If I were to use a small steel bolt (#0-80) to align my bronze and brass parts during solder, in theory I could just remove the bolt after soldering because the solder shouldn’t stick to the steel? Right?
Details: I need to solder a (small) bronze casting to some thin wall brass tubing. I plan to use brass wire solder (1330 degrees - approximately comparable to “medium” jeweler’s silver solder) and a small torch.
I know with say 45% silver solder, if you get any flux on the steel, it will adhere to the steel. We use 45% to join brass to steel & copper to steel.
Yikes! Thanks for that warning. It sounds like potentially a bad plan - and here I thought I was being so clever. I guess I can test it on a scrap bolt.
But the silver lining is that now I know I can potentially solder to steel!
I have used aluminum alignment rods for brass soldering in steam engine models . The solder won’t stick to the aluminum even with flux . Tim’s right about steel. It can be soldered .
With 0-80 even the flux can be an issue even if you don’t have a solder bond. There is enough surface area that the stickiness can provide enough bond that you can twist an AL bolt off. Stainless is harder to solder to than plain steel, but you can still solder to it. At your soldering temp you above the melting point of AL and are in the range of silver solder anyway. I’d either counterbore the bronze part, clamp it all externally, or use a ceramic pin to align them.
Though why so hot. There are a lot of solders that will work around 400F. Does this need to hold pressure? Is it just a mechanical joint and not a seal?
You’re right - technically brass solder is silver solder. I’m using it just because it’s the right color - I’m not the neatest solder-er.
I need to align two holes. The pin would be radial.
Where would I even get a 0.050 diameter ceramic pin?
EDIT: I suppose I could do all the rest of my soldering with the brass solder and then solder just that one spot with low temp “silver solder” in the 400-ish degree range.
Always some chance for experimentation.
Stainless steel that is not recently abraded is quite resistant to 60/40 rosin core solder, much more so than regular steel. I don’t know if some of the fluxes you would be using would cut through the chromium oxide or not.
As it turns out, I was able to solder by carefully avoiding the area with the bolt (thanks to the warnings above!) Since there’s not much structural strength required, and it’s not a water seal I was able to solder opposite the steel bolt and then remove it after soldering.
For scale, this is 0-80 UNF bolt.
