Date:         Wed, 7 Jun 95 22:28:34 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         ja@decws3.coe.wvu.edu (John Anderson)
Subject:      Silver solder?

Well, I got one of those technical questions and it's not really
VW related but I figure with the wealth of knowlege out there,
I'd seek opinions.  Now the reason I'm doing this is not important
but I need to affix a 1/8" hex key to a strip of body thickness
sheet steel, as shown below.  I don't figure I could MIG weld it
even at low low power, I just tried to silver solder them together,
I sanded the surface shiny, cleaned with degreaser and acid, fluxed
well and the solder will only wet the surface in small dots here
and there.  I tried regular tin/lead solder as well but wanted the
higher strength of tin/silver.  Any opinions, I can braze fairly
well and might see how small of a brazing rod I can find but that
requires a lot of heat.  Ideally I'd like to spot weld it with
mini spot welds in a couple of locations, figure discharging a
couple thousand microfarad capacitor off a big 20-30 watt 24V power
supply might do the trick? Anybody got any ideas in general?

Thanks

   ______
   |    |
   |    |
   |    |
   |    |
 ========== < steel hex key
   |    |
   |    |
   ______
      
      ^strip of sheet metal (1/2" wide, 1/32" or so thick)

John
ja@coe.wvu.edu
'71 Westy Virginia, '90 Corrado G60