02-11-2022, 06:43 PM
As promised here is the picture of the second soldering jig. It's my design but I didn't do the welding. I left that to my BIL. Looks a little rough but everything came out square and straight.
And the update. Bad news. The silver soldering was not a success. I tried everything with the materials on hand. I used a flux call Flux-4. I used straight borax. I used paint thinner, Scotch Brite and sandpaper to make sure everything was clean. The soldered joint just would not hold. My deduction is that the silver content in the rod they sold us is too low. The rods are rectangular in cross section and about 1/16 x 1/8 inches. They are marked TW-O. No clue what that is or what it means and google was no help.
So, when we bought the silver solder we also got a piece of brass brazing wire. It's about 0.040 inch in diameter. After having no luck with the silver solder I decided to try the brass to braze the joints on the band saw blade. I ground the same scarf joint as before, fluxed it inside and out with borax mixed with a little distilled water and hit it with the MAPP gas torch. Once the flux turned clear I held the rod on the joint and kept the flame on the joint from underneath until the rod melted. It took a while and the joint was at a bright red heat. When the rod melted it flowed into the joint just like it should. I made up 4 blades that are 152 inches long (3860 mm). We can buy wood cutting blade by the meter for 13,000 pesos per meter. That's about $3.50 a meter or $1.05 per foot. Strangely the price is the same if you buy 1 meter or the whole 30 meter roll so we just buy what we need.
Next is a sharpening jig/method to keep the blades tuned up.
Thanks for looking,
JScott
And the update. Bad news. The silver soldering was not a success. I tried everything with the materials on hand. I used a flux call Flux-4. I used straight borax. I used paint thinner, Scotch Brite and sandpaper to make sure everything was clean. The soldered joint just would not hold. My deduction is that the silver content in the rod they sold us is too low. The rods are rectangular in cross section and about 1/16 x 1/8 inches. They are marked TW-O. No clue what that is or what it means and google was no help.
So, when we bought the silver solder we also got a piece of brass brazing wire. It's about 0.040 inch in diameter. After having no luck with the silver solder I decided to try the brass to braze the joints on the band saw blade. I ground the same scarf joint as before, fluxed it inside and out with borax mixed with a little distilled water and hit it with the MAPP gas torch. Once the flux turned clear I held the rod on the joint and kept the flame on the joint from underneath until the rod melted. It took a while and the joint was at a bright red heat. When the rod melted it flowed into the joint just like it should. I made up 4 blades that are 152 inches long (3860 mm). We can buy wood cutting blade by the meter for 13,000 pesos per meter. That's about $3.50 a meter or $1.05 per foot. Strangely the price is the same if you buy 1 meter or the whole 30 meter roll so we just buy what we need.
Next is a sharpening jig/method to keep the blades tuned up.
Thanks for looking,
JScott
JScott, proud to be a member of MetalworkingFun Forum since Mar 2014.