Chapter 5.10 – Soft Soldering and Filing the BottomMy goal
today yesterday was to finish up the tank assembly. I need to soft solder together all the parts so that it is one water-tight unit.
I decided to take it in smaller pieces, if I can, rather than just try and solder the whole thing together. Seems like it will be REALY hard to get back in some of the corners as a whole unit. It will also be easier to give each section the attention that it deserves if I do it in smaller chunks. (This is my theory anyway)
So, I start by soldering the corner members to the front plates. Here it is all set up for soldering.
Now, doing it one section at a time caused this problem though – I have to maintain the little openings for other plates to slide into. The soft solder effectively filled the 0.040” gap at the edge of the corner members. So I used a razor saw to clear out those openings.
This is an attempt to show you one of the slots I’m talking about, after opening it up.
Here are all three corner members solder to their respective parts – the left and right front plates and the rear of the top plate.
Now comes my latest setback. I was attempting to clean up the solder joint area on some of the Horseshoe Member pieces using a fine Scotch-Brite wheel and ‘thought’ I was being careful. But this thing is a rather gangly piece with things sticking out all over the place. And, well, I must have touched it to the wrong side of the wheel and the part shot out of my hand, bounced around a few times and hit the floor. None too gently I might add. Needless to say, all my carefully shaped curves and angles were all a skew
And what’s worse, is that it cracked partway through at one place where there’s a hole close to a corner (too close – that wasn’t very good planning on my part).
After scolded myself for using the stupid Scotch-Brite wheel when I KNEW I shouldn’t, I started on the recovery plan. (I KNEW I shouldn’t have used that wheel for this very reason but it’s so easy, and I was being careful… but not careful enough – have I ever been able to be ‘careful enough’ that I don’t lose a piece while using that wheel? Not very often! So, I deserved the scolding! - Don’t you hate it when your right, but you don’t listen to yourself?)
Anyway, my recovery plan was to anneal the part again and carefully re-form it back into its intended shape. If I could be careful enough not to break it completely, it should be plenty good once it is all soldered into place.
So, the next many hours were spent re-forming and re-fitting that piece into the rest of the assembly. And of course, to make sure it all fit properly, I had to re-assemble everything I’d taken apart. But in the end, I got there.
After that fiasco, I think I’m now ready to get back to the soldering. But first, I have to take it all back apart again so I can clean the areas to be soldered.
This was about all I could handle for one day. It will take more time than I had (more patience than I had right then, to be honest) to flux up and solder it all together. This will be a multi-hour process. Maybe tomorrow? I’ve got Monday off for MKLJ day:)
We’ll see how it goes then.
Kim
