Propane Fillet Brazing

[bigggidy]

Hello all,

New to the forum as only just starting my journey in frame building. I only currently have experience of OxyAcetylene brazing, however, I am setting up my home workshop and a little apprehensive to use acetylene in a residential area.

• Can you fillet braze with Propane
• What setup do I need to get? (Torch heads, regulators, etc)
• Can you use inline flux with these? Or only brush on flux
• What are the differences when working with Propane?

Thanks in advance
Mike

[bigggidy]

It wouldn't let me reply to the administrator, as their inbox was full. So adding full name here.

Mike Tempest

[David Tollefson]

Doug Fattic has a thread here on propane vs. acetylene with all the set-up info you need. In short, yes, oxy/propane works well for fillet brazing -- it's all I use.

[bigggidy]

Doug Fattic has a thread here on propane vs. acetylene with all the set-up info you need. In short, yes, oxy/propane works well for fillet brazing -- it's all I use.

Thanks for that link, really useful!

[Doug Fattic]

I learned to use propane for fillet brazing in Ukraine where we build charity bicycles because acetylene was much more difficult and expensive to acquire. Like others have said it works just fine. In fact in my last framebuilding class we started out using oxyacetylene because a student already had that for his setup but then he wanted to try using propane with Paige multiport tips and came to prefer it instead.

Paige Tools has just come out with adaptors for their multiport tips to fit either Smith’s AW1A torch handle with an AT-61 elbow/mixer or a Victor J-28 with a UN-J (or Victor compatibles like the Uniweld 71). The advantage of using a multiport tip is that the flame is much less likely to blow out from gas bounce back pressure when it is close to the work like is common when fillet brazing. They also provide a very sharp center flame.

A number of us have been bugging Paige Tools to make these adaptors for some time and they finally did the Smith one earlier this year and then the Victor became available this past month. While Victor TEN tips work okay with propane, the Paige multiports have a little sharper flame point and are less likely to blow out.