray brass? Ya got me! If there were little sprayers that spray brass, then yes, maybe that would work, but I gotta wonder if such a thing would be within $$$$ reach of anyone who plays with stoves or if the company that had one would be willing to spray a burner for less than a zillion dollars. Maybe Sparky can tell us more? I really don't know. Sorry. Woodsy - PT coming your way in just a bit. Daryoush (Svea121) asks about the dimples on the burner head. *I* think the dimples are an artifact of production. I base this on my attempts to build roarer burners from scratch. I believe the roarer burner head is cast. Then the four holes for the inlet and outlet tubes are drilled. The head is also cross-drilled to form the connecting passages that connect the feed tube holes to the u-tube (jet-bearing curved tube) holes. Then the plug is placed in the head where these cross-passages were drilled. The plugs are the dimples we all see in the heads of roarers. Daryoush (Svea121) also asks about the ink and the brazing wire. The black india ink was used to mask the flame ring I used to support the gallery when I brazed it to the burner tubes. India ink acts to keep the braze filler from flowing where you don't want it - in my case I did not want to braze the flame ring to the gallery or the burner tubes. The india ink idea comes from CCS's Murph who suggested it long ago in a post here on the forums. The brazing filler wire I use comes from McMaster-Carr which you can find with a Google search. They have everything on the planet. Go to their website and type "brazing alloys" into the "Find" box at their webpage and you'll be directed to the catalog page. For brass I use cadmium-free Gap-Fill brazing wire in the 3/64" diameter. It is 45% silver, 30% copper and 25% zinc. It melts at between 1225 and 1370 deg F and is selling today for $333.25 for a 48-foot 5-troy-ounce roll. Because of the high silver content, the price fluctuates daily with the rise and fall in the international silver markets. I don't know that this stuff is the cheapest, but it works really, really well for me so I stick with it. Sorry about all the words. Those were big questions! Cheers, Gary
