Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Either "comweld 965" or "ezi-weld 801" acording to earlier pages of this thread :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Ive only got the one 2" end to solder a ring on which is the top of my original T500 column. then never stainless steel again. I went back again and saw the posts you mentioned bluc.
I also saw camakazi managed some success with his lamb cannon also so im going to give it a try. worst case scenario i do it and use up the rest of my bernzomatic flux and have to buy some bakers.

I wont be flaring the end it will be just sitting around the end of my pipe with no flared 2" end like mac said to do in the easy easy flange thread.
Do any experienced solderers out there think it would be better if i just hard solder the ring for my flange on, or braze? i want the easy and strongest option. It will have a packed section above it. basically replicating a bubbler and packed section in 2"

From what ive read brazing is the strongest but dont know how hard it is, have never done it, I find soldering easy but doing it neatly well that's another thing :angry-banghead: :laughing-rolling:

Probably what I call brazing is the same as what you call silver soldering

P3T3rPan wrote:Probably what I call brazing is the same as what you call silver soldering

Yup!

Completely different to soft soldering ;-)

Most of my soft soldering is/was done with a soldering iron and air acetylene

Anyone on sunshine coast looking for ezi-weld 801 flux trade tools Nambour have it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Had another idea for soft solder for people that don't know how to use or have access to welding gear for things like stainless stock pot fermenters brew kettles keggles etc what if weldless fittings are used the nut on the fitting for strength and then soft soldered to seal instead of using gaskets ?No leaks ever and no where for bacteria to breed? I want to setup couple stainless fermenters and storage vessel and trying to work out best plan of attack. I dont have lots of cash and looking for cheap way to do it with me doing bulk of the work..

when you say stainless steel stockpot fermenter what volumes are we talking about here? pretty sure mine is about 5L in the kitchen maybe 7L.

I have thought about this also but not too this extent. mine only was with the T500 boiler and column. I was thinking about cutting my T500 column 1.5 or 2" from the boiler and making another easy flange there but instead of relying on the rubber seal with the T500 boiler i was thinking about soldering it on to the lid with no leaks and no chance of removing it. Dont know if i do this though. Would rather put my efforts into a 6" build than play around with this though

Can get a 56l one on ebay for about $60 item number 171784346667 was looking at for the fermenters was thinking two of them and a 20l one for low wines short term still un decided on long term storage and weather or not to modify and incorporate my current t500 boiler into the brewery... :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Has anyone tried this solder for SS to copper?

http://www.bunnings.com.au/tradeflame-8 ... -_p5910266

The MSDS looks like is is very similar to the Bernzo solder.

I think the flux is more important than the solder when joining copper to Stainless.

i did this...

http://www.bunnings.com.au/consolidated-alloys-120g-aquasafe-solder-stick_p5060443
and this which i use for copper to copper also
https://www.masters.com.au/product/900001096/cigweld-965-soldering-flux-125ml
costs about 17$ does SS to copper and if you water down to about 1:3 or 1:4 it does copper to copper very well. im still using it ad happy with it

scythe wrote:I think the flux is more important than the solder when joining copper to Stainless.

So here is a Stainless to copper union using soft solder and the right flux, now I will tell you that the stainless needs a fair bit of heat to get the solder to bond. I used quite a bit of paste flux on both bits and when the SS was just getting ready to glow, the solder dropped and bonded. You have to work your way around the area slowly and the solder will follow.

I warn you if your do this process do ALL your copper to copper joins LAST, or you will blow all your nice solder work copper on copper. The clean up was awesome and really saw no bad residue, just the darkened area that was heated and I hit that with steel wool and soap. It looks like shit after you heat it that hot but it cleans up nice and the nice thing is I used PROPANE ONLY. So if you use map or oxy propane your styling, I looked at the local welding supply for your ezi-weld 801 but it was not to be found. The welding supply said he sells a ton of this and it's cheap, 9$ here in Canada .

Note: (the flux is white ,like too much salt mixed with water to make a paste and the directions say you thin it with water)

FOLLOW UP

One thing I did notice is that I did a scratch test and it appears that the soft solder has been altered and is very tough to scratch unlike soldering copper.

P3T3rPan wrote:Probably what I call brazing is the same as what you call silver soldering

True brazing uses a brass filler rod. Silver soldering is similar in technique inasmuch it uses a hard rod and flux paste, but the rod has a percentage of silver.

It's soft soldering up to 400°C after which it's brazing or welding.

Has anyone noticed how many of the products mentioned at the beginning of this thread are no longer available or have gone to that strange but interesting store that always locates in the most inaccessible places (I think it's called Master's).

Am I the only one who suspects that there is a conspiracy against DIY going on in this country?

bunnings has bakers flux and aqua safe soft solder for soft soldering.

I will have to disagree with you there bundaboy.

Soft soldering uses a soft solder (of course) usually at low temp in the range of 250 to 450°c but this is the working range based on the alloy of metals in the soft solder rather than some technical definition.

Hard soldering or silver soldering is not brazing, even tho it uses higher temps in the 600 to 850°c range.
Brazing uses alot of alloys, some are even similar to silver soldering so i guess the general public, plumbers and marketing departments can be forgiven for getting the 2 confused at times. :D
Brazing also uses a similar temp range of 600 to 1100°c.

Its only welding when the parent metal melts together, altho brazing can be called braze-welding it is not officially welding.

Dont get too hung up on definitions, we are not compiling a dictionary here, stick to using soft solder when talking as we dont use brazing fillers or fluxes in hobby distilling and saying brazing will lead to this sort of off topic ramblings.

Yeah bunnings has aquasafe100, bakers fluxand trade flame now.
Masters has bromic plumbsafe, comweld 965 and bernzomatic, they also have Reva clothes pegs.
Its just the way it is i guess now.

i just get whats available at a not too bad price. lead free