BOILER CLEADING

Hi, I am about to work on cleading my boiler on a 71/4" g 9F, can anyone from experience advise on the best material to use. I was going to use 26 swg brass, but maybe someone has used a different material that is better to work and form. Thanks Howard.

This is something of a negative reply but you never know , it may help . The best material I have ever had for that job is lead coated stainless steel . It is quite thin ( probably in the order of 16 swg ) solders beautifully , easy to cut etc. It is used as a replacement for lead roofing on churches and similar . I managed to scrounge a few offcuts when a local church was being repaired after a visit by some lead thieves . Might be worth asking around you may get lucky .

Never understood why brass is used, it's expensive and difficult to paint. I used old computer casings on my last effort, but getting the old plastic coating off was another story.

Nickel Silver Sheet has good properties for the job. Depends what sheet size(s) you would need and what you consider a reasonable price for the job materials. Various thicknesses and hardness grades available.

An example after a quick search- NSS.

Regards

Hi,

What about steel shim plate. Relatively cheap, readily available, flexible and should be easy enough to get paint to stick.

Regards,

Alan C.

Thanks for all your ideas. Howard

I was chatting to a bloke at the boot yesterday and he told me he had used baked bean cans for his loco, he was quite serious!

Bean (ho ho) a long time since that was possible. For at least 30 years most tin cans have been corrugated:

Quite hard to find plain tin cans; last time I needed one I found only Condensed Milk and Fish Roe, though I expect there are others. Biscuit tins are more useful especially if your family snack between meals!

Not sure what the corrugations in tin cans are for: possibly it allows thinner steel to be used, or perhaps it makes them easier to crush for recycling. It's a mystery.

Dave

Corrugations make them stiffer, so they do not crush so easily with radial pressure.

As we left our holiday let earlier I took this pic of the last can of food left in our supplies box.

Rik

I used .8 mm brass. I bought .6 mm and .8 mm and used the latter. It was hard to roll and needed a couple of annealing but it was kept in one piece, not sections. A friend uses 1 mm stainless. Others use quite thin mild steel but it won't take threads and it will eventually rust.

Zinc coated steel (commercial name Zintec) is good for cleading. It bends, folds and rolls easily and can be soft soldered and takes paint with the correct primer.

A good souce is a friendly maker of temporary road signs or a steel stockist.

Brian