Never used the stuff before. Got a pill-to-liquid smoke conversion kit and I need to shrink the tubing onto one side of the resistor. How does one shrink the stuff? I suspect a flame is not ideal. Would a typical hair dryer work?
I use a match or lighter. Just wave the flame under the wrap & it’ll shrink without any problem.
You can also use a soldering iron. Stroke the tubing gently using the side of the iron, away from the tip to avoid getting solder on the tubing.
Go to Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s and get the marine electrical kit. Has various sizes of heat shrink, crimps and etc. The nice thing is it has a refillable mini butane torch. Works great. Some automotive stores might have it too. Also works great to “weld” plastic baits together.
Thanks, all. I ended up just using a flame carefully. Seemed to work.
I keep a small candle, the stuby type, on my work bench for shrink tubing.
I think you’ll like the tubing better than wrapping black tape around a connection. It’ neater, less work too.
George
Heat shrink in going into the catagory of inventions given to man by God, with velcro, zip ties, duct tape and WD-40[:D]
BTW, I’ve used both a heat gun and a flame, heat gun better, flame handier
Jim
I use a heat gun. It’s a great help for spray painting. I even use it to mix up two part epoxy. It is an overkill ( cost wise) if it’s just for tubing.
A dab of silicone (bath or car gasket) works too.
I started out by just holding a soldering iron or gun close to the tubing. In my experience, the stuff would melt if you actually touched it with the iron. I came into an old (mid 1970’s) 1500 watt hair dryer that got very very hot. It worked quite well for shrinking the tubing. Eventually I picked up a heat gun on Ebay, but I still tend to use the old hair dryer because it hangs on a hook within easy reach.
I never use any open-flame in my “train shop” as there are too many flamable substances in there.
If you can find it, there is also heat-shrink tape, which can come in very handy if you discover that you have soldered the wires together and forgotten to slide the tubing on first.
Speaking of sliding the tubing, in many cases I have found that I can slide the tubing a couple of inches above a splice or joint, do the soldering, and immediately slide the tubing down over the joint. The residual head from soldering shrinks the tubing very nicely in many cases. It sometimes does unwelcome things to your thumb and forefinger too.
BF,
Where might one find heat shrink tape? All I’ve been able to find is real thick stuff for shrinking monster size cables, not train wire…
McMaster-Carr lists it, but I haven’t used theirs. Try a Google or Yahoo search under “heat shrink tape” or “heat shrinkable tape.”
Note: Some varieties specify that an open flame must be used.
OK, I’ll look harder. The ones I found either don’t have adhesive (the open flame ones) or are real thick and thus unsuitable.
thanx!