Author Topic: Old School Soldering  (Read 12357 times)

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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #25 on: January 06, 2021, 03:13:35 am »
I've pulled apart the old Turner torch and inspected the tank and head.   It will need all new seals as well and some new hardware.    It was dropped on the top at one point and the holder for the iron had been badly damaged.   I attempted to heat and straigten it but cracked the brass.   I brazed it back together but you can see it has a bit of a bend to it still.   From what I can tell, this one is about 20 years newer.   

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #26 on: January 06, 2021, 03:20:26 am »
This is the last of the three that were found.  Notice to red Christmas ribbon around the box.   Sadly the filler was damaged.  While this could be TIGed, there's a lot of rust along the seam and inside the tank.  This one will be left as is. 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #27 on: January 06, 2021, 03:51:18 am »
To attempt to solder SMD with it, will require some sort of custom iron.   It's going to be a trade off of thermal mass, size and ease of use. 

The home made iron I show in that video is very crude using a wine cork for the insulator and one of my dad's old 35 Remington cases for the handle.    If you watched the video, you could see it's possible to do some basic surface mount part removal with it.  I'm sure I could have soldered with it as well.    The new iron will need to be heated with your hand next to the mass.  Thinking ceramics.   Maybe just embed a thermocouple into the mass and use a hand held meter to monitor the temperature.   

Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #28 on: January 06, 2021, 04:15:28 am »
To attempt to solder SMD with it, will require some sort of custom iron.   It's going to be a trade off of thermal mass, size and ease of use. 
Will a can of spinach help ?  :P
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #29 on: January 06, 2021, 04:19:16 am »
I was thinking 6 months of weight training.   Need to sort out some finger exorcises.  Hummmm...  I'll let that one float.

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #30 on: January 07, 2021, 01:55:58 am »
Machined up a about the largest bit of copper I thought I could use before it gets in the way.   I tried a few heat cycles with the propane torch and did some through hole soldering with it.    It's better than I would have expected.   Using one of my original Pace tips.

Offline TerraHertz

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #31 on: January 07, 2021, 08:25:32 am »
No, an oxy torch is far worse, If this thing leaks, you get a fire. If an oxy torch leaks on the fuel line before the arrestor it could ignite, flashback, and blow up the whole tank killing everyone in the room. That's why they should always be inspected before each use and why they put oderant in acetelyne.

The other 'nice' thing about acetylene, is that if the confined gas pressure is allowed to rise above about 15 PSI, it can spontaneously detonate. Doesn't need any oxidant. This is why acetylene cylinders are complicated things, full of porous material soaked in acetone, with the acetylene disolved in the acetone. Even the top of the cylinder around the outlet is packed with asbestos cloth. The aim is to avoid any significant volume of high pressure raw acetylene.


I don't know why anyone would consider these old kerosene torches dangerous. Any more than just a bottle of kerosene. They are not pumped up to high pressure, just enough to push some kerosene up into the heated tubing where it becomes a gas to produce the flame. It's the expansion of the small amount of heated kero that creates the 'blow' of the flame. Plus the kero tank is not going to suddenly spring a leak. The seams are mechanical, with solder just to seal. The solder can't melt while there's kero inside, and if there's no kero, then a leak due to melted solder seam is not a problem either. I guess if you filled it then put the whole thing in a fire, it could explode, but that's a silly case.
They are however a pain to run. Clogged jet being one annoyance.

As for filling a plastic bag with any fuel-oxy mix, now *that's* a death wish. Static electricity and plastic bags... That guy in the video was just lucky.

Here's my old torch. Haven't run it for decades. Yes I do have some big copper-block soldering irons for it. It's a 'just in case' relic. Hmm, it still holds some kerosene, but the pump seal is dead.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2021, 10:31:39 am by TerraHertz »
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Online coppercone2

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #32 on: January 07, 2021, 09:18:16 pm »
modern acetylene cylinders use THF instead of acetone and there is alot of safety work that went into them since there was a explosion in australia a long time ago. Some of the concerns that people have no longer apply to modern tanks, but all concerns involving gas are still the same.
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #33 on: January 08, 2021, 03:29:05 am »
The post apocalyptic Pace iron.

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #34 on: January 09, 2021, 04:08:28 am »
Seems like batteries shouldn't be used.    My old Central Scientific Galvanometer, model 375-4. 

http://www2.humboldt.edu/scimus/Manufac/Cenco/Cenco.htm

Offline pickle9000

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #35 on: January 09, 2021, 04:52:10 am »
Stained glass was a major user of soldering irons 3/8 inch to 1 inch tips is normal. 120 watt iron is a pretty good size for a half inch tip. Came is the H channel material (solid lead) that the glass slips into. Old pre-electric irons where just that a copper iron in a fire you would have as many as you need to keep up with the job.

It's a very old technology.
 

Offline helius

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #36 on: January 09, 2021, 05:12:17 am »
Copper soldering irons were used in this reproduction of the 2200-year-old Antikythera Mechanism:

Showing that a similar tool could have been used to make it.
 
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Offline TerraHertz

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #37 on: January 16, 2021, 10:42:26 am »
modern acetylene cylinders use THF instead of acetone and there is alot of safety work that went into them since there was a explosion in australia a long time ago. Some of the concerns that people have no longer apply to modern tanks, but all concerns involving gas are still the same.

You don't happen to know how to transfer acetylene from one tank to another? I'm curious.

For propane it's easy - gravity and gas pressure in the full tank will push the liquid to the empty tank. Just a matter of fittings, tank orientation, flushing out air, etc.

For general gases, oxygen, argon, CO2, MIG gas, etc, there are high pressure gas transfer pumps. Cheap from China, someday I must get one.

But acetylene... I have no idea. At least of how to do it safely. Must be possible, since cylinders _are_ filled.
Maybe there's some old book(s) from the early 1900's with details, before everything went liability mad. But I haven't found them yet.

It's not such a pressing need, now one can buy gas cylinders outright again. Thank God.
Years ago I swore I'd never again get sucked into the cylinder rental scam.
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Online coppercone2

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #38 on: January 17, 2021, 06:37:03 am »
Yea I would not fuck with acetylene its cheap enough. Seriously dangerous way to try to save money. Get a portatorch with small bottles.

For high pressure gasses you use higher pressure equalized tanks with flow limiting restriction and a good regulator. The distributors typically have weird gasses delivered and common gasses supplied from a gas battery. I want to say the welding store does not use a transfer pump they just have like 30 cylinders daisy chained together for distribution, the high pressure transfer happens in some professional facility.

When I think of china + thousands of PSI that is bad. How do you know someone did not machine a shitty casting or something. The professional air compressors are the size of a industrial washing machine and run at like 95db+. The frames of all this stuff are built like safes with like 3/8 inch plate being the minimum. Special tech gets paid like 30+ an hour just to service em. I expect the QC for these parts to be very expensive (like a spline shaft manufacturing place). I suspect its welded together with the same standards as military vehicle armor.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2021, 06:45:51 am by coppercone2 »
 

Offline iso

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #39 on: January 17, 2021, 10:12:37 am »
modern acetylene cylinders use THF instead of acetone and there is alot of safety work that went into them since there was a explosion in australia a long time ago. Some of the concerns that people have no longer apply to modern tanks, but all concerns involving gas are still the same.

You don't happen to know how to transfer acetylene from one tank to another? I'm curious.

For propane it's easy - gravity and gas pressure in the full tank will push the liquid to the empty tank. Just a matter of fittings, tank orientation, flushing out air, etc.

For general gases, oxygen, argon, CO2, MIG gas, etc, there are high pressure gas transfer pumps. Cheap from China, someday I must get one.

But acetylene... I have no idea. At least of how to do it safely. Must be possible, since cylinders _are_ filled.
Maybe there's some old book(s) from the early 1900's with details, before everything went liability mad. But I haven't found them yet.

It's not such a pressing need, now one can buy gas cylinders outright again. Thank God.
Years ago I swore I'd never again get sucked into the cylinder rental scam.
I transfer calibration gases at work from cylinders into passivated canisters, which are not rated for much pressure but the principle I imagine is the same. I put the receiving canister under a vacuum (if it's a calibration gas, down to ~100 mTorr, but for general gas use it doesn't need to be down that far I imagine) then attach it via a bit of stainless steel tubing (usually via a Micro-QT connector) and an appropriate regulator. I then open up the regulator slowly to the required pressure until I can't hear the gas flow anymore. I assume it'd be a similar process for transferring between two larger gas bottles. With acetylene I suspect you couldn't put the old cylinder under vacuum otherwise the saturating solvent would disappear, but maybe if you purged the air out first as you suggest...
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #40 on: January 17, 2021, 12:40:20 pm »
Soldering irons like that were quite common, and you can do a lot of tinsmithing with them as well. Buckets, cups, gutters are all things that used to be soldered together, and there are still plenty of them in use. A farmer would probably have a good number of milk urns that had tin soldered joints in them and do not forget the biggest use was in preserving food, with the original soldered seam tin cans, where the seam and both lids were soldered on. 

While the modern ones are either electric resistance welds, or ultrasonic welds, the lids themselves are crimped, using a thin coating that is both a seal and protective coat to the inside. In the old ones the tin coat served the same function, though you could not tin can tomatoes as the acid dissolved the tin, along with other acid food and drinks like orange juice. I have used them in the past, and still have one or two around, but electric soldering gun is so much more convenient, and also does not need periodic reheating. for bigger jobs gas torches are a lot better, but those are more for plumbing and glazing.
 

Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #41 on: January 19, 2021, 09:30:32 am »
Gave both my blow torches to my neighbor that has a collection of ~100 of them. 

..

Main blowlamp brands we saw in NZ were Primus and Sievert.
Must get a pic of my buddies big collection................

Would like to see it.
Actually when I went to see Jimz today he said he had 200 different models !  :o Plus he's got a few doubles as well so I'm guessing 220+ !
Some pics for your pleasure:







So if old school soldering is the topic of this thread there's some resources for that here:


In the workshop are an additional few in occasional use, in the foreground 2 very similar models from Sievert LH a White Spirts version, RH a Kero version used last week. Both are quick start models with a preheat burner to get the main burner to temp when just opening the valve was enough to have it fire up.


Largest to smallest which is blown through a length of tubing and the LH model is the same as Joes as far as we know although the expert said the wrong pump was on Joe's one.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2021, 09:33:13 am by tautech »
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #42 on: January 20, 2021, 04:45:28 am »
Wow!!!  Thank you very much for taking the time to post their collection.   Some of their irons look pretty small.   Did you show them a picture of my custom iron for surface mount work?  Should be pretty fun to try it,  once we get some warmer weather.

Quote
Largest to smallest which is blown through a length of tubing and the LH model is the same as Joes as far as we know although the expert said the wrong pump was on Joe's one.

Interesting.  It looks like the same pump in your photo.  I wonder what the pump was supposed to look like and why it would have been changed.  I don't feel so bad now about changing the design.   

Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #43 on: January 20, 2021, 07:22:02 am »
Wow!!!  Thank you very much for taking the time to post their collection.   Some of their irons look pretty small.   Did you show them a picture of my custom iron for surface mount work?  Should be pretty fun to try it,  once we get some warmer weather.
I linked Jimz to this thread a good few days back and suppose he saw but it didn't comment. He did some basic electronics years ago so knows a bit about this sort of thing. We have been good friends approaching 40 years.

Quote
Largest to smallest which is blown through a length of tubing and the LH model is the same as Joes as far as we know although the expert said the wrong pump was on Joe's one.

Interesting.  It looks like the same pump in your photo.  I wonder what the pump was supposed to look like and why it would have been changed.  I don't feel so bad now about changing the design.
I guess he made the comment based on something he saw in your vid but didn't elaborate more.

He certainly has a wonderful collection and probably the best in NZ. I guess you saw the NIB units of which some look just like the day they were made. Those couple of 3ft long units hanging on the wall are quite impressive as are the the couple on the floor alongside all the irons.

Funny I picked right out one I'd given him which is a small Primus Kero blowlamp that has curved steel rod folding handles that flip back to hug the tank so to be more compact in storage. That one and the other tautech donated one a more common and little larger Primus he has multiples of.
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #44 on: January 22, 2021, 04:00:55 am »
I would be interested to know if your friend has ever seen an iron like that small one I showed  (not my home made one for electronics, but the old one found with one of the torches).   

In one of the photos, on the top shelf, there appears to be some sort of very large shell casing.  Looks like about 100mm.  Any idea what it is?

Everyone I have shown their collection to has been impressed.   The large torches are jaw dropping.    Does he ever run them?  If so, any videos of one of the large ones in action? 

Offline IanB

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #45 on: January 22, 2021, 04:36:57 am »
The large torches are jaw dropping.    Does he ever run them?  If so, any videos of one of the large ones in action?

My grandfather had a torch similar to those really big two-handed ones. I remember playing with it as a child. It was called a "flame thrower", it ran on kerosene, and it was used for burning weeds and undergrowth to clear ground for planting. It made a giant flame about a foot long.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 04:40:06 am by IanB »
 

Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #46 on: January 22, 2021, 07:35:12 am »
I would be interested to know if your friend has ever seen an iron like that small one I showed  (not my home made one for electronics, but the old one found with one of the torches).
This one in the OP ?

He's got nothing like that that I've ever noticed but I'll ask.

Quote
In one of the photos, on the top shelf, there appears to be some sort of very large shell casing.  Looks like about 100mm.  Any idea what it is?
I'll find out.

Quote
Everyone I have shown their collection to has been impressed.   The large torches are jaw dropping.    Does he ever run them?  If so, any videos of one of the large ones in action?
Very occasionally however if they get all cleaned up for display then not.
I have seen one of the bigun's running and they are indeed fire and brimstone breathers !  :scared:
Pretty darn noisy too.

A rainy day is what I really need to spend a few hours there however now in mid summer in NZ they are not that common and I normally need them for catching up on paperwork due to the never ending outside jobbies here at home. Let's see what I can arrange in the next few weeks however we have an expo coming up so it's gunna be a busy time.
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Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #47 on: February 02, 2021, 09:01:21 am »
In one of the photos, on the top shelf, there appears to be some sort of very large shell casing.  Looks like about 100mm.  Any idea what it is?
Jimz was out when I called however a pic from which I'm fairly sure it's a British 25 pounder 3.45" Howitzer casing although it looks much bigger held between knees for the pic.  :)
At one time they were common here in NZ and pop told me he had used them when he did his CMT in the late 40's.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_25-pounder
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #48 on: February 28, 2021, 04:45:16 am »
That's a big shell casing. 

I finally put the Turner back together.   Your friend my not like my repair work.  The handle screws are new brass as I had destroyed the original ones.  I left the paint on the handle original.  Note the pump stems discolored part way up.  The torch was stored on it's side and the stem had corroded to the point where it was about to snap off.  I welded that entire stem to build it up and then put it in a lathe to cut it back down and polished it a bit.   Used some Teflon tape for the small pipe and replaced all the seals.   

I ran water through it today for the first time.   No leaks and seems to hold pressure well. 

Now we just need some good weather and I'll try out the new soldering iron...

Offline tautech

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Re: Old School Soldering
« Reply #49 on: February 28, 2021, 05:35:45 am »
That's a big shell casing. 

I finally put the Turner back together.   Your friend my not like my repair work. The handle screws are new brass as I had destroyed the original ones.  I left the paint on the handle original.  Note the pump stems discolored part way up.  The torch was stored on it's side and the stem had corroded to the point where it was about to snap off.  I welded that entire stem to build it up and then put it in a lathe to cut it back down and polished it a bit.   Used some Teflon tape for the small pipe and replaced all the seals.   

I ran water through it today for the first time.   No leaks and seems to hold pressure well. 

Now we just need some good weather and I'll try out the new soldering iron...
Looks just fine in fact very tidy Joe.  :-+
If it wasn't functional the only options are restoration, buying a donor to fix it or scrap/recycling.

But like anything aged one must decide its value to you and whether you intend to use it or have it as a collectors piece in used, restored or NIB condition where the common models are worth more as a tool that gets used rather than just sitting on a shelf.

Jimz and I chuckle at your water pressure tests where we'd just be adding some fuel and pressurizing it ready to fire up and if it leaked then back to square one. They need be in a very abused condition before leakage is likely and they were made as portable so got a pile of abuse over the years. Don't remember ever seeing a blow lamp leak.
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