 Hi I'm Michelle Patterson and July's What's Neat all about soldering starts right now. The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. Hi my name is Ken Patterson and in this new video we're going to take all the mysteries out of soldering. This is going to be an advanced and beginners video on soldering. We're going to discuss soldering your track work and everything that goes into that. We're going to talk about soldering all the wiring on your layout and the block wires and how to go about soldering the electrical for a model railroad layout. We're going to talk about all the various types of soldering equipment. Pencil points are the primary tool that we're going to use for the track work and the wiring and then we're going to get into resistance soldering rig. A great mystery for many people but if you learn this trait you can actually make some darn good money selling models and building fabricating stuff from scratch out of brass. I'm going to show you how I took this beautiful $5,000 one half inch scale precision scale locomotive that was destroyed in shipping and absolutely rebuild the model into pristine factory new condition. Then I also take you through and I show you how I built a light tower. Actually in this video we're going to take a light tower that I've already built and repair it and I'm going to show you how to go through the process of working on a tugboat. Building the superstructure handrail steps and the top lighting and antennas and all that fabrication work all made out of brass. There's literally nothing that you can't do with brass and in this video we're going to cover all the bases and take all the mystery out of soldering. Each type of equipment that I'm going to discuss has got its own separate purposes although a lot of them can overlap. Starting with your old grandpa's handgun if you can remember the old Weller handguns the 125 watt units most people have melted a lot of railroad ties using these things but they work really good for soldering your track together. You can find one of these on eBay for about 10 bucks. Normally what we like to use is pencil tip soldering irons and there's various types of them they come with bases and fancy knobs but I like the simple ones. The larger ones are really good for O scale and almost large scale track. The smaller ones are excellent for doing HO scale track and our HO scale wiring. This is what you really need to get started with and these will last you a great many years they simply don't wear out. You can find them for as low as five or ten dollars and I've also discovered units that have got adaptable blades on them so you can use them for cutting into plastic making shingles on the side of a building anything like that. A lot of stonework you can do in Walther's plastic buildings when you're when you're super detailing them with a knife cutter like that. As we move up the scale now we're getting into the more useful units where they've got temperature degrees on them. They'll show either in Celsius or Fahrenheit how what the temperature of the needle is so in Fahrenheit about 800 degrees in Celsius around 480 degrees and these work great because you can adapt a lot of different types of tips on them. I've got a knife tip on it. I've got pencil tips very heavy tips a lot of different tips usually they come with about 10. You can buy a unit like this on eBay for about 50 bucks. Now resistance soldering rig that's what this is when you use one of these units you'll see when I step on the foot pedal switch I get instant heat in the tip of the nozzle and as you see the nozzle heats up the brass everything instantly melts together. If you use liquid soldering like I'm doing here in this video I'm putting liquid solder onto the piece of metal. I'm hitting the foot switch and you get instant heat instant bond it's almost like using hot milk glue and and this unit is absolutely usable for building brass models. If you're building brass you want that area to get very hot quick so the surrounding brass doesn't cool off and also melt and your whole structure starts coming apart. I also use the resistance soldering rig for doing garden railroad track when I've got a solder wire on a code 250 rail that's pretty heavy and any of these other units would get the rail too hot and melt the ties with the instant heat that you get from a resistance soldering rig it makes jobs you couldn't ordinarily do doable. Now as we get up higher into the scale radio check sells a pretty nice soldering rig two piece unit simple pencil tip I haven't found a lot of different types that I can put onto this one I inquired about that and couldn't find any it's got a very fine tip on it for doing electronics work so if you're fixing cell phones and things like that has nothing to do with the hobby you got a side income these are great for that this is really almost too small for working on track it doesn't heat it up quick enough but it's a great unit it's got temperature displays on it preset temperature displays and a knob so you don't have to push buttons and wait for things to get hot the last unit that I want to talk about is is the Kremel of the Krem this is a unit that's got the variable speed temperature readouts for the fine point soldering tip it comes with about 12 different size tips so the versatility is there for all uses in the hobby another interesting thing it's got is a 12 volt power supply in the front so if you're at the workbench and you want to test something test the joint test the the lines on one of your resistors you can do that with the 12 volt power supply another feature that this has got and this has become really big in the last 15 years is using air to solder with as you see in this clip I'm using the pencil tip point air to loosen up the solder on the circuit board and by doing it that way you're soldering with air you're not touching a very hot point onto the electronics and you also get an even flow over a large area so that you could take a lot of liquid solder and heat it up in a quick hurry using this unit so something new if you're into electronics soldering with air works really well I have also discovered that when I'm out on a photo shoot and I'm drying the bottom of the feet of people after I put that glue on them that tacky glue to make them stand up takes a long time for that to dry but with this gun I can quickly speed it up so I found a lot of other modeling uses out of this heat gun so that's just kind of an overview of some of the soldering equipment that's out there and that's all I wanted to discuss at this point on this tape one of the most important soldering rigs that you want to invest in is this simple pencil tip rig spend the $50 go to ebay find one of these units this is going to be the most useful pencil tip unit that you're going to find for model rariting you're going to solder your wiring together with it in this case I'm attaching jumper wires to my turnouts after I've gapped them so that I get power throughout and these are going to be DCC friendly turnouts and at the same time the points are hot all the time which is what I really like is hot frogs so that I don't lose any conductivity but for a unit like this in this example this is this is the best unit you're going to use it for your soldering of your wiring you're going to use it for soldering your rail joiners and your track work this is just a magnificent unit and it works it gives you a nice temperature readout in Celsius which is really irrelevant once you find the temperature that you like and that you want that's the setting that you're going to use all the time but this is the unit that I suggest that you invest in is one of these types of pencil tip units where you've got a body unit and then you've got a holder for the gun these work out really well like I said I use this for 90% of the work not for fabricating so much as for all of our electronic track work switching laying tracks soldering jumper wires soldering all of your connections to your circuit boards when you're making your power panels this is going to be the unit you're going to find the most useful to use now I'm using 6040 rosin solder on this it's already got the flux in it and rosin solder doesn't hurt the electrical so and in this case I'm not I don't have any wire for the acid core solder to wick up into so if I was using acid core solder I could actually do that on the track joints and it would flow beautifully but this is working really well with this rosin solder and I've already got some paste flux on the track which is why the solder flows if we didn't use resin or any kind of cleaning agent at all in the solder to clean this rail as it's soldering this solder wouldn't even stick it would not stick to the metal so because of the rosins that are in it or if I were using acid core flux on this in this case that would cause it to flow very nicely so that's what you do again with the pencil tip rig and that's what I'm using here is this this nice pencil tip rig right here to solder this track work together and in any scale be it n scale in this case I'm do actually doing n scale rail joiners for HO scale track code 70 that's the best way to do it today they fit perfect so that's how we use the pencil tip for soldering track now notice when I touch the hot probe to the track I don't touch it very long and the solder just flows right into the joint and that's how you want to use these pencil tip soldering rigs this is the best way to do this on track it's just a wonderful way to guarantee continuity and it works now let's talk briefly about block wiring the first thing I like to do is take a dremel motor tool and grind off the rail so I've got a good contact area for the for the solder to stick and then what I need to do is fish a wire through the foam generally and I use a brass tube for this sometimes I run the wire through the tube in this case I just have to poke a hole and stick the orange wire in I'm using solid strand wire on this because it's never going to bend or move I don't have to worry about breakage so what I need to do is solder the end of the wire to the rail and I like to strip that off with a rail stripper and then I like to take a pair of tweezers to clamp the rail into place while I'm soldering it with the rosin solder so that joint's done and then it comes down to the electrical side where we want to solder the switch I put rosin on the switch leads and also on the wire and a little bit of solder already on the switch and I just touch it for just a few minutes a few seconds because you don't want to melt it and then we stuff all the wires back in after everything's soldered up and it's essentially how I do my block wiring. So now in this segment of the video we're going to discuss resistance soldering rig I've got a PBL rig here that I've had for about 15 years and these things work great if you can find one of these online mused they don't break they work forever and the purpose of a device like this is to heat up the location of a brass model or a piece of brass you're working with immediately so you've got instant heat so that all the surrounding parts don't come apart and come desoldered when you're working on a project so if you're adding small details to a locomotive like this adding a bell or a new blower you can do that without affecting the rest of the model with the resistant soldering rig also this boat is built the superstructure and all the handrails and the floors are all built out of brass same same idea where I'm sitting here and I'm soldering on very small parts just like hot glue without desoldering the rest of the location so this is how the brass models are made overseas the same principle now let me show you how the device works I've got this large scale engine here that is actually a museum quality half inch scale model and this thing's got to be rebuilt because it got shipped and got destroyed in shipping and so what I'm going to do is rebuild the cow catcher and all the various parts on it that are broken using exactly the same technique that I'm going to show you on this scrap brass right now and essentially what I do is I've got my resistant soldering rig I've got my tip that will get hot and I've got my ground wire and I've got to connect the ground wire to the piece of work that we're working on in order to have the circuit of electricity run through the brass for the soldering effect to work so I'm going to clip my my alligator clip right here to this piece of brass and all I want to do is for demonstration illustration purposes is I'm going to take this circular piece of stock and just attach it to this flat stock just like that so I've got everything set up the only thing I need to do is get in there with a little bit of solder I'm going to step on this foot switch to activate it and today I'm going to use a little bit of liquid solder from the hardware store just regular old liquid solder so I've gooped on some some liquid solder right here just for illustration purposes and how this works I'm going to press down on my foot switch with my foot so I've got instant heat on the location that I want to solder let me just show you how easy this is now instantly the whole area is getting hot and just like that she's attached let me do the other side same way instant heat let it cool and just like hot melt glue your parts going to be attached this works it's a great system so I suggest for fine model building for building handrails for building can't nary for overhead wires for projects this is a very useful tool to use so look into resistant soldering another great use for resistant soldering other than just soldering brass models together I like to use it on the garden railroad track and the reason for that is it would take a soldering iron a regular pencil point soldering iron much too long to heat up this rail and by the time it did heat it up the rail overall would be so hot that you wouldn't have any more plastic spikes left on the track it would absolutely incinerate them so the key to doing outdoor garden railroad track for making my wires that jump from one section to another so have complete continuity all the way around is to use a resistant soldering rig and let me show you how I go about doing that first of all we've got to make sure the location where the wire is going to be soldered is clean and I'm using solid wire this time and that's going to that's going to be an important factor in just a moment but when you put your rosin in this case I'm using flux paste on your wire and then I would solder it but because I'm using solid strand wire I'm going to go ahead and use some acid soldering flux on this and the reason for that is because the acid flux works very quickly it flows much more smooth than the paste and because it's solid strand wire I don't have to worry about the acid flux soaking up into the wire wicking up as they call it and then the joint literally the acid would eat that joint away in about five years and you lose your electrical conductivity so because it's solid stranded wire and because it can get washed off in the rain I won't have that problem out here so simply what I do is I've got my got my acid core solder I've got a step on a split switch at the same time to activate the probe that I do the solder joint I need to connect my ground wire to the track and I also need to use this pair of tweezers to hold the wire in place during the soldering so it doesn't move I don't have enough hands to do everything because doing the solder itself is going to require both hands so everything's set up and ready to go all I've got to do is step on the foot switch the gun's going to get hot immediately upon contact and then I'm going to make contact and you're going to see this solder very quickly heat up very fast I don't have a good ground hold on keep my ground wire connected I got power now I'm instantaneously getting hot and the solder is flowing and that's it I'm done clean up the excess and I've got a good solid joint now all right just the wires on there solid and I've got my conductivity and my track can still float aesthetically it doesn't look great but functionality wise this is the way to go on garden railroads now in this segment of the soldering video we're going to talk about something where the resistance soldering rig can actually pay for itself in just virtually one project and I mean that now now I've got it set up underneath my workbench this is a spot where it's normally always set up and on top of my workbench I've got a brass locomotive this is a precision scale uh k-27 in one half inch scale and originally when this engine was brand new this engine sold for four thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars so you're looking at a five thousand dollar locomotive and the front end of this had absolutely been destroyed in shipping when this model was shipped to me and rather than cry over spilt milk in the next 20 minutes here we're going to fix it now the problems are rather complicated on this and I'm not going to take this locomotive all apart I don't have to primarily it's the cow catcher it was seriously bent it's supposed to be the shape of this and I've re-bent the metal very closely now also the running boards are both loose and it's this is where the resistance soldering rig absolutely there's no other tool that could do what we're about to do because the whole point is to heat up the area around this brass without the rest of the cow catcher falling apart and if you look these are some very heavy pieces of brass for running boards that I'm going to have to put in there so normally what I would do is I would sandblast this whole locomotive but today I'm going to take some lacquer thinner and a wire brush and I'm going to clean up the parts the best that I can and then we're going to put some liquid solder on there and some acid core flux from pbl I really like this acid core flux now this stuff will have to be washed off so the solder joint doesn't continue to eat itself away because it's acid core but after this is all finished and it's all cleaned up and all the solder joints are in place it should be virtually as good as new it's just a matter of bending the metal and getting everything to fit the way it's supposed to and that's not going to be a problem it's just going to simply take time because you've simply got to bend the metal and work it until it's in the right position if you need a break quit take a break come back and do it again while you're fresh also on top of the cab this dome that protects the air hatch on top of the cab was severely bent and I've already kind of re-bent it into the shape that it needs to be but the attach point is going to be on the rear of the cab right here where it is completely loose and we're going to reattach that with just a little bit of solder too so let me get these parts cleaned off with some lacquer thinner and wire brush and I'll show you how we use a resistant soldering rig to solder one additional point I might be taking q-tips that are wet and wet towels just to keep the main area cool because we're going to heat this up really fast and I certainly don't want the rest of those parts to start popping off okay just a little further explanation for preparation on this now I've got some torn up old pieces of dirty sock I've got a cup of water right here so I can wet the sock and what the reason for that is I've got clamps here and I can clamp the sock or the q-tip around various sections of metal so that the whole area doesn't get too hot I might not have to do that but I'm prepared just in case now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put acid core flux on the parts where the solder is going to go and I'm going to assemble all these parts in place into position whether they are supposed to be affixed to the rest of the brass and I'm also going to put liquid solder on it in all the locations where it's going to make contact and then I'm going to heat it up with the gun with the resistant soldering red tip I'm going to heat up those locations and start to solder this that's the plan so let's see how this goes that's where the parts are going to go so now I'm going to put on the acid core flux where the parts are making contact so everything will be super clean and I'll have very good clean area for the solder to flow so liberally put on this acid core flux I'm not worried about getting it on my fingers right now I'm just worried about getting this job done and that's where those parts are going to go right it's exactly where I want them to be now I'm going to start by soldering the footboards on at the bottom and work the uh work the joint all the way across these two pieces so they solder together and I'm going to clamp this with tweezers everything's in the right position the same on the bottom and I still got to put in brushing some solder I want to do that before I get these two clamped I'm going to use this paste solder this plumber solder from the hardware store it flows really nice I'm going to put it on this piece of metal so I have an area to work from like a palette so right now we're going to pretend like this is oil paint and we're going to put this on like oil paint in locations where the pieces touch so I'm going to remove my clamp now I'm going to pull out one of these pieces here move it a little bit so I've got good there that's what I want right there and I don't know if you can see this I'm going to try to get to see what's going on here I'm putting the solder I'm working the solder into this joint right here underneath the footboards we can always clean up the solder if you get too much on after it's attached there's ways to do that with wire wick which absorbs the solder and takes it off of the model that's wick wire wick soldering wick is what they call that I've still got to put this triangle on the bottom here that it's going to be one of the last pieces to go on this is going to be very complicated to not get this whole structure too hot I need this to stick together putting the solder behind the footboards and I'm applying it rather liberally it will stick to the clean metal and the areas where the acid core solder is the areas where the paint is still on here the solder will not stick in those areas so I don't have to worry about it flowing there and the heat might bake that paint right off but after we wire brush this and clean this and lacquer thinner after it's soldered we'll be able to put a fresh coat of black paint on this and it should be perfect if I have to do a little wet sanding with a thousand grit paper to make it match up I can do that but this should look like it's never been altered all that much it should be almost as good as new because this is how the brass builder built them all right got everything clamped together where I want it I'm going to start with this first foot pad and I'm going to solder on this area here I've got both clamps holding it I've got the resistance soldering rig center that's highest setting number five I'm going to take this ground clamp and I'm going to clamp it to the workpiece somewhere on here so I get good ground I don't know where I'm going to clip that on here hold on I want to get great great electrical flow through this so I'm going to clamp it right here that should give me good conductivity we'll find out here in a second I got the foot switch on the floor everything's clamped together all I got to do is step on this and do it oh lord here we go I'm not going to hold that with my fingers either I got good contact okay good here we go I got good flow now under the workpiece there we go we got a good solder joint I'm backing off now because I don't want it to get too hot now I'm going to keep going all the way across work my way down here while this thing's good I'm going to drop it right here and I heat up this area right here see the solder flowing right between the two pieces that's how it's supposed to work just like that back off so I don't get it too hot I'm gonna work my way down right here I want good solder flow here and I've got it between the two pieces this is getting really warm now I'm gonna back off right now I've got an inch of area to just solder together I'm working my way down a little further now I hope you can see this I can't see the camera I'm trying to see this through the goggles at the same time okay here we go I'm getting a good area hot both pieces of metal good joint I'm backing off the heat now that's a good solder joint right there now I'm working my way down to the bottom footstep which is where my clamp is so I gotta move that that puppy might be hot it is very hot so that's what the water is for when I cool that down right now this is serious this is almost like welding but not quite because solder is such a cool melting point metal this little wet rag is getting very hot right now I might have to let this cool off for a minute before I proceed any further because I really don't want this thing is very hot I don't want the I want the front end to cool before I continue on so let me just pause here for a minute okay I'm picking up right where I left off and I'm working on the bottom here now so I want to get down in here and try to see what I'm doing all the rods and set up everything's ready to go I should just be a step on this and go I don't have contact hold on and here we go I still don't have electrical contact I got nothing okay I got it I got heat now all right to continue now I think this is getting hot because it's parts loose right here I need to tighten that up or else I'm going to lose my electricity inside of the resistance of this loose nut all right that's tight put my clamp on see if I got contact I do all right let's do this let's get this hot get in this area hot here and now I'm working on both pieces and I've got a good solder flow right now underneath the lap both pieces are soldering together sweet I'm going to work my way up to this joint right here here we go right now that's a good solder joint right there it's flowing beautifully in between the two pieces of metal the flux is just drawing the solder right in I'm working my way up now this puppy's going to get hot so I'm going to back off here at this last part and I got a good solder joint right there see that isn't that nice all the way up the workpiece all the way up make it smooth good joint right there I'm going to get me some solder and actually feed some solder into this while I'm doing this I want this to hold look at that that's beautiful joint right there flowing very nice onto the workpieces this is just working out nice there's another nice joint the solder is flowing between all the workpieces right now everything's working out real sweet this is nice there you go look at that flow right in there that'll be strong as brand new let me see I might take a file to this after we're done with this I'm working on top now I'm flowing some solder in between those parts you couldn't do this with any other tool look at how that works now this model is going to be just this is how they build them in China this is how they build them in the factory okay so let me brush off these parts and look at them and then we've got to apply this triangle to the bottom which will be really easy to do as you can see so far it's working out really nice got a little bit too much solder down here I've got this part cleaned off the bottom of the pilot which is going to fit right into those grooves real nice but I've got to clean out some of this excess solder right here and that'll allow that part to fit in there real nice and we'll clamp it in place put solder on it and I'm going to start at the rear and then work myself around to the front point and I can bend the metal and work my way around as I go so I'm going to start right here and I want her to be in place just like that I'm going to let you watch me do this real time so that you see from start to finish how this is going to work out I'm going to start with my paint brush and I'm going to start applying the acid core flux where my solder joints are going to be I want all this brass clean and I want good flow here and I'll get that with this this is the best flux in the world pbl soldering flux I love that stuff I use it for all of my big static models when I build brass scratch build stuff all right I'm going to put this part in place I'm also going to put the flux underneath that only in the corners where I'm going to work it right now worry about the rest of it later as we work around the front I'm also going to squeeze on some solder although I'll tell you where there's a lot of solder in there when I hit the foot switch what's in there may already flow but I'm just going to ensure my flow and just squeeze a little bit of excess solder in here not too much not too little just kind of fill that area see that just a little solder right in there now I'm going to put the piece in place I'm going to clamp it the best I can tweezers just like that there's exactly what I want very happy with that very happy with that okay I'm going to ground the resistance soldering rig with my clip and I'm also going to be ready with a little solder on the side here a little wire solder and I'm going to start right here at the top there's a piece of plastic here to protect the train I'm going to pull that off right now let's protect the train from rubbing on the rails and shorting out see if I got heat I do okay let's do this the solder's flowing in the joint beautifully look at that plastic melt we'll put some clear tape there there you go another good flow everything flowed nicely right there I want to pull this in with my pliers just so this gets centered in the right spot heating it up and pulling it in with the pliers at the same time pinching it into position heating it up and I'm pulling it down I got a good joint right there good good solder joint right there good flow right there okay I'm going to let it set before I let it go with the pliers because I've got that metal right where I want it to be just like that now we're going to do the one on the bottom the same way the same way on the bottom joints I'm going to come in behind with my solder on this one ready here we go foot switch touching my solder just a little bit there come on baby get hot there you go there you go I got good flow between the parts and it's permanent now I'm going to work my way around to the front I'm going to have to move the camera here just so I can see what's going on for a minute into the front this is really nice the way this is lining up I want to make sure this metal lines up real perfect so I'm going to take my pliers and just squeeze everything just in the position here where it should go let me bring you in on this so you can see what I'm doing here I'm trying to get this lip to line up right with that and I need a bigger pair of pliers I need a little brute force here I just want to gently squeeze that just in the place like that there's no reason to make a mistake here we're in control of everything I want to get this just right and that is just right that looks good see I'm squeezing it into position just metals bends real soft that's why brass is such a joy to work with if I can get a solder joint just like that right there I'll be a very happy camper I'm going to put on my flux you're here with me real time as I'm doing this flux is in position and I'm going to heat this up I'm going to touch my solder to it at the same time that I'm heating it up and clamping it with these pliers with my fingers all at the same time I can do clamps that that's a good joint right there that's what I want I'm going to get on the switch here and just fill this bottom area with solder ready here we go just a little bit right there's perfect right here just a little bit there you go look at that beautiful it's flowing nicely all in a joint look at that it's perfect that's exactly what we want right there and just work your way all the way around to the bottom here of when you've got this to go I'm going to flip this engine over and look at it and bend it just right okay this is the last part now to do I just need to run a bead of solder up this joint right here and this cow catcher's finished she's all done so I'm ready to go I've got everything exactly bent where I wanted I've just taken a little time with the pliers here and worked it and I'm not even going to put any liquid solder on it this time I'm just simply going to use my bead of solder and work work right along the piece without blocking your camera view if I can do that at all possible so here we go I'm going to start right here foot switch and I got solder a little bit too much right there that's okay a little wire wick I can take that off a little more foot switch solder work my way down foot switch solder okay now that's it I would say that if I clean this part now I give it another bath and lacquer thinner real clean and then all I've got to do is uh paint it that's pretty much it you've got our part on there good and solid all the pieces are back together again very heavy pieces of brass and it's not going anywhere that's not going to break this is a this is pretty much fixed right here and that's how I take a resistant soldering rig and absolutely repair the front end of a brass locomotive I'll take the file to this clean it up real nice and then paint it and I think we're going to be perfect I'm also soldering the protective hood for the cab roof vent same way I've got the solder in the joint I've got everything fluxed with acid core rosin and I got good solder flow just like that I got good joint right there too perfect so this is tacked on permanent so a little bit of thousand grit sandpaper smooth it out a little bit clean it up and I'll airbrush the roof and I'll airbrush the pilot both at the same time now now I finish before painting and clean up everything with a Dremel wire rotary brush I go over everything and just any loose solder any loose resin anything that doesn't belong there comes right off the wire brush real sweet and now I'm ready for one more wash with a lacquer thinner and a cloth and then it's time to uh thin some scale coat paint and paint this okay I've got an airbrush mixed with some scale coat black paint at scale coat one lacquer based paint I really like that on brass it's I've been using that on brass for 20 plus years and it works great so I've got the model sitting here in the spray booth I've got my airbrush ready to go with 20 pounds of air pressure and all I'm going to simply do now is just put an even coat of spray on this the paint is thinned about 40 almost 50% thinner and then 50% paint so you have a smooth coverage the key here is to be smooth you want it to look as factory as possible and this will look at how beautiful that's looking I want to turn it around and I want to do the underside as well this thing weighs about 40 pounds right down here the same way I'm avoiding the wheels this airbrush gives me very focused spray so it goes only where I want it to go looks very nice that pretty much fixes that I'll tell you what it looks just as good as new now I'm not going to bake this whole engine I'm going to let this thing set for a good 24 hours and let this paint cure but that is pretty much the way you'd want it to be if you're going to fix it it looks factory it looks brand new it looks very good and we've done that with the resistant side ring rig you couldn't do that without any other this is the best tool to do that with and if you get talented at it start repairing brass or scratch building brass you can literally make some money with a tool like that and this is how our finished soldering job looks this thing looks factory new a couple dents prototypically accurate in fact if you really want to talk about the cow catcher but I think the thing looks absolutely fantastic that's the magic of being able to use resistant soldering rigs you could take a locomotive like this it was literally on its death bed and bring it back to life the cab that section came out pretty good so we've got pretty much a finished locomotive now it looks decent now remember you're going to use rosin core solder for doing your electrical work you're going to use acid core flux rosin core flux acid core flux to do your building scratch building brass pieces I like to use the soldering wick wire for removing excess solder because when you hit the heat to this wick it in fact absorbs the solder just sucks right into it because the wick is impregnated with a lot of a resin a rosin so that it soaks in I really like using this rosin core solder a roll like this will last you virtually your entire life I've probably have had that one for 25 years and I like to weather my soldering joints using microengineering's weathering solution when I'm doing track it helps darken that really shininess so once you master this you can build a lot of really cool things with either pencil tips or resistant soldering rigs like this 110 foot light tower that I built that needs to have a little repair work done to it I can see but this is something that I built when I first got the resistance soldering rig and it was in a real model journal article a long time ago okay so let me show you how to repair this light tower because it's it's pretty beat up and it really needs work first we've got to clean off the area where we're going to have to do all the soldering and normally what you would do is you would take a wire brush and some lacquer thinner and simply brush off the part and clean it but I want to show you another tool that's really helpful to add to your arsenal of tools when you're working with brass and that is a sandblaster I picked up this north coast prototype model sandblaster about 20 years ago and I've got a vacuum attached to it where I can suck the air out of the sandblasting unit while the sandblasting is going on so let me show you how we're going to use this tool right now to fix this piece of brass I've got 60 pounds of air being delivered to my sandblasting unit and I know you're not going to be able to see inside of this because it really fills up with dust when I do this I also have the vacuum and I'm going to turn that on right now and sandblast this unit and just like that we should have something that's clean enough here now I'm going to wash this off in water but this is the brass you can see the exposed brass now let me get this to focus you can see how it's cleaner now we're going to sit over at the workbench and attach these pieces that are broken off and we can use a resistance soldering rig for this project or we can use the pencil tip I'll show you how to do both so let's talk about how we're going to fix the light tower now notice I've got this in a panda vise and the reason for that is because sometimes I clip the alligator clip to the vise itself and then I'm able to get electrical conductivity through the whole model but in this case I've got the alligator clip set up right here on the end of the structure and I've got the top all set up where we can start working fabricating and rebuilding this now there's no magic to this we're just going to do this one section at a time because this thing is really messed up on top it must have gotten stepped on or crushed under something I'm putting just a little bit of liquid solder on and I want to just get this first L piece to be in a position I also want to put on some acid core pbl flux on here because that'll really help it flow I've got the resistance soldering rig set for a lower setting I'm set for three on this because it's very small material I've got my clamp in place and I can actually hold this with my fingers as I do this just like that little heat just like that and that's the first part attached now I'm going to work on these corners look how messed up that is this is really a simple fabrication actually it was really easy to build this at the time I recall that it just took time putting just a little solder on the parts here I'm going to work in this corner right here next once this is in place this will be structurally more sound so there's just a few joints here to fix now look I'm going to put the solder I'm going to make sure it's right where I want it there's where I want it now I'm going to hit the switch just like that so that's fixed work our way all the way around piece by piece making sure all the parts are bent just right I don't have this thing fixed in no time nice thing about brass I just it's soft it's easy to work with I'm putting this joint on right here a little solder a little solder on this joint here too this is like that I just want a little bit on there I don't need very much this is how you fabricate brass and I'll tell you what it's permanent and there isn't anything you can't build in brass it's a wonderful medium to work with I'm on it I'm holding this with my fingers now because I'm far enough away where it's not going to get burnt and that's attached so this structure is slowly getting rebuilt much stronger now and just keep working my way around and we'll have this thing fixed in just a few minutes doing just what I'm doing looks like a little bending going on here we'll have this thing back together if you look at the next joint I want to solder here it's actually got enough solder on it where I don't have to put any solder on this joint right here all I simply need to do is put a little flux on it and drop some heat on that and I'm positive that there's enough solder in there already where it'll flow very nicely and I just lost my continuity because the alligator clip fell off let me put that back on the model I'm going to put the alligator clip right up here and now I'm going to step on the switch here and just do this attachment right there one two three and that's it she's attached and that's that's permanent that's not going anywhere and just like that the light tower has been sort of refabricated and it's fixed it's repaired and you couldn't have done that with another another tool I didn't use a pencil tip on it because really in reality the resistance resistance soldering rig is the best tool for doing this it really heats up that small area quickly whereas a pencil tip would have probably gotten some of the other parts heated up and then we'd be coming apart again now one suggestion I've got for you is to build a platform and what this is is this is a platform with a piece of brass on top okay and it's got a piece of brass it's soldered to the top coming off the side here so I can just put my grounding clip on this when I'm doing my resistance soldering and this piece becomes grounded so that I only need to use my pencil tip when I'm soldering very fine detail for example look at these photographs of this tugboat remember the green tugboat we talked about that I built all the stanchions handrails in the top with brass well using the resistance soldering rig and using this brass table that I've just described to you to build out of a block of wood and putting brass on top you can see where I only need the pencil tip in small areas the alligator clips off to the side my flat surface is grounded so I'm able to solder on the lights the antennas the handrails the roofs angle all of that was carved out of a sheet of brass and you know soldered all the parts onto it look at the handrails that I'm building here in this photograph these handrails are sitting on top of the flat grounded surface so that I can solder them together solder the steps on solder the individual pieces on using a low setting on the resistant soldering rig and the the flux the acid core flux for this you can see I've got my solder wick down there in a corner here's another shot of the setup with the boats cabin put in place in the center of the steps in the superstructure that I just soldered together so there's a lot of really cool things that you can do and there's a lot of nice kits on the market here's a bridge from john pilecki structures now he doesn't make a show scale structures anymore but he's making o scale narrow gauge structures now but this is one he made an h o scale bridge and there's a lot of products on the market and look at the beautiful detail of these bridge parts so once you get good at soldering it's just a matter of repetitiveness and I imagine this would actually go quicker than you think once you start getting into building all these bridge girders in order to put together this 200 foot long h o scale bridge so that's the kind of neat stuff that awaits you just check it out experiment think about what you'd like to build get some really nice solder equipment and just pretty much you know mess around with it at first I'm sure there's a lot of other information that you can find in old articles and magazines on how to apply soldering stuff to the hobby but this will give you a good general round you know a lot of information here that's going to help you go a long way with regards to building things out of brass and being able to solder your wire do your track work and repair models that need to be fixed so I hope this helped you this soldering video um happy soldering all of the model railroad products seen in this episode of what's neat are available through caboose in lakewood colorado or order online at my cruise dot com