Looking for ideas to keep SS woven wire screen from unraveling

keeena

keeena

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Here's an odd one: I have some woven wire screen that I need to keep from unraveling. The screen is made from 304SS, wire size is about 24 thou (0.6mm). I was planning on using the screen without any sort of frame but didn't realize the weave could come apart. I'm looking for ideas to keep the edge from unraveling.

The size of the mesh for my application will be 8 feet long and 5 inches high. Some ideas:
  • Folding the edges, but not sure if it would work well and would need to make a pretty long bender to do so.
  • Braze the weave joints/intersections on the outer edge. Not sure if it would be a good option or how to go about it / what to use. This seems like the most controlled as well as more likely to preserve SS properties.
  • A quick zap from a tig with a backing heatsink could fuse the joint (just along the outer edge).
I can certainly experiment, but figured I'd throw the Q out there. It doesn't have to be particularly pretty and not for any critical or food-related use.

304SS_Mesh.jpg
 
Spot weld! Adjust the energy to get fusion without melting thru. As Wobbly said you probably won't need to do every joint. I used my homemade spot welder to make a sink grating out of SS wire and it came out great. HF has relatively cheap spot welders too.
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I have a couple pieces of that stuff. I didn’t like the fraying edge either so I pulled the one edge strand out and then turned all the ends back on themselves to stop the next edge strand from coming out. My pieces are only about a foot or so square and I can’t remember if I even made it through four edges on one piece — it was mind numbing…..
 
Spot welder. For relatively small wire you could probably cobble up something with a power supply and large electrolytic capacitor.
 
@rwm - found a pic of your spot welder here on H-M; looks awesome!

The cheapo HF model would do this w/o any problems? There's a couple on CL near me for short money.
 
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keeena said:
@rwm - found a pic of your spot welder here on H-M; looks awesome!

The cheapo HF model would do this w/o any problems? There's a couple on CL near me for short money.
Click to expand...
The cheapo HF model would work fine. If anything, you'd have to work on flicking the switch a very short time. If the switch is on too long, well say goodbye to that wire. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty easy to learn the flick. You can see the spot get red hot almost instantly.

I find having a spot welder is really handy for quick jobs that you just want to stick together with no fuss.
 
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