RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out

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Elizabeth

The trick to soldering aluminum is to get the area around the joint as clean as possible, and start soldering as soon as you can. A stainless steel brush is the preferred tool to clean the joint before hand. Never use aluminum oxide sandpaper to clean aluminum before soldering, the joint may look clean, but you're putting oxide back on the aluminum as fast as you think you are cleaning it off. A guy at the local welding shop explained this to me when I described the difficulty I was having fabing 3 "L" shaped brackets for throttle spring anchors on my triple Weber Datsun. The first one came out fine, but I spent a couple of days re-doing the other two over and over, and they would break easily if you dropped them. Don't expect the aluminum solder to actually "flow" like electronic solder. Even with an oxi-acetylene welding torch, and the good solder rod with the flux on it, you're are just building up blobs of solder as artfully as you can. A correctly soldered aluminum joint can be surprisingly strong.

Good luck

Paul

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Antenna wire breaks off, soldering Aluminum. near impossible - Elizabeth 20:46:38 06/24/12 (4)

I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - Elizabeth 00:19:21 06/25/12 (3)

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - Paul Eizik 07:27:52 06/25/12 (2)

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - gentlegiantfan 08:09:34 07/10/12 (1)

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - Paul Eizik 20:48:29 07/11/12 (0)

Follow Ups

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - Paul Eizik 07:27:52 06/25/12 (2)

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - gentlegiantfan 08:09:34 07/10/12 (1)

RE: I stucck the Al wire in the hole, built up a mountain of solder next door. so it at least will not fall out - Paul Eizik 20:48:29 07/11/12 (0)

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