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[TomHugill]

Hey folks, on my moonraker there are a large number of railings that required soldering. On my Najade I used standard solder but experience has taught me that these are fairly weak. I was wondering if anyone with more experience could point me in the right direction of a more robust soldering material.

[boatmadman]

silver solder will do the job. You need a different flux and as usual, cleanliness is vital. A bit of practise on some scrap and you will crack it in no time.
Ian

[TomHugill]

Do I need a specialist iron? I've just replaced mine with one that goes upto 400 degrees, will this be sufficient?

[boatmadman]

Might need a higher temp gas torch, see below:
http://www.cupalloys.co.uk/low-temp-silver-solder/

[imsinking]

I use EASYFLO 4 solder, one of the lowest temp' hard solders , you need a blowtorch . . . a drawback to it is the brass goes really soft & starts bending all over the place . . has anyone ever tried the new flexible super glues instead of soldering / brazing ?
Bill

[roycv]

Hi imsinking, recently soft soldered some small stanchions, lots of cleaning up needed.  Still do it but try superglue first.
regards Roy

[Subculture]

The higher temperatures anneal the brass. However over time it hardens considerably.

I find soft solder is generally adequate, but it does depend on the railing design I suppose. You can get higher temperature soft solders with low or no lead content, these might be a bit tougher than the 60/40 soft solders.

[Shipmate60]

I use soft lead solder with a liquid flux and found no problems.
The liquid flux lets the solder flow and reduces the cleaning up.

I have had some rails bent flat but just straightened them and all fine.


Bob

[TomHugill]

Could be that my solder is the issue, could anyone recommend a decent higher temperature soft solder?

[Subculture]

You can try a plumbers merchants, they should sell lead free solder for drinking water pipe connections. You can get it in smaller gauges from places like Maplin or online retailers like Rapid, Farnell etc.

I use an acid based flux for soldering brass, although a normal rosin based flux works fine for smaller jobs. I find scrotchbrite pads work well to get the brass squeaky clean for soldering before applying flux.

[Brian60]

For more precise control and less mess/cleanup I use solder paste which you are supposed to be able to brush on (not a chance!) I put into place using a toothpick. Once in place a quick flash of heat and the join is soldered.

[Shipmate60]

An old thread about soldering Stantions:


http://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,4898.msg49323.html#msg49323


Bob

[david48]

On my Fairmount Alpine railings and there's a lot ,the materials I used was bakers fluid,core solder variable temp soldering iron . The stanchions are about .05 mm think , top rail .75 mm and the bottom 2 rails are .50 mm . The brass was pushed through the holes and a very small drop of Bakers fluid put on the joint tin the iron and wipe of excess solder ,when the tip just touched the joint the solder flashes into the joint there was no cleanup . I  tried  silver solder but because the material was so thin it just destroyed.
David