061_construction_brass structure

Instruments required

Butane torch + butane

Silver paste solder (hard)

Silver wire solder

Flux

Soldering brick

Tweezers/pliers

Jewellers mitre box and saw

Butane torch

soldering brick and silver paste solder

first attempt at soldering the box for the finger= fail

Above is my attempt to solder the box to go around the finger. The issue with cutting separate pieces for each plane is that it is difficult to solder each one without melting the previous solder applied. Advice from a friend suggested that bending the outer box and soldering only the inner pieces would solve this problem. 

soldering the wing piece

Above is an photo from the soldering process for the wing piece. The difficulty with this pieces was the same as the above - parts kept on falling off whenever a new solder was applied due to the heat. I also realised that soldering rods together using the paste solder was neat and effective- however soldering a brass plane to a rod/another plane was difficult as an even distribution of heat was required and the paste solder was not melting easily. The method was then altered such that small pieces were soldered together using the paste solder - but larger pieces where less heat was required were soldered using the silver wire solder. 

Structural components

The wing

Ring

Runners and structure

Soldering components together

Nearly finished structure

Polishing

Due to some of the difficulties soldering the pieces, much of the brass was marked by fire scale/oxidisation. I attempted to use pickle (below) to remove the fire scale after sanding with a fine emery paper. The pickle was moderately successful. I also tried Brasso to further polish the metal, however I found it also had little effect.