Welding to a cast iron block how?

iv been building tables and tattoo rests and stands out of engine parts and car parts, i was wondering if anyone had an idea, or have successively welded to a cast iron block? i have a idea for a engine stand coffee table and wanted to attack pistons to the top of it. I have read that if you pre heat the metal it helps, and then some say to cold weld? any ideas

Should be pretty easy. You can weld cast with nickel rod, or Ni Cast rod, That would be where you would pre-heat, and post heat. You can also wire feed cast. I have done a bunch with wire feed, and I pre heat and post heat for structural stuff. Decorative stuff, I just wire feed and it seems to work well. Burn it in hot. Watch for cracks. Clean it well before you start.

thanks bonehead, you always know what to do, says to use 308l wire. also do you have any pics of the skulls you make? iv been thinking about putting some close to life size skulls on my stands, and no one does them like you do. If so message me and ill send you my email.

I've used high nickel rod multiple times on castings that were thinner without preheat, but I imagine with such a large heat sink like the block, pre-heating would be in order there..

you can also use silicon bronze mig wire to weld cast to cast and cast to steel. but i don't think there is a way to weld an aluminum piston to steel or cast iron. if you wanted to attach a piston to the block for decorative purposes you could drill and thread a piece of threaded rod into the block and then epoxy the inside of piston to the rod.

piston will have the rod still connected. Im stoked to start work on it

Another thing you can do to help get the weld to penetrate is grind a gouge into the metal then using a torch preheat the block once it's nice and cherry hot weld the parts you're wanting to weld to it and then let it cool. Once it's cooled down, use the torch again to heat the block I.E. post heat.

Glad to see this post, I have welded cast before not to bad but I am about to have to do it again. Going to try and wire feed it and hope for the best.

Neverdone said:

Glad to see this post, I have welded cast before not to bad but I am about to have to do it again. Going to try and wire feed it and hope for the best.

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I have some nickel rod for TIG if you need it tig welded let me know since we are not too far away from each other.
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Another thing, if you are ever trying to "weld" a crack in a block, don't. The correct way to fix a block is something called block stitching where you drill a 5/32nd hole on each end, and on every 1/4 inch or so. Then you insert pins into the holes and drill 1/2 of the bit on the pin and the other half on the block. It's a very tedious task and very few people(even machine shops) can do it correctly. Just a little FYI. We have to do it every now and again on Locomotive engine blocks when we have catastrophic failures.

I think he may have been talking about welding areas like the ears for a starter mount or other non structural areas that things mount to.

I think I have seen that done on some blocks where they drill the holes to stop the crack from propagating further when welding. The pin idea is something I have never tried, sounds like an interesting way to do it, do you get pins that are similar to the base metal in composition then?

I have always used a wire feed mig welder.

We personally don't do the block stitching. General Electric has a company out of PA that comes and does it for us. From what one of the guys who does it has told me, there is no welding required at all and they use some sort of extreme Rockwell hardness for the pins. I also know that it normally takes about 2 days to complete the stitch after we already removed all the exterior bits. Here's an example from a company in my hometown.

http://www.locknstitch.com/Repair pdf files/Custom truck with cracked 5.9 block.pdf

I saw a guy weld a cracked manifold once - he heated it red hot in a forge, then arc welded it while it was still hot.