brazing stainless steel

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Can the brazed joint be polished to where you don't notice the filler material? I'm planning on making a new grille for my truck and would like to do it out of stainless and polish it up.Lincoln Promig 180
Reply:i would suppose you could use silver braze and polish it.  doubt you would notice any difference.
Reply:If you can find a braze to match the color of the base metal then maybe, but I think thats going to be hard to find.  Closest you would be able to get is probably going to be silver solder.Have we all gone mad?
Reply:Cool, I'll try it with the silver solder and if It doesn't come out to my liking I'll just paint it black. Either way this thing is going to look pretty sweet.Lincoln Promig 180
Reply:Ensure you use a high melting point silver solder to obtain adequate joint strength. If very thin, overheating may be a problem - lot's of distortion.Why not GTAW your SS grille ?Cheers
Reply:Originally Posted by chrispc66Ensure you use a high melting point silver solder to obtain adequate joint strength. If very thin, overheating may be a problem - lot's of distortion.Why not GTAW your SS grille ?Cheers
Reply:The color typicall doesn't match well.  Nickel silver brazing alloys have a bit of a yellowish tint.  Even if you can polish it to match, both materials will oxidize differently and over time the brazed joint will become more obvious.Do you have an oxygen/acetylene rig or are you trying to use a MAPP torch?  You can weld stainless with oxygen/acetylene.  You need to run a slightly carburizing flame (rich on acetylene).  Use the same filler material as a TIG weld.  You may want to use back-up flux to prevent sugaring.  One brand is Solar flux.  Back-up flux is more for structural and sanitary type stuff that can only be welded from one side.  It will take a little extra polishing over TIG but the results can be satisfactory.