20 Rods- USA Made - As Seen on TV, Simple Aluminum Repair Brazing/Welding Rods, 1/8"' x 18" rods.

Bought these twice. First time I was skeptical. As we all know, videos showing how great a product is rarely works out that way. BUT, I ordered some anyway. At first I had a hard time getting them to adhere to my work. I was joining 1” square brace tubing about an 1/8” thick onto a rectangular frame made of the same kind of material which was aluminum. I heated the parts, but unknowingly wasn’t getting the material hot enough. The rod melted too soon being in too close proximity to the flame. I tried filling in a hole in an aluminum beer can like they showed on the video and it worked perfectly. Strong and able to easily span the hole I punched into the can. I simply superheated the area around the hole and then swirled the rod around the opening allowing the rod to get heat from the edges of the butane torch I was using but mostly picking up heat to melt the rod from the can. Keeping the rod moving was the trick, pulling it away fro a second then swirling it around again. I then used the same method for the heavier material. It took much longer at max heat to get the frame material hot enough because aluminum disperses the heat throughout the work piece. What I found worked best is not to even try to weld the pieces together until I held the heat on the (clamped joint) at least for a count to 100. I also had some inside joints to weld. So after the piece was hot enough, I flowed out some rod and spread it into the joint with an old steel screwdriver. To my amazement the next day when I was putting my tools away, I noticed there was some of the rod material still on the blade. I couldn’t scrape it off so tried my wire wheel mounted on one side of my bench grinder. To my surprise it wouldn’t take it off. I had to grind it off. I hoped the rod would work on aluminum, but wow! Steel too!Try it and it’ll work and you’ll love it. I love this stuff and ordered more to keep around the shop

I actually had fun playing with this, and was able to weld several pieces together. Adhesion and strength both seemed fine. however I couldn’t get it to work on the one project I really bought this for. I have a pressure washer with an aluminum manifold that cracked during last winter… I guess I forgot to drain it completely. I think it would’ve worked, but I could not get the temperature high enough for the aluminum to flow into the crack. Maybe it’s because it’s a rather large aluminum piece, and the rest of the block was fairly cool, but I could not get the part I was trying to heat to go above 495°… And these rods don’t really seem to work until you get it closer to 700. (I was using a digital thermometer to read surface temperature ) As I said I was able to do that on several smaller pieces, so it does seem to work. It just might be problematic on large hollow pieces that tend to conduct heat away from the area you are working on. In any case, it was worth a shot. if I could’ve save the pressure washer I would’ve saved six or $700 . I’m sure I will find other uses for this, and It is handy to have around

These things pay for them selves for sure! Soon as I got em in the mail I tried the pop can fix like on the video for this product on Amazon and it turned out the same as shown. It's surprisingly really strong also and idk how it is for having suck a melting point. I don't really have any welding experience but I'm good with tools and learn quick so didn't really need practice to learn how to use. If there's any and I mean ANY bad reviews on this product DON'T EVEN WASTE YOUR TIME READING THEM!!! If there's a bad review it's because that person clearly doesn't know how to use any kind of tool cause there probably some city folk with soft hands and should have a perfesional do it for them.

I had to practice use of this rod several times before i had any success. This is true for all forms of welding. I had some scrap aluminum laying around, cleaned it, and was using a small Oxy/Act brazing tip. Does flow quickly when applied at the correct time. For the cost of the rods, it is definitely worth trying. What you are trying to repair is already messed up, what do you have to lose?

I've always hear welding aluminum was hard, I bought this product hope I could bypass buying a machine cause I'm a mobile mechanic. So when I bought these just to have them in stock ready for use a client called me to fix an a/c line that had cracked. Upon using this product I had cleaned thoroughly 2x the cracked a/c line and when I welded the line it didn't hold up. I told my client 3rd time is the charm if not I leave at no cost to you for coming to visit and fix... He replied great give it another try, and this time I cleaned again, welded with propane and waited at least 35min to give it time to cool and cure. Installed refrigerant and so far it been 7months no issues.