AH! I need more of the Copper How To article!
 

Checked out the frontpage and saw a Copper How To article...and it stopped and teases me with pictures of the required items for soldering copper! I need that now for my heatercore so I can put new fittings on it :D

Anyone know got some nice information or useful links on the subject of soldering copper?

I proably already know how from my dad doing it...but I wanna cover all my bases.

*Goes off to find a working torch and the solder and flux.

Clean copper, apply flux, heat, solder. :)

Don't apply too much solder. The joint will draw the solder in. Just apply enough to fill the joint.

If you know how to do it from copper water pipe fittings, it's not that different at all. Same material, different shapes.

I have heard it is a good idea to fill the heatercore with water so that you don't run any risk of desoldering the fins from the core. Personally, I would be surprised if anyone applied THAT much heat, but better safe than sorry I suppose.

Yeah, another method is wet towel around the area you're working on...

Well doesn't matter, decided to crash course some soldering myself. Did one barb fitting as I'm not ready to put the barbs onto the tank as i'm still having problems with how my tubing is gonna be routed.

Wish I had my MaxiJet pump and Waterblock already :(

As shown here.

u guys are really really lucky asses to live on north america continent. it's not like i live in katmandu or something, but in europe u can forget to goto a diy shop to pick up some barbs of whatever spec, u just don't find that stuff here.
y fittings ; forget it, u just get t's

so if i want to step up from 3/8 to 1/2; i need to order some stuff over the internet; unbelievable

Whats even better...those fittings were laying around the house for at least 10 years :D The barbs are new though, I picked them up Friday.
Don't be too torn up about it, for some reason, it seems our selection at the local stores is actually getting worse...which reminds me, I supposedly have a local "hook-up" at Ace Hardware...I need to exploit that:p

that aces hardware must be something, every time i read a how-to article somewhere, they always say, grab that n that at ace's, half of that stuff, i never find.

it's like, my gf gets all crazy about going to IKEA (most girls in belgium). she and all her friends go berserk, when a new ikea catalogue gets distributed; for me, i get the same feeling about going to diy stores; heh, just picked myself up some riveting pliers; funfunfun

You are not the only one.....


Here in DK is there some hardware stores, but they don't have all the stuff like Lowe's, Home Depot and so on......they have garden furniture, stuff to your car, bikes, and toilet stuff and shite like that.....boooooring stuff :mad:

xactly same situation here

Can I join the club?:D

Same here, The only barbs and fittings I can buy is that garden hoses stuff...For other kinds one must go to the machine shop or order the goods from the net...talk about time/money consuption...

For my first block I used air compressor fittings which are initially 6 mm ID, and I managed to re-drill them to the 7 mm ID... and that's all...

I'm kinda happy, cos' I thought that shi##y situation is concentrated around here where I live...but actually, there's nothing to be happy about...:shrug:

Wow, I thought that hapens only when you live in south america, but seem to be the same in the "old developed world":D

Not that big of a deal. Lowes has the best selection where I'm at. Even then, most of the time I have to order stuff off the net. BTW Ace sucks! Atleast where I'm at.

Unless you have one hell of a torch thats not going to work. The solder doesn't flow until its way above the boiling point of water. Which means you'll have to boil all the water out first.

Same reason you have to drain a pipe before you can solder a new fitting to a T.

Aces is awesome. Theres about 30 in Tucson as best I can tell. Every 2 miles theres a store with all the fittings you could ever want. Ditto for Autozones, I pass 2 autozones and three 3 aces on my way to work over the summer.

Still for really rare stuff you need to goto a plumbing supply store. I'm sure they have these in Europe/where ever as well. Its not like theres no pipes there.

1/2 is a common household pipe size. There will be places that sell the stuff. I'd check the phone book. I've never seen a place that cared if you were a plumber or not, so long as you got money.

Don't skimp on the cleaning part. Really. When I was making a compressed propane flame thrower way back, I didn't clean the copper well enough and one of my joints came a part effortlessly as soon as I put ~20 PSI into it. I looked afterwords and it had a line were some spot on the copper hadn't been able to solder. I can just imagine this happening on a watercooled comp with awful results.

If its just one or two fittings, fine grain sand paper (150 or so is fine) is good enough. More and you should spend $6 for a pipe brush. Much safer if you're doing lots of pipe.

Get your dad to help you out. Its the only way to learn. What I did was follow a plumber around for a few hours. Makes all the difference.

Thats what I did...all my life :D

Thats why I got tired of waiting and went ahead and Gung Ho'ed it instead. As shown above with the horrible job there.