Just how in the heck do you solder brass? There must be a trick to it I ain’t grasping here. I have a 1/350 little PC from Iron Ship Wrights (can I say that here?) with tiny pieces of brass that need to be soldered and for the life of me I cannot do it! I can sweat a pipe, make good connections with wire but this has me really , well, angry.
I’d appreciate any and all the help anyone could give me.
Will
The first thing you got to know is it brass. Some kits give you other material that won’t take solder.
Use solder that designed for electronics it has flux built in, 60-40 lead and tin and .032 in size (Radio Shack Catalog #: 64-009)
Next is the iron (Radio Shack Catalog #: 64-2071) 40 Watt)
This is VERY IMPORTANT. Tin the iron before you use it the first time. (http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=tinning+a+soldering+iron&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title) You will need a wet sponge for cleaning (Radio Shack Catalog #: 64-2078) This may be helpful (Radio Shack Catalog #: 64-020)
Clean the two mating surfaces.
Mechanical means such as agitation, spraying, brushing, and other methods of applications may be used in conjunction with the cleaning solution.
Next, use a jig to hold in it finished position and solder (http://www.mediacollege.com/misc/solder/soldering.html)
Clean the soldered joint. When cleaning is required, flux residue should be removed as soon as possible, but no later than one hour after soldering. Some fluxes may require more immediate action to facilitate adequate removal. Mechanical means such as agitation, spraying, brushing, and other methods of applications may be used in conjunction with the cleaning solution.
Soldering tips (http://www.mediacollege.com/misc/solder/tips.html)
Practice on some pieces that you don’t care about.
Thanks I’ll give it another try. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Will
I brush flux on both parts to soldered, pick up some solder with the tip and make damn-sure that both parts are getting heated by the iron at the same time… Then, when they reach the right temp, the solder just flows right into the joint… I use the X-Acto “Extra Hands” soldering jig as well, so I’m sure that bth parts a touching right, and have a little pressure on them to keep the iron from moving them apart… Keep some heat-sinks on hand as well if you’re doing any soldering that requires multiple solder joints on the same piece so you don’t un-solder something you just finished…
All the tutorials and advice given are solid info.
Clean…Flux…and Heat are your by-words. Brass is a very dense material and you have to ‘open it up’ with heat to accept solder…as mentioned above, practice on scrap if you can.