Maybe the first time I saw this technique was at a National Championships in Scranton, PA. I’m not positive, but I think it was 1995.  Mike Palumbo had a Native American chief sculpture that had it’s arms stretched out to either side and this technique was used to weld the arms on. It was remarkable how clean and strong the welds looked and it was a big deal because I remember a lot of carvers talking about how he did it.

    It was cold and he had a small portable oven with lit sternos inside. The oven was heating small, flat pieces of marble and he would use the marble to flatten both welding surfaces and then put the pieces together. Add a little bit of cold water and the weld would quickly freeze, as long as the ice was cold enough (but not too cold, or it would fracture). This welding method formed welds stronger than any other technique that I knew of and the welds were hard to see too.

    I’m not totally sure who really came up with the idea, but Mike Palumbo and Erik Cantine most often get the credit in my memory. I believe Aaron Costic quickly adopted the technique and I remember seeing him use the technique a lot. At some point, aluminum plate was used instead, and it became the favored material over polished marble and/or granite (which will crack after a while and get pretty heavy!). Hopefully, someone who knows the exact story will add it to the Comments section below. That’s why it’s there after all!

    Anyway, when I moved to New Orleans, Clinebell ice was hard to come by and if I wanted clear ice sculptures, then I had to cut the core out of my blocks and weld them back together. This was my Aluminum (actually, I used marble a lot) Welding Boot Camp. Now, it’s just part of my carving procedure and I don’t have to worry about whether or not I can weld something, just if I should or not. I probably do some sort of welding on eighty percent of the sculptures that I do and I almost always use this technique. The jester pictured above was a particularly involved welding exercise (it was from about 1999?) The piece isn’t totally clear, but it’s pretty darn close (the back leg was a problem.)

    The gist of the technique is that you cut your two weld surfaces as flat as possible with a chainsaw, nailboard, or perhaps planer, and then you use the slightly warmed aluminum plate to flatten the surfaces. Once the surfaces are perfectly flat, you quickly put the pieces together. Then you pour cold water over the ice so that it flows into the weld. As long as your ice is cold enough and the weld is flat enough, then you should have a strong weld almost instantly.

    Basic steps
    1. Plan your weld(s)

    2. Ready your aluminum, cold water, and ice

    3. Cut your weld surfaces as flat as possible

    4. Apply warm aluminum plate to both surfaces until the plate grabs when it’s removed

    5. Join weld surfaces immediately

    6. Add cold water to the weld while supporting the added ice if necessary

    Over the years, several carvers have offered advice to me on the technique:

     Aaron Costic showed me how to make an aluminum sandwich: put the aluminum plate between the two weld surfaces and hold it together until the surfaces are flat. Then quickly slide the plate out and press the ice surfaces together; then apply cold water. This method gives the weld surfaces no time to change and is very quick. It helps if you have 2 people.

    Dean Carlson pointed out that thicker (3/4” rather than 1/2”) aluminum is better. It holds heat better and you don’t need to get it very hot (just slightly warm.) In another recent conversation with Dean, he explained that you shouldn’t apply the metal to the ice for very long, or you end up with a curved welding surface (not what you’re looking for). As the metal sits in contact with the ice, the edges of your weld surface melt slightly faster than the center of the weld surface. So if the metal stays against the ice too long, then you get a convex (high in the center) surface. To avoid this, your surfaces should be as flat as you can make them BEFORE you apply the aluminum so that you don’t have to have the metal against the ice for very long. And a “tempered” (heat evenly distributed, no hot spots) piece of aluminum works best.

    Erik Cantine showed me the pebbling pattern that starts in the center of the weld and indicates a strong weld. If you look closely, you can sometimes see the weld slowly freezing, expanding out from the center of the weld to the edges.

    I can’t remember who I saw using a cooking syringe to shoot COLD water into the weld, but I remember seeing Kevin Roscoe or Peter Slavin using a modified needle pump (like to pump up a basketball) as a very large syringe. Later, Junichi Nakamura took this to a whole new level for me with giant syringes. Maybe they were for whales, or maybe they were modified pumps too...

    Aaron Costic demonstrated a number of times in competition that you can weld ice in warm temperatures if you just get one of the two pieces of ice down to below freezing. You can put it in a freezer for a while, or cool it down with dry ice. You have to be careful not to fracture the cold piece of ice though.

    Somebody else who I can’t remember pointed out that the aluminum will grab onto a very flat surface. If you have a good weld surface, you can tell because the aluminum will pull on the ice as you pull it away.

I’ve included a couple diagrams that should be helpful below.

    You can get aluminum plate from Icecrafters or you can usually find it locally by looking in the yellow pages under “aluminum.” You might have realized from the diagrams above that a variety of sizes would be useful. You may be able to get a deal on some scrap pieces. You’re looking for sizes that work for ice sculptures; pieces that are too large or too small won’t help you much. Try sizes like 10”x10”, 11”x22”, or 22”x22”. Remember that you want it to be a little bit bigger than your weld surface. Icecrafters has some of the most popular and useful sizes available on their website.

    To heat your aluminum, you can use an iron, put it outside in the sun, put it in the oven, put it in hot water, use a heat gun, use a blow torch, use an electric blanket (yeah, I’ve used that method) or come up with your own way (just find a safe way.) As I mentioned above, however, it doesn’t need to be that hot to work. In fact, making it too hot is bad, especially if the heating is uneven and the plate has hot spots.

    After you get some practice with this technique, you’ll be able to see if a weld will be a good one. As you look through the ice at the weld, pour cold water into the weld. If you’re seeing water flow into and out of the weld, then you may need to reweld it. If not, then you may have a very good weld. Ice that’s not welding properly tends to look lighter than ice that is. The bad weld reflects more light where the ice isn’t continuous, making it look lighter. Until I can get a good picture of the difference, you’ll have to try it yourself to see what I mean.

    Finally, horizontal welds (like graphics 2 and 3) are better than vertical welds. Vertical welding (like graphic 1) is more dramatic, but it’s a lot harder and the added cold water tends to fall out of the weld. So turn your welding surfaces to the horizontal whenever you can instead of attempting a vertical weld.

    Incidentally, I added this entry a lot sooner than I was going to initially because I got a specific request for information on welding. So if you want to know something and you think I might know it, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Use the Comments section... It’s for questions AND suggestions.