The Whole Garage Catalogue: A Soldering Copper

Friday, December 30, 2011

A Soldering Copper

No, you haven't misread, and I haven't miswritten -- it's a soldering 'copper', not a soldering 'iron'; there's no 'iron' to it.

This is the smallest one I've ever seen. The solid copper tip is about 3/8" in diameter by 1 1/4" long. It's heated by a flame. Does this ever bring back memories.

In my junior high school's metalworking shop, we used similar coppers, but they were huge compared to this one. Attendant to each copper was a little cast iron, natural gas fired 'oven' in which the copper was kept hot.

One of our sheet metal projects was a holder/dispenser for paper table napkins. The material was light gauge, tin plated steel. (The tin plating made it readily solderable.) Final assembly of the box-like construction involved soldering two seams at its base. I can still hear Mr. Makings, the teacher, saying, "Hold the work so that gravity works with you." [I've been itching to quote Mr. Makings^[1] in a post.]

It may seem like a clumsy way to solder, but it's not. Remarkably fine work can be done with such tools.

Note:

[1] Mr. Makings was a big, barrel-chested Scotsman who brooked no nonsense in his shop. His grasp of the subject matter and ability to communicate it were superb. (The woodworking shop's teacher was excellent as well, although I can't recall that man's name.)

Those two years of formal metalworking and woodworking instruction are about all that I treasure of my 'education'. That it's no longer provided to kids at that age is a crime. Those responsible for that ought to be in Guantanamo, or perhaps someplace similar, but with a less benign climate.

Anyway, this can go in the small toolbox where I keep solder and flux and a similar-sized electric soldering iron.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!