Welding bronze possible?

[CharmCityBoater]

The bronze pipes that are part of my boom gallows are splitting. I would like to repair them or get them replaced. The challenge is that is that the OD size is 1.7”. No one sells bronze pipe in that size. Can I weld them? Can someone recommend a machine shop / fabricator that can fix them

[more]

easy for brazing also possible welding tig/mig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYehchLR6vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnuF4J3A4Iw

[more]

also you can diy, by gunmetal electrode,mini inverter welder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=QZUfpAQ7zAM

[capt jgw]

I wonder why they split. Does it get below freezing where you're at? If so I'd bet they had water inside and it froze. I had that happen with a couple lifeline stanchions. However you fix them, drill some drain holes in the bottom or it might happen again.

[skipperpete]

Yes, you can weld bronze, the difficulty is finding the correct filler rod. A long time back, I decided to repair a bronze anchor chain gypsy and got flux coated electrodes from ESAB and did an acceptable buildup and grind..... only just acceptable so I decided to try improving the quality using a Tig and the defluxed electrodes.... vast improvement but you need a lot of amps. I started to repair heat exchanger tube stacks after a welder genius showed me how to silver braze the new tubes with the very localized Tig arc. A local foundry heard that I was doing bronze welding and asked me to Tig up some bronze statues ( they cast em in sections ) and then I discovered that bronze alloys vary in color quite a lot so it took a fair bit of testing to get a matching colour so that the welds became invisible (finally we did a bigger melt and poured the excess onto a flat surface then sliced off thin strips with a guillotine) and this might be the hardest part of welding up those splits on your boom gallows. Actually, those splits could even be where old welds or silver soldered seams from original manufacture have cracked open.

[SailingHarmonie]

One issue I have seen with welding bronze, is bronze that has lived under water for decades. It is porous enough that it has absorbed salt that when it melts it’s just not stable enough the form a good bead.

Not likely to be an issue with your situation.