warren haywood
Western Thunderer
If it’s too much hassle leave it as it is, we will discuss it over a couple of beers Friday night
A couple , pish, this problem is at least three or four beers in the solving, maybe even a curry meal too
Anyway onward.
Tender rear and sides. The rear is fitted but the sides just held in place by gravity and sticktion. There's still more details to add to the tender rear and well deck and those will go on in due course.
The sides were a fear point, you do at least get two spare sides to practice on, neither went well, the cant rail bend is critical to get uniform and parallel with the footplate, especially once painted, any wrinkle or out of alignment shows up like a big sore.
Fortunately both the required sides formed perfectly, one is good going for me, but two....it can't last. To check the bend I've spent some time polishing the sides, this is the easiest way to see if there's anything untoward before the beading goes on or they are fitted. Both side still need some more final polishing and inspection before I'll be happy to move on.
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More anon.
Brass is much harder, it's very easy for a clean brass surface to get too hot and form a sort of barrier, especially from flux. The only way round that is to clean it all up and try again.
Don't let it get dirty in the first placeHow do you keep it clean, as I can't remember (old age).
Big, as big as you can get on the ERSA to hold the heat. I've tried smaller ones and they just die as soon as it touches the metal. I can't change them now anyway as the big tip seems to have heat hardened onto the iron, I tried the other day and it made some alarming creaking noise from inside when I tried to twist the tip off. If I need to change the tip then it'll be a new iron, I may well do that at some point.What size soldering iron bit are you using?
Steph
Agreed it is not a complex problem - although I beg to differ in the analysis. The simple answer is that brass is the wrong material for the job, it's thermal dissipation is far greater than nickel-silver. I find it quite easy to hold components together with bare fingers when soldering with nickel silver because the heat stays local to where the soldering iron is, whereas with brass even 6" to 8" from the joint it becomes too hot to hold even with asbestos fingers. To be honest I've found that a lower temperature iron makes the problem of soldering brass even worse. As far as I'm concerned you cannot run your iron too hot, after all there are quite a few modellers who use miniature blowtorches with excellent results. It's all about getting the heat into the joint as quick as possible and unfortunately brass will just soak up heat like a sponge. A lower temperature iron just prolongs the time required to get the joint up to temperature.it sounds as though it's nothing more complex a problem than running your iron too hot.