First attempt at silver soldering :-(

Hi fizzy,
The insulating brick I have used is JM23 which is OK up to 1260 Deg. C (If you need even higher temperatures up to 1400 Deg. C use JM26) Here are two places that sell them.
Artiisan Foundry shop
Castree Kilns
They are not cheap. Some people use airated concrete blocks or virmiculate insulating blocks or board. I have not tried these.

Les.

Vermiculite bricks and vermiculite board works fine for me. Available from solid fuel stove suppliers, or ebay, etc.,

Regards,

Phil

CuP Alloys sell suitable material .... not cheap, but it works.

Dave

I started with skamolex blocks from Chronos. First just the small bits, then a bigger square.They degrade as you use them especially if contaminated by flux (and I get flux everywhere).

I bopught two huge bits (18" square by 1" thick) from somwhere at a good price for repairing a storage heater but fixed it with insulating board out of another heater instead. One of tehse days they are going to be the makings of a brilliant little hearth!

Neil

Hey, turns out that you can heat Brass parts too much... found a nice spring clamp to hold the parts I was soldering next, got everything clean and fluxed up, poured the heat on and soldered nicely - when everything was cool I pulled the spring clamp off to find that it had sunk into the brass by about 2mm!

Live and learn - what fun

Hi guys,

Just though a quick post in order - after lots of learning my Hero Engine fired up last night!

It's waay too ugly to photograph, it's dinged, scratched covered in soot and wonky - but it spun under it's own power (albeit slowly).

I'm over the moon and am now scouring for my next project - which will be a simple oscilator of some form...

Thanks for the help and support !

cheers. Jerry

Canberra - Oz.

Great stuff Jerry.

Where in Oz can I buy some of those "good" cheap lightwieight firebrick thingies? (And what is the proper name for them?)

Hi Hopper,

I found a couple of these firebricks at my local Bunnings! Mind you, I got lucky - the guy I spoke to said they used to stock them regularly, but had dropped the line several weeks ago and he had two left that someone had returned. He sold them to me for $4 each.

The girl at the cash register had a nightmare as they weren't even in their product database anymore - so don't just try asking at the front desk - they'll say they don't have em. I found them by wandering around out the back near all the pavers and just lucked out by asking the right guy who knew where these returned blocks were. If you try Bunnings, recommend you try the same tactic

Thanks Jerry. I go past Bunnings several times a week, on the way to the dump recycle shop so will stop in and have look for some bricks.