Evening all,
I finally stopped stalling and started on building my first keg boiler (we all know there will be another one at some point!) and I feel like I'm chasing my tail a bit trying to solder on the fittings for the heating elements. I seem to get the solder just right in one section before moving onto the next and then buggering up the satisfactory job I had done by applying heat to the next bit.
I did manage to work out I get a better result pointing the MAPP gas at the inside thick part of the fitting and not directly at the solder, but I still seem to be having the problem that the heat needed to melt the solder is hot enough to vapourise the flux for the solder thus making it impossible to stick :angry-banghead: :wtf:
So for the moment I've put a pause on it to regroup and watch more videos on soldering stainless to see if I'm missing something before another attempt, and of course to keep you lot informed :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Some pictures of my half-arsed soldering:
Those pics are of the 2nd element mounting I attempted (you don't wanna see how crap the first one looks! :shifty: ). The overall plan is to have 2 x 2400W elements with a 4" porthole to fill and just leave the original keg tap fitting for the home made still I started years ago. I'm using plumbers lead free solder and matching flux I picked up from the big green shed.