Re: ELTO Ruddertwin Restoration

[RICHARD A. WHITE]

quote wbeaton:

It will be tough to do it with a soldering gun. I would think you’d have better success if you heat The entire tag with a torch to get the entire area hot. You can then work the edges with a soldering gun or iron. You could also try cutting a piece of plate steel the size of the tag. Direct the torch heat to the steel instead of directly on the tag. Then work the edges with a thin steel wedge or flat head screw driver. All that heat may warp the tank or desolder the seams so be careful. It will be even harder to solder the tag on once you’ve had the tank nickel plated.

On a side note, I took the serial plate off my Model C yesterday. It was held on with tiny nails. There didn’t appear to be any solder at all.

PS. It turns out that each nail had a tiny bit of solder, but they were mostly loose. That’s probably why they came out so easily.

If you get the tag too hot you might ruin it, This is why I stated using a big chunk of metal…I feel you will not be able to use a torch a you cant heat that big of a tag evenly at one time. Once the iron is heated completely to the correct temp, 370 degrees for 50/50 solder, the iron is placed on the tag, that has been prepped ahead of time and within a very short time the heat transfer though the tag melt the solder and drop flat onto the tank… hell the near perfect iron would be just that, an old iron from way back in the day. It already has a handle to lift it back up.

The temp is critical as the melting point of solder is about 370 degrees so in order for this to work the iron would probably need to be around 400 or so..going to need a good thermometer to check that. trying to get the entire tag to hold the correct temp with a torch would be a serious challenge.

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