Today I thought I would have a go at some steam pipe and silver solder.
Not having done much ss before, I decided to do some practise items first. The first pic shows a flange blank ss’d to a short length of copper pipe and cut in half. As I wanted to be sure to get full penetration (ooeeerrr), I cut the item in half to have a look.
Success, it appears to have gone all the way through!
I then cut 2 more blanks and had a go at soldering from the pipe end, pic 2 shows the result, not so good, think again.
I then turned a flange with a spigot for the pipe to sit in with the idea of putting a ring of ss in the bottom of the spigot, apply heat and let it do its job, but, the pcd of the bolt holes is too small to let me do this with the design requirement of 4mm pipe, so, think again!
I then soldered blank flanges onto a length of pipe from the open end of the flange, filed back to near flat and finished on a flat plate – success, pics 3 and 4 show the results, with some added bling!
Next I needed to work out a way of getting 4 bits of pipe the same. Pic 5 shows a flange positioned 20mm or so from the end of the pipe., with flux and ready to solder.
Pic 6 sees that pipe in the tube bender, using the flange to locate for length, and pic 7 shows the pipe after bending.
Pics 7 and 8 show the finished and polished pipes. These will need to be cut to length to fit into the control block at a later stage.
Overall, I am happy with the results, they aren’t as good as some I have seen, but they’ll do!
Ian
