Red,
It is easy to overheat the work and the solder will just ball up and dance around like
water on a waxed car. Clean joints and a good flux is one aspect, the other is the right solder.
I soldered pretty well, and then a friend lent me a stick of "REAL silver solder", I was unable to solder for the next year and a half. Then another friend stopped by and looked at the stick and said, "NO,... throw that out... " but didn't give me another option.
I found this
Alpha Fry silver braze at the hardware store, and immediately gained back my ability.
It comes with the solder and flux, and really has worked well. 56% silver
Hi Cos,
A little of both, I silver soldered the two frames, and major cross pieces, then
I soft soldered the grating, and minor cross members. At some points I had
two torches running just to get enough heat for the hard solder to flow.
At the grating, I used soft electrical solder. I fluxed the grating and frame with
Kester's self cleaning soldering paste. At first I tried to torch the grate, but quickly
realized I was overheating the work, and was going to burn or damage the grating.
So I used a soldering iron set at about 350°C and tinned the frame(this also heated it),
then laid the grating over the solder, and used the iron to sort of burnish the frame into
place, adding solder as I worked my way around the edges. Once the grating was firmly
set, I then came back with the torch and a slowly worked my way around heating the
solder joint and letting everything settle. Pressing down with a scrap piece of brass as needed.
For the horizontal cross members I would press coat the joint with flux, and then lay a
short cutting of solder on the seam. I would then heat the metal till the solder flowed.
If it flowed to one side, I would heat the opposite side of the joint to get it to flow back across.
I cut and soldered the frames in one evening, then came back in the morning to finish the pieces.
I then puzzled over my hinge points for the day, and commited to drilling them that night.
I was trying to imagine how I would have approached your gantry pieces.
Those are a difficult bit of puzzle. I think I would have silver soldered the
major pieces. Ended up with bits of wet paper towel to close up the framing and
then soft soldered the stanchions and railings. You really did a nice job on those and
the rest of the gantry brass work.