Silver soldered rings

[thehomeengineer]

Hi All

Not sure if this is posted in the correct category.

When silver soldering I like to use rings wherever possible. This ensures the soldering can be placed exactly where you want it and just the right amount of solder is used for a tidy joint. To make the rings a piece of steel smaller than the ring needed is cross drilled at one end to accept the solder rod. Due to spring back the rings end up larger hence a smaller mandrel makes a tighter ring. The lathe placed in a low gear can the be used to coil the solder around the steel. For safety the solder is run through a tool holder and the end of the solder rod held with a pair of pliers while feeding onto the mandrel under power. Once complete the rings can be snipped to length and adjusted to fit snugly around the joint to to soldered.

The Mandrel are cleaned before cooling solder so the solder is not contaminated.

Different diameter ring mandrels.

End of solder rod bent to aid the start of coiling.

Ready for sniping into rings.

The rings were purposely left short so there wasn’t any excess solder around joint.

Components cleaned in sulphuric acid bath. As I solder a lot of copper the steel components come out copper plated which cleans off easily.

Just a tiny amount of solder was used to solder the 1/8” pipe to body.

Completed lubricator bodies.

I hope this helps and will be of interest
The Home Engineer