johnsmachines

machines which I have made, am making, or intend to make, and some other stuff. If you find this site interesting, please leave a comment. I read every comment and respond to most. n.b. There is a list of my first 800 posts in my post of 17 June 2021, titled "800 Posts"

Tag: silver solder

August 19, 2018

Just how strong is a silver soldered join?

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.

 

 

 

7 Comments
August 6, 2018

Trevithick Dredger Engine-2 steps forward, 1 step back.

A few posts back I reported how I very cleverly silver soldered together some “sliced bread” bits of brass and bronze, because I did not have big enough material.

Then I spent a day machining the outlines, drilling the holes and finishing the parts.

Today I silver soldered the parts to the Trevithick boiler.  The joins in the material were so good they were invisible, and the fact that the joins were there did not enter my brain.

And this was the outcome.

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Before

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After

The beautiful silver soldered join melted as I attempted to silver solder the part to the boiler.  It has made the part unusable.

I will go through the exercise again, but next time I will bronze braze the join.  Bronze will not melt or let go with silver soldering temperatures.

I will try to not make this mistake again.  I try to not make the same mistake more than 3 or 4 times.

1 Comment