I need to solder a some wires to a couple hinges. i can’t get the solder to stick. anyone get any ideas why and how fix it?
It could be one of any number of things. The spot where you’re applying solder must be nothing but bare metal and needs to be heated to the melting point of the solder. Depending on the mass of the metal and the power of your iron/gun, this may take a long time.
Some metals are also more difficult to solder to.
My best suggestion would be to sand the metal down with a course grit sandpaper and then put a big glob of flux on it. Heat the flux, let it work its magic, wipe it off with some alcohol, and then try soldering. You may need to heat the metal for several minutes.
If the hinges are attached by screws, try wrapping the wires around the screws before tightening them up. Alternately, if your soldering equipment lacks the heat to bring the hinges up to the melting point of the solder, you could try solding the wires to nails and driving the the nails into the hinge after drilling pilot holes.
If they are steel, I have heard you need to use an acid flux. Here’s a link to a page on this site http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/004/462ifjeg.asp about soldering. Here’s another page http://www.trainweb.org/csg/soldering_tips.html
Enjoy
Paul
Thanks alot guys. I was trying to solder a Steel door hinge. I was gonna solder it and screw it on. incase one got broken somehow i would still have power.
Most carbon steels should solder fairly easily. The one thing with soldering is cleanliness. I’d clean them to bare shiny metal, then maybe scuff them a bit with a scotchbrite pad or sandpaper to give them a slight tooth for the solder to bite into. Then flux them and tin them up before attepmting to solder your wires. I worked in a radiator shop for 4 years, so I’ve had my share of soldering practice on everything from radiators to gas tanks. Usually when I had a problem it was me trying to save time and not clean enough. So clean, clean clean then solder away.
You cannot solder to some metals. As I don’t know what metal you are trying to solder too, I can only guess. Brazing will probably do the job for you. The soldering iron you are using might be far to low a wattage to solder to a large mass of metal. I assume that the hinge is small, not a door size hinge, so you would need about 100 watt iron “if” the metal can be soldered, otherwise braze.
If all else fails, drill and tap the steel plates and use a bolted jumper wire with or without ring terminals. Make sure you use stranded wire so it wont fracture from flexing. J.R.