Tinning Stainless Before Soldering

[muddog]

I posted this in the newbie forum, but it's buried under 150 posts. I thought it might be of interest to all.

Finally after 151 posts we're going to talk about tinning. I'm am newbie to this forum, but not to shinnin or beer making . This is one point that has been completely missed . If you want to take a moderately difficult task and make it relatively simple, then learn to tin stainless.
it's very simple. clean your pieces , I sand mine,get the shine off, don't touch em, flux em, heat em, flux so more , put solder to it ,if it doesn't stick, flux some more. watch your heat it, don't burn your flux, it won't take as much heat as trying to solder 2 pieces together. make sure you have solder all the way around your piece.
You have your joint all cleaned and fluxed, put the heat to it and solder and the solder just runs everywhere, it's not like copper which loves to suck up solder. maybe you didn't clean well enough or you got your flux to hot and burned it. now it has to come apart to be
re cleaned and now you are going to try again and hope for the best.
Once you have it tinned, you won't have that problem, once it's tinned, you know it's going to take solder. watching the tinning while heating is also about the best indicator that you have the proper heat on both pieces. as you are heating watch the tinning, to me it looks like it starting to sweat, then it will get shiny, it has now come to temperature. now is the time to add more solder, if need be ,I've had joints come together perfectly with just tinning.
I first figured this out when I drilled a keg for a tri clamp ferrule, it fit snug like it was supposed to, but the hole was ragged so I cleaned it up with my dremel. set the ferrule in the hole and it fell thru to the flange, that was good. now I had to figure a way to keep the ferrule in place. had a drink or 10, I lost count. but it finally came to me to tin the ferrule to make it fit snug in the hole. once I tinned the ferrule I had so much fun doin that , I decided to tin around the hole on the keg. set the ferrule back in the hole ,gave it a little tap to set it, put the heat to it , watched the solder get shiny and all of a sudden it just all sucked together added a little more to form a shoulder and was done. Wow it was that easy . After that I will not solder stainless without tinning first.
I know how frustrating it can be to solder stainless. this technique will take most of that out. it is fun to me now to watch it come together instead of running all over the place, whereas it used to be a chore to solder stainless. you'll save solder as well.
try it, you'll like it. Muddog

[Aquafish]

Mudgog just came across your post be it a little late. I drilled the hole in my key, used the dremel to fit it snugly, hit with rubber mallet to seat, perfect. Cleaned fluxed and set to solder. I heated the bushing, things going great then BAMB the bushing fell into the keg. I have tried every thing to hold it place but no sucess so far. Was going to give up and go to a welder. You provided a differnet approach and I'm going to give it a go, nothing to lose at this point.

[Halfbaked]

it is fun to me now to watch it come together instead of running all over the place, whereas it used to be a chore to solder stainless. you'll save solder as well. try it, you'll like it. Muddog

Are you suggesting that you have a video coming? If so that be great.

[bearriver]

Are you suggesting that you have a video coming? If so that be great.

Great idea there, I'm sure that would help many will be distillers!

[Truckinbutch]

You have been making some very informative and useful posts . Easy to understand . Thank you for that
>WHERETHAHELL was ya when I was startin out ?

[Aquafish]

Because of this posting I was able to get that SS fitting soldered into the keg. Still not easy but it can be done. I used regular solder and Stay-Brite flux. This is very different from soldering copper and takes some pratice to notice the differences. I burned the flux several times and had to reclean everything. I finally figured out the proper procedure and things were going great. Being greeding I wanted to have it look pretty, big mistake, I should have stopped when it looked solidly soldered. To much heat and everything falls apart. If I had to do it over again I would not have cleaned such a large area around the hole. The solder doesn't stick to dirty metal. Lots of pratice and you could solder anything to SS. But thanks again to Muddog

[muddog]

I forgot about this post and just came across it.
Tb, thank you for the kind words.
AF, helping people makes me happy, you made me happy, thank you.
I like to put a shoulder of solder on fittings as well and that can be the most challenging part.
Here's idea that I think will work:
Once you have you stuff tinned and in place, wrap a piece of solder around the joint and hopefully with proper heating it will form a shoulder.
Also the beer brewing boys have created a dimpler, with it you can make a dimple in you're pot and fill with solder.
Them boys over to the home brew forum : http://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow are some smart sumbitchs and a lot of what I learned I 've carried to here . You want ideas for temp control and boil pots check them out.
Here's my dimpler:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/4-87-keg-tool-402677/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow