Just how strong is a silver soldered join?

by John

I bought some 6mm x 0.7mm brass strip to hold on wooden lagging on my 6″ vertical boiler.   Trouble was that I could find suppliers who had the strips only in 300mm (12″) lengths.  So I decided to join 2 of the strips to provide the 450mm lengths that I need.

I have made band saw blades with silver solder, quite succesfully, but the ends were scarfed so the join was over a 5mm or so length of the blade.

I wondered whether I could butt join the brass strips with silver solder, and if so, whether the join would be adequately strong.

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So here are the brass strips end to end, fluxed and weighed down so they do not move.

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And here is the silver soldered join.  Not particularly neat, but OK for the purposes of the test.

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The other side.  As I said, not particularly neat. And I did not even bother with an acid soak.

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So I drilled a hole in the end of the joined strips, and wired on a hefty weight.  The top end was held in the vise.   Seemed OK so I increased the weights.

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Looking down the strip from the vise.

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By this stage I was standing back, expecting the soldered join to give way.  But it did not.  Hmm.   Must do a tidy up soon.

 

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21 kg, 46.3lbs.

At this point I stopped adding weights.  I think that the soldered join should hold the wooden strips to my model boiler!

Are you impressed?  I am.