Just a personal preference, but I like 50/50 solder best for electronics. You can no longer buy it. I have several 1 lb. spools that I bought years ago which will probably last me the rest of my (soldering) life. It is .062 diameter and resin core, works great. Mouser has a great sellection of solder in 60/40 and 63/37 and various diameters and resin types. They also have lead free. I figure it is too late for me to worry about that since I have been using 50/50 for about 60 years.
How’s that layout coming along, Frank? [:-^]
Jim, here is a link that will tell you more than you really want to know.
Thanks, John.
slo as a gin fizz - why don’t you treat the Mrs to a nice Florida vacation and come on down for a month? I’ll trade you room and board for backdrops, painting and trees.
I’ll trade you something else for a backdrop and some trees. And you know what I want.
My Jersey Central Switcher? That’s a fair deal - how many trees do I get?
Well, this thread inspired me to order some solder, 5 pounds of .050-inch 60-40 with a 3.3-percent rosin core, Kester number 26-6040-0053, for $65.83 from Allied.
A few things that I learned from Dad along the way with regard to solder.
-solder should flow to the heat, so don’t actually touch the solder to the iron (except for tinning), let the temp of the object being soldered melt the solder- this lets you know the connection is good.
-heat sink, heat sink, heat sink. In many applications, the hemostats mentioned above, can be used to also position the item being soldered. So many of the electronics we use are heat sensative, that it is a good idea to protect them.
-one of the most heat sensative items are diodes, so always protect them.
-make sure that your connections are protected and insulated. Check to make sure that any beads of solder do not make their way to places you don’t want them.
-check your connection before moving onto the next one. Especially when you are doing a number of connections, it is much better to check right away than to trouble shoot at the end.
and also do the points listed previously, make sure it is clean!
Dennis
Never recommended using silver solder - just letting people know it is out there. In fact, my comment about a high melting temperature was to point people away from anything with silver content, as it took a small iron forever to get it to flow.
Also, I said I thought it may be used for plumbing as I had bought some once at Home Depot and it was in the plumbing section with the small hand held torches - hence the wording “Used in plumbing applications I believe”.
Just trying to share information with folks.
Gotta be so careful what you say…
I use a hobby type Silver Solder found in most R/C airplane stores for soldering linkages or controls. Would also be great for guys experimenting in making some animations for our trains, like a swing or merrygo round. This is a more lower temp. type & of course not meant for soldering wires.
Thanks, John
I use a silver solder from Radio Shack for nearly all of my soldering work. What I use, I believe, is called “silver bearing solder,” and contains about 3% silver. I believe it’s 57% tin and 40% lead. It’s comes in a very, very thin diameter which I find to be very useful. It can be twisted around wires and other places in such a way as to hold things in place, and then melted to form a very secure joint. It has a rosin core.
From what I can tell, the melting point isn’t too much higher than standard solder. Although I generally always use a 100-watt gun, I have no trouble when I use any one of my irons, even my dinky little 15 watt one.
The advantage to silver solders is that they tend to be stronger than standard tin-lead solders. I have read before(although I don’t know how true it is) that Lionel originally used a solder a lot like the one I use, with a small silver content.
Most lead-free solders I’ve seen are around 90% tin and 10% silver. These do have a very high melting point, and are generally very difficult to work with(at least in my experience).
Most plumbing solders contain antimony in addition to tin and a little bit of silver.
Use only rosin core solder ! Acid core just keeps eating away at metal ! The new silver -no lead solder and flux is what I use now . Don’t know about radio shack’s silver solder but should’nt have lead .
Here is a website that offers a variety of solder products. It contains a note that is aimed directly at model railroaders, and which illustrates the concern about the temperatures involved in soldering.
In my opinion, ordinary solder works just fine for most toy train applications. For you TMCC guys, however, perhaps a good quality silver solder would provide a welcome increase in conductivity; but you must be careful to control the heat.
I have no financial interest in nor experience with this company:
I bought some 60/40 rosin flux core solder last night. It has flux in it as the name implies. I also picked up a 40 watt soldering iron for $7.99. It has a pencil point tip to it. All from Radio Shack. I guess it’s time to learn how to solder.
Jim