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Help! My boiler leaks

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john mills:
for those spots the gas torch will be hard to get the local area .I use the gas to generally heat the whole boiler the last bit use a oxygen acetylene to bring the local area the last higher temperature it can get at those inner places while the gas supplies the main heat
that is were a helper is needed. don't try all the heating with the oxy torch it is too concentrated and too higher temperature but can bring those local area a little hotter to make the spots that don't want to run properly.
john

Firebird:
You have my sympathies.

I'm currently battling with a Sweet pea boiler which can be seen on the Sweet pea face book page.
As well as the usual propane torch I have oxy/propane torch as well which will get into tight spots without extinguishing.
I also have a long neck sievert torch which will work in enclosed spaces. See Cup alloys web site (usual disclaimer) for details.
The Sweetpea boiler is my 3rd boiler and I have had issues with all 3 but patience is the key, you will get there eventually with it.

Good luck, stick with it.

Cheers

Rich

Wrecks:
Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement.

I worked on the foundation ring this afternoon. The image shows the pits I found under the solder. I drilled these out and filled the holes with copper rivets. This has corrected this leak, but another showed up right beside it on the inner vertical seam.

I've got a buddy coming over Monday and we're going to tackle the tube wall joint. I'll need four hands. I'm going to make some shields for three of the four firebox walls and heat up the tube wall with the big propane torch. Then, I'll try to melt the solder with a mapp-oxygen torch.

The boiler has had just these two problem areas for the last 4 heating cycles, and I've had it up to 100PSI during testing. I need to go to 200psi for the final pressure test. Do I need to be concerned with all this heating and cooling? Are the other joints getting brittle?  I'm worried that when I go to 200, it'll release a flood.

crueby:
You don't have to worry about the  copper getting brittle, heat just anneals it, unlike steel where it hardens with proper heat and cool cycles. Copper and brass only harden with working it, hammering, bending, etc.

Wrecks:
Well, I botched it. I used the shields, and they worked great. I exposed the area I wanted to repair and blasted the interior of the firebox. The exposed area melted solder with no problem. After the first small repair on two tubes, I still had a leak so I decided to do all the tubes. I thought this worked great. The entire tube area was flooded with solder. But I had reused the shield sheets and they were steel. A large amount of fire scale dropped off the sheets into the melted flux and solder. On testing, I had many more leaks now. It was as if the solder were porous. I don't really know if the debris caused it, but the solder looks really bad.

I made a few mistakes with this boiler. It was a bit twisted and some of the bushings weren't exactly where they should have been, so I don't feel too bad about starting over and applying what I've learned to make a better one. Except that I REALLY don't want problems inside the firebox and I'm not sure why they showed up.

One thing I noticed is that none of the threaded ends of any of the stay bolts leaked. Maybe the threads help with the solder sealing. What if I threaded the firebox ends of the tubes? Could that help prevent tube leaks in the firebox?

Also, Kozo specifically says to use a small amount of solder for repairs. I've worked under the assumption that more solder is better. When I repaired, I'd always attempt to solder a whole segment, not a spot. Which is better, spot repairs or area repairs? In general, is more solder better than less solder?

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