Soldering brass tubing to brass tubing

[LJDIII]

Greetings - I hope the educated can help this uneducated individual. I need to solder ornamental brass tubing to ornamental brass tubing. If my memory serves me correctly I could use 40% Tin with 60% Lead solid solder using Zinc Chloride or Ammonia Chloride Flux making sure not to over heat the thin tubing. Your assistance with this will be greatly appreciated. In the past I have always gotten quality assistance from the forums.

LJDIII

[hankj]

Greetings - I hope the educated can help this uneducated individual. I need to solder ornamental brass tubing to ornamental brass tubing. If my memory serves me correctly I could use 40% Tin with 60% Lead solid solder using Zinc Chloride or Ammonia Chloride Flux making sure not to over heat the thin tubing. Your assistance with this will be greatly appreciated. In the past I have always gotten quality assistance from the forums.

LJDIII

You are correct.

Still, for thin work, why would you not want to use a cored wire solder?

Much simpler, IMHO.

Hank

[LJDIII]

You are correct.

Still, for thin work, why would you not want to use a cored wire solder?

Much simpler, IMHO.

Hank
Hank - Thank you for your response - "cored wire solder would be rosin or acid core. Correct or am I missing something. I know that rosin is for electronics while the acid is used where corrosion is not a problem. In most cases acid core was used for radiator repair when the radiators were metal. Now they seem to be all plastic. Wouldn't the acid over a period of time corrode the joints and they would fail?

LJDIII

[hankj]

Solder with a flux core is abailable for virtually every application today. Any decent hardware or big box store should have it.

Hank

[LJDIII]

Hankj - Thank you for your response. Stopped by a Big Box "L" on East cost. They are closing out a product that was a type of supper glue for Brass connections. I didn't buy it because in some cases this Big Box doesn't know what to carry and gets in a jam.

Thanks once again

LJDIII

[LarryL]

Brass to brass joints are easily made with silver solder, flux and a propane torch. Just buy a small quantity of silver solder with a 40 to 50% silver content and not one with a 5% silver content.

LarryL

[Monte55]

Brass to brass joints are easily made with silver solder, flux and a propane torch. Just buy a small quantity of silver solder with a 40 to 50% silver content and not one with a 5% silver content.

LarryL

Good advice

[usmcpop]

Saw this on a musical instrument repair forum. This was mentioned with respect to 70-30 or 60-40 solder:

"Resin-core solder such as is used for electrical work should never be used as it won't hold properly. Only solid wire soft solder should be used, with a liquid flux."

[LJDIII]

LarryL, Monte55, usmcpop - Thank you for your council and knowledge. I would like to ask LarryL if he is talking about the small propane hand held tank kit set up or in my case I have one of those "turbo torches" with three tips that hooks up to a 20lb cylinder?

Thanks to all

LJDIII

[LarryL]

LarryL, Monte55, usmcpop - Thank you for your council and knowledge. I would like to ask LarryL if he is talking about the small propane hand held tank kit set up or in my case I have one of those "turbo torches" with three tips that hooks up to a 20lb cylinder?

Thanks to all

LJDIII
A Benz-0-Matic propane torch with small hand-held tank will easily melt silver solder on small components. I've not used any of the Turbo torches but they probably will also melt silver solder well. In fact you will have to be careful not to overheat a silver solder joint as overheating will blacken a joint. Before I graduated to an oxyacetylene torch and GTAW welding, I did a lot of silver soldering with a Benz-o-matic torch. Your components have to fit tightly if you want to produce high-strength silver solder joints.

"Brazing Book" has a lot of information about brazing and silver soldering/brazing:

http://www.handyharmancanada.com/TheBrazingBook/contents.htm#Index

Of course, the Harmon Company is pushing their products but you can get a lot of useful information from websites like this one.

LarryL

[LarryL]

LJDIII, the AWS forum has a brazing section that covers silver soldering. You might look over the threads there to see if any of the soldering operations being discussed are similar to your application. :)

http://www.aws.org/cgi-bin/mwf/board_show.pl?bid=15

LarryL

[LJDIII]

hankj, LarryL, Monte55,usmcpop.

Thank you for your good council. Just completed the project using all the methhod that were put on the table. Each section of this project wound up using 60/40 solid core solder and silver solder. For the lower grade of brass I used the 60/40 for the high quality brass I used the silver solder. I am considering the purchase of a cylinder of Mapp Gas to see how it would work in the future. Any thoughts? Also would any of you have a problem with an e-mail if I get hung up?

Thanks once again for your good council. You make it easier to chug along lifes way.

LJDIII