What's your solder setup?

[robert3985]

I'm about 180 degrees out from everybody else here, and I've laid a lot of track and built a lot of turnouts over the last 30 or so years (I'm losing count! )  I used to be not particular about what alloy of solder I used, but in the past 15 or so years, I've settled on using 96/4 tin/silver .031" solid core solder for all of my trackwork.  I don't find that lead alloys solder any easier to NS rails and joiners than my silver-bearing solder, and my joints are many times stronger than they would be if I used soft lead alloy solder.

What makes the most difference in my experience is what kind of flux I use.  I notice a huge difference as to how any appropriate solder flows and sticks depending on what flux I'm using.  When I was building hundreds of hand-laid turnouts for club members and myself back in the days when Railcraft was the only company that made C55 flex, but there were no RTR C55 turnouts available in the world, I tried several different fluxes with various degrees of success and a couple of major fails!  Some fluxes really soldered well, but didn't neutralize and ate my ties, rails, ballast and cork roadbed after a year or so.  All of that trackwork had to be ripped out and re-done, including the cork roadbed.

I was attending the annual NMRA show in Salt Lake City shortly after such an incident, and there was this fellow soldering up N-scale brass catenary poles and selling them at his booth.  I got to talking with him and he put me on to Superior Supersafe No. 30 Gel Flux, and told me that it would be the biggest improvement in my soldering I had yet experienced.  He was 100% correct...and it self-neutralizes any acid residue from the heat of soldering, and leaves very little burnt flux on the joints.  Yeah yeah, everybody that uses the traditional "rosin" flux can do a pretty good job, but Superior Supersafe No. 30 will make a huge positive difference in your track work for soldering anything to your rails.

For added strength, I chose to go with 96/4 tin/silver solder, .031" dia., solid core.  It melts at app. 460 deg. F, and I am entirely satisfied with how clean and strong my rail solder joinery is with it...especially at my turnout headblocks and throwbars, and also at the feeder joints.  They are VERY difficult to pull off the rails, which is important to me because I solder them to the bottom of the railfoot and they disappear after painting, ballasting and weathering. I DO NOT want to have to hunt around for them later and re-solder them in their concealed locations if they break off!

Nowadays, I use my 250W American Beauty Resistance Soldering Station for the majority of rail and feeder soldering.  The tweezers give me the distinct advantage of being able to both hold and solder in a single operation which has greatly sped up soldering a feeder to each and every piece of rail on my layout!

However, for a lot of years, I used my old Archer 35W iron with a wedge tip.  I still use it to tin parts mostly and solder electrical joints under the layout.  I can't tell you the model number or any other information I can't remember because the printed-on labeling has worn off years ago.

Since I started soldering feeders to every piece of rail, I have absolutely no need for a rail joiner on every rail joint, except where the rails need some structural reinforcement.  New ME C55 and C40 flex that's going down is doing so without joiners, even on corners.  I still am using ME C55 and C40 NS rail joiners on complicated yard and industrial trackage.

Photo (1) - Feeders feeders everywhere.....


I'm sensitive to how my track appears when I'm looking at a long train coming or going, which makes me look down the track, which shows up most of the imperfections in my work or my technique.  A very common, ordinary and quick way that model railroader have added ties to a soldered rail joint forever is to slide extra ties under the rail joiner after it's been soldered.  In my opinion, this looks like Hell, both because the rail joiner is so long, and because the inserted ties are usually noticeably lower than those ties still attached to the rails.  My method is to remove the "lips" on either end of the joiners, and then cut the joiners very short so they're the same length as the space between ties. Cut the rail joiners by mounting them on a scrap piece of rail and cutting both the joiner and rail at the same time.  Cut the plastic between-tie-spacers away from three to four ties on the ends of the to-be-joined flex sections, and slide the ties back, away from the rail ends.  Then, after everything is aligned, slide your short, deburred NS joiners onto one piece of flex, align the rails and carefully slide the joiner to the center of the joint and solder it in place.  After you've checked your rail joint for perfection and maybe re-aligned it until it's smooth and even, then slide the ties back into place on either side of the short rail joiners.  This makes for nearly invisible rail joints in places that you need the mechanical advantage of rail joiners on your rails.  The silver bearing solder makes these joints MUCH STRONGER than soft lead solders, especially with the shortened joiners.

Photo (2) - Cut-down rail joiners on painted RC C55 flex before ballasting:


Remember, ALWAYS polish the rails with a pencil eraser where you are sliding your rail joiner on to.  ALWAYS clean the tip of your iron and tin it before every solder joint, and use the best flux for this type of work...which IMO is Superior Supersafe No. 30 Gel.

If you're interested in giving Superior Supersafe No. 30 Flux a shot, and using 96/4 tin/silver solder for its added strength, you can get all of that here: https://www.hnflux.com/  which is H&N Electronics in California City, CA

Just my opinions, and these recommendations have worked very well for me for the past 30 or so years on portable layout sections that put up with a lot more stress than a stationary home layout.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore




 

[ednadolski]

Gareth mentions "don't be an idiot and eat it".    The hazards of lead-bearing solder are currently overblown, just take common-sense precautions as you would with any other industrial process. By far most of the fumes from soldering is the flux burning off... in casual, infrequent hobby use, I wouldn't worry it. If I were soldering and unsoldering boards all day, yeah, I'd want at least some fumes control.

Remember that for handlaying track, it's not contamination from fumes but rather the filings that you get from filing the solder joints to shape frogs and such.  You don't normally get that from soldering circuits, even in an industrial process.  So part of the "common sense precautions" should include proper cleanup and disposal of filings, cleaning off your files, and good old fashioned hand-washing when done.

Personally, I don't see the need to use toxic materials when practical alternatives exist, but that's just my preference.

Ed

[Peter Amling]

Ooh, if you're doing a small layout, I HIGHLY recommend doing the "lapped" track joints thing and skipping joiners altogether. I'm mad I learned about it right after I finished laying the track on mine.

What are lapped track joints? I did a search and nothing came up.

[peteski]

What are lapped track joints? I did a search and nothing came up.

I suspect it is more of a butt joint (you can Google definition of each, without using the word "track").  Lapped joint usually means filing each end in a way that the both pieces overlap.  But I'm also curious as to exactly what was meant.

[C855B]

Lapped joints is a technique detailed by David K. Smith, a talented modeler on our forum who is taking an extended leave from the hobby due to health concerns.

David's technique is to not join sections of flex track cut straight across, but, rather, stagger each rail cut in a way where they are mutually threaded into each others' tie base. About 1-1/2" of this overlap is sufficient to join two sections and maintain curvature without soldering or even using joiners. It works better on Atlas flex than Model Engineering's since Atlas track is slightly looser which makes the after-the-fact re-threading easier.

I am using a variation of this idea with M.E. track, staggering only ~1/2" and using joiners cut in half to keep rail position consistent through curves. Re-threading more rail than that with the M.E. wasn't working, at least not for me.

[Nato]

                     "A Weller Soldering Gun, what else would one use." Hey , hey , hey, just kidding. Nate Goodman (Nato). 

[havingfuntoo]

Mike are you using M.E. track that is bright or the weathered stuff? The weathered stuff will give you total misery on anything other than strait sections and hates being soldered if you have not touched it up a bit, well for me and my style or lack of it.   

[C855B]

Bright. Been down that road with pre-weathered. Was reminded of it earlier tonight when I was organizing supplies and found about 40 sticks of weathered. I'll never use it, prob'ly should just find a new home for it.

[havingfuntoo]

I bought a heap of it also ...... just use it in the yard construction now where I can disguise the rough treatment I give it with ballast. I could not justify selling it cheaply nor the backlash from the person who would have bought it and realized why I sold it.

[central.vermont]

Weathered stuff is good for guard rails and cut to 39' length's and stacked. 

Jon

[Wutter]

I kind of like the weathered stuff actually, the track patina holds up better than paint on rails. You just have to make sure to sand and polish all areas where electrical contact will be needed. I usually start with a 400 grit and step it up all the way to 3000 grit and some metal polish at the end.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I've used this technique elsewhere and am also a big fan. This layout is less than 2x4 and has 16 switches. I don't think that there will be enough space between turnouts to justify this technique, but I could be wrong.

The reason I love it is that it does away with unprototypical appearing joiners.

[ryan_wilkerson]

I use a Weller WES51.

I have been laying ME weathered flex with the concrete ties this week on a new FreeMo-N module. I solder on the underside of the rail and prepare the rail by filing off the weathered layer. I staggered the flex when I could. ME doesn't like to slide like Atlas.
I like the cut joiner idea.

[Scottl]

I have to say that there has been some very useful soldering advice in this thread.  Having said that, I find the notion of soldering joints rather over the top.  I have done it on curves to avoid kinks at joints, but in straight track sections, I think the give and take of joiners or lapp joints (my preference) is fine.  It requires you solder on leads to everything, but if the OP is going to have 16 turnouts in a 2'X4' layout, he will probably be doing that anyway.

[wazzou]

I use this.  I've never given enough thought apparently to solder and flux, so this thread has provided a lot of good info in that regard.