Yeehah! The workshop has received a commission. The lady next door brought me a glass-framed, 'pressed leaves' artwork that's in need of repair; one of its soldered hanging eyes has come away, like so.
What I'll have to do here is get that bare patch of copper frame perfectly clean and bright, then pre-tin it with solder prior to the final resoldering. Pre-tinning is the key to success here, and would have precluded this failure had it been done when the frame was first made.
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This will work fine.
I deleted the extra bit of copper that was soldered to the eye. There's no need for it, and the other side doesn't have one.
The only difficult thing here will be rigging a means to hold the eye in place for soldering. Once I find a good way to do that, the soldering will be easy.
Mañana.
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A Soldering Clamp Rigged -- TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2013
Here's what I came up with for a soldering clamp.
That's a spread-open paper clip and a rubber band.
The solder's adhesion to the paper clip will be negligible -- the paper clip will break away easily. The only downside to this method is that there will be a slight flaw in the appearance of the finished solder fillet. Here's a view of the result with the flux residue cleaned away.
That 'groove/ridges' in the solder is the flaw that I mentioned. All things considered, the flaw is quite tolerable, and the soldering clamp did away with what could have been a great deal of aggravation.
Anyway, that's a sound solder joint that will last indefinitely. Here's a view of the entire artwork.
A little patch of summer/autumn to have in the house for when the snow and ice are piling up outside.
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