Welding damaged brass fuzes

[Alpini]

Hello,

I'll show a little article about how broken brass fuzes can be repaired. Required is a AC tig welder. I used a 200 Amps import model, 3 mm brass welding rods of unknown alloy (bright yellow brass color). In the german language internet not much can be found about how to weld brass with a tig welder so I had to experiment myself. Welding steel and inox is pretty easy aluminium can be much more difficult depending on the type of alloy and thickness. Compared to aluminium brass is even more difficult. It requires much power and when starting it requires about a minute for thick walled fuze parts to heat up until welding becomes possible. With too much heat the brass will be "cooking" when the Zinc starts burning so it's best to do it outside as the smoke is not healthy. So only a small temperature range is left for a good weld. Also I had a problem to weld in edges as the liquid brass doesn't want to flow there.

First of all I turned down the broken surface of the fuze body to a flat shape and machined a small brass bar as a replacement for the missing part. In the next step I made a fuze holder from an old gear. Then I screwed the welded fuze body into this fuze holder. So I could securely machine the part on the lathe. After smoe simple machining and thread cutting th last step was drilling the flash holes on the milling machine using a dividing head. The last pictures show the finished fuze. It's a prussian "Feldschrapnellzünder C/73". For this fuze I couldn't notice any color differences between the original fuze brass, my replacement brass bar and the welding seam.

When I find some time during the next days I'll show the same repair for Dopp.Z.92 fuzes...

 

[BMG50]

Very good job.

 

[Alpini]

Part 2 is a repair of a "Dopp. Z. 92 F.H." fuze which is compared to normal "Dopp.Z.92" not often seen so the repair made at least "some" sense.

The Dopp. Z. 92 F.H. was used not or only in small numbers in WW1 and it was used on H.E. shells only. The HE shells were filled with a strong picric acid charge and in normal operation the fuze is destroyed completely. The example here was used on a practise shell which was loaded with a "Zündladung 92" detonator and a black powder charge. Because of this reduced charge only the fuze's lower end was damaged by the Zündladung 92 and it had some major damage from the impact itself.

The repair was mainly the same as on the fuze above. First I machined a new bottom part with a large machining allowance for later operations and welded it onto the end. Due to the small wall thickness on this part welding went much better than on the Feldschrapnellzünder C/73. Then I also filled most of the larger dents of the top part by welding which is not easy because of the heavy construction. The lower part was later machined on the lathe. It's not completely finished because the bottom hole needs to be larger diameter and threaded but this will require making a thread tap first and I don't have enough time at moment. The filled dents on the top part I machined only roughly on the lathe and finished by filing and grinding with sand paper. The top plug is a complete reproduction as my spare original plugs are hiding somewhere

 

[Alpini]

and pictures of the finished fuze:

 

[Andysarmoury]

A brilliant job and thanks for showing the process very well done it looks great.
Cheers
Andy

 

[HAZORD]

They look great Alpini!

 

[starshell]

Superb workmanship and skill, and a very interesting process. Thanks!