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Soldering onto nickle silver help


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Hi everyone, I am after a little advice on how to solder on to nickle silver track, the join i get never seems to hold at all well, and they are for ever comming apart, I do roughen the serface, and try to get the metal as hot as i dare, but it never seems to work that well for me. Any tips would be very welcome.

Regards, Colin.

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Soldering problems nearly always come down to

1 wrong solder

2 wrong flux

3 too little heat

 

but more often than most unclean parts.

You are soldering wire to track - so I assume the bottom of the track with any webbing removed.

Use multicore resin fluxed solder - for electrical purposes NOT LEAD FREE

Tin the wire.

Tin the bottom of the track.

place two parts together and melt the solder with hot iron - remove the iron and DO NOT move the parts until cooled.

 

A 25W iron (with a CLEAN tinned tip) should be more than adequate.

 

Nickel silver is as good as brass or copper for soldering. If it was steel rail - then that requires different flux.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

As a particularly clumsy modeller, with a fine line in impatience, I can recommend Baker's Soldering Fluid as the way to get most solderable surfaces to behave as you wish. Cleaning the surfaces is important for any soldering, but I find that an initial application of Baker's, even heating it before putting the solder anywhere nearby, can make the cleaning more effective.

 

When I first used Baker's, more than 40 years ago, it came in a tin, which the product showed every sign of trying to eat. Now it comes in neat plastic bottles, and doesn't look rusty when you tip it out!

 

Just one caveat - do not use it in a confined space if you are asthmatic. Don't ask me how I know!

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