Garden Railway Forum

Getting closer to soldering up the tender tank.

"This soft soldering caper is strange compared to silver brazing eh Shaun."

Soft soldering = steep learning curve at the Llewellyn Loco Works.

That looks absolutely brilliant Dazza. Very clean and neat I think. Well done....

Some lovely work there! Soft soldering a bit different to brazing steel with brass isn’t it!

Garethh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:38 pm Some lovely work there! Soft soldering a bit different to brazing steel with brass isn’t it!

I still silver braze some brass bits with silver. I silver braze my frame tubes with 56% Harris silver. Brass is only used now on the cutout piece in my chainstay bridges, but I do brass brass frames for years before switching to Silver 20 years ago. Just getting one's head around the fact that the material gets barely warm and the soft solder runs after all the years of brazing. It feels like one is cheating when using soft solder.

Hydrostatic Dazza wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 7:52 pm

Garethh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:38 pm Some lovely work there! Soft soldering a bit different to brazing steel with brass isn’t it!

I still silver braze some brass bits with silver. I silver braze my frame tubes with 56% Harris silver. Brass is only used now on the cutout piece in my chainstay bridges, but I do brass brass frames for years before switching to Silver 20 years ago. Just getting one's head around the fact that the material gets barely warm and the soft solder runs after all the years of brazing. It feels like one is cheating when using soft solder.

I’ve only ever used silver on frames for stainless bits and pieces, I can definitely see how it’d work better when doing a lot of lug work though. I found I was hopeless trying to use a soldering iron to soft solder, a small butane torch seemed much more natural!

Some more soldering last night at the Llewellyn Loco works. More fittings and coal rails and a wee bit of clean up to come. The loco will steam in the third decade of the 21st century, if I keep my fingers crossed.

The Llewellyn Locomotive works shop crew are doing their best to make progress on the Tender.
Stainless tender hand rail from a 2.00mm Swiss DT bicycle spoke. The Llewellyn Locomotive works shop crew are doing their best to make progress on the Tender.
Stainless tender hand rail from a 2.00mm Swiss DT bicycle spoke. Might finish breaking edges and soldering today before this evenings run at the Potters Orchid Railway.

At the Llewellyn Locomotive Works, Captain Plod did a wee bit of finishing work on the hand rails, soldering and fitted a water tap under the shoveling plate, Queensland Railways influences are showing.

MAM prepped her plate work, Plod did the soldering, all good practice for Plod's coal fired loco build, but don't let on eh ;-)

Extremely tidy work there.

MAM in the Red Room working on her Lady Ann plate work.

Meanwhile the mob were working on the WHB hose and machining a lamp bracket and soldering it on to the tender. A red and white SLR lamp will be stowed in a tender mounted tool box.

Old Man Aaron wrote: ↑Thu Dec 31, 2020 1:55 am Extremely tidy work there.

MAM is learning a lot from a master engineer... Looking forward to seeing progress on her build Dazza.

FWLR wrote: ↑Mon Jan 04, 2021 9:29 am MAM is learning a lot from a master engineer... Looking forward to seeing progress on her build Dazza.

I am not so sure about the "master engineer" , I simply read a lot, learn from others and try to apply good stuff to what we do.
I will keep all posted on progress. MAM was doing some clean up work last night and tonight we may be doing some plate work soldering.
MAM's loco runs very sweet, 30 -35mins at a realistic speed and very stable with its SloMo. Due to Roundhouse motion having a decent amount of slop and play when I set the valves I optimised it for forward running, We can get it to creep around the POR with out fuss. Very soothing. It works fine in reverse but I can detect a difference, but it is not significant

The workshop foredog and offsider are pondering the tool box lid and fitting the little hinges with some trepidation. The intention is the tool box will store two small SLR models lamps for use on the tender, one red for light engine running and one white for tender first running. The white lamp may be used for a cab light for the gauge glass etc when one is night running. The box shape with curved lid is inspired by early Queensland Railway loco tender boxes, some which still exist to store tools at the Ipswich Heritage workshops where I volunteered on occasions in the past when one could. Also the picture and workshop drawing of Burma Railways # 9 gives inspiration.

That's a very good looking set of bending rolls there Daz and indispensable for jobs like this, are they a home brew construction or perhaps something made for the jewellery trade?

pandsrowe wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:55 am That's a very good looking set of bending rolls there Daz and indispensable for jobs like this, are they a home brew construction or perhaps something made for the jewellery trade?

They are made for hobby use and are available here in Oz from suppliers of hobby tools. Mine came from a tool stall at a local exhibition in Melbourne. From memory it was the plastic kit modellers show, but I've seen them at model railway shows as well.

Chronos has them in the UK, catalogued as a 'miniature bending machine' and I assume other model engineering suppliers would also sell them.

I bought mine years ago for HO use and don't use it often in garden scale as it's small size limits it to small and thin parts. I've got a 3 in 1 sheet metal machine which is a combination of bending rolls/bending brake/guillotine that gets a lot more use for loco building, especially the guillotine.

Regards,
Graeme