Bending steel rod for stove legs. A useful tip for bending steel rod for stove legs, and such like, is to buy some steel tubing with a bore slightly larger than the rod you are bending. Put the rod in the tube, the pull out slightly more than you need for the first bend. Grip the exposed rod in a vice and position your tube so that the rod is supported, within the tube, all the way to the bend you wish to make. Now grip the tube and make your first bend. Re-position your tube for each subsequent bend. As well as supporting the rod and ensuring crisp bends, the tube ensures that you have plenty of leverage for making the bend. Best Regards, Kerophile.
Tired of the parts you drop rolling or bouncing to the most inaccessible spot in your workshop? Purchase a metal oil drain pan, one of the 20" diameter 6" high jobs like a professional mechanic uses. Place pan in middle of workshop floor and fill nearly to the top with used crankcase oil. 85% of dropped parts will now land in pan. To ensure that 100% of dropped items land in pan maintain oil at 180 degrees C.
JET PRICKERS: Hi, If I am using traditional tin-plate mounted jet prickers I have got into the habit of writing, with magic marker pen, 0.23mm or 0.32mm IN BIG NUMERALS on the body. Can save frustrating minutes. Best Regards, Kerophile.
Yellow flames from No.96 or No. 100 stove burners: https://classiccampstoves.com/threads/primus-no-96-yellow-flames.17755/#post-181340 Best Regards, Kerophile.
Two methods I've found useful for removing soft solder are solder suckers and solder wick - as shown here: https://www.amazon.com/solder-sucker/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=ips,k:solder sucker The solder sucker works like a reverse bicycle pump. When you press the plunger all the way down, the piston engages with the button latch. Heat the solder up until it's liquid, push the tip of the sucker into the solder, and press the button. The spring-loaded piston shoots up, and creates a vacuum which sucks the solder into the pump body. Unscrew the end after use, and you can pick the solder bits out quite easily. The PTFE nozzle has a melting point well above that of soft solder, and comes to no harm. Giving the piston a very - very - light coating of WD40 before use helps to stop the solder sticking to the piston. The solder wick is very useful where you only want to remove a small amount of solder, and particularly from easily damaged parts. The wick is flat braided copper wire, coated with flux. Heat the excess solder up until it melts, place the end of the solder wick onto the solder, and capillary action draws the excess solder up the wick. When it cools down, just cut the solder-filled end off the wick, and you're good to go for next time. For freeing off seized (frozen) parts, a friend who rebuilds old motorbikes swears by leaving the parts to soak in road vehicle diesel fuel for a couple of days - preferably in a sealed container. He reckons the additive in the diesel which helps it to vapourise at low temperatures is what does the trick. Putting it into a sealed container (even an open tin with a plastic bag taped over the end works) helps to stop the volatile additive from evaporating too soon. And, finally, the best bar none non-seize stuff I've ever come across is sold in Britain as Copaslip. It may have other names in your country. Copaslip is a mix of a light grease with minute flakes of copper mixed in with it. Even in a high temperature situation, such as the fixing nuts on car exhaust manifolds, it works after having been on there for years. What happens is that, even if the grease completely dries out, you are left with a hair thin film of copper in between the two parts. As soon as you put pressure on to undo it, the copper film shears, releasing the two parts. HTH Jack
And I've just remembered another useful product; solder paint. http://www.mbouk.co.uk/solderpaste.htm It's a mixture of fluxes and minute beads of solder, which you paint very thinly onto a surface which you want to tin. Heat it up with a torch until you reach the melting point of the solder, and it flows beautifully - giving you a nice thin film of solder just where you want it, with none of the awkward blobs you can get when you lift a soldering iron or stick of solder off.
Jack, the solder paint sounds very interesting. As for Copaslip, I have a tube in my toolbox - great stuff.
A friend who was an amateur gunsmith used solder paint when he had to shotgun barrels together and to solder top ribs in place, and he swore by it. Though he was an amateur (being a building surveyor by profession), his work was good enough to have many gun dealers in his are send their repairs to him to do - and his barrel-work frequently drew very complimentary letters from the proofmaster at the Birmingham Proof House.
HANDY HINTS NEVER DIE. It's nearly 10 years since @kerophile offered this tip in this post here on squeezing nipples to resize the jet and I still use this tip on oversize jets of good quality (IMHO some of the old ones are much better than new ones). The only 'refinement' I have made is to place the oversize jet upside down on the pricker, and locate it it in the vice still on the pricker. Then, holding the pricker in one hand slowly tighten the vice onto the nipple flats while moving the pricker up and down in the jet. When you feel the nipple tighten onto the pricker, remove them both from the vice and rotate the nipple as you pull it off the pricker. A few extra pricks and the jet is resized. Although the new hole must be oval in cross-section, this doesn't matter on a silent burner and even on a roarer I have never noticed any directionality in the resulting flame shape. Thanks George!
Similarly to the @Twoberth variation, I use a length of stainless steel wire slightly smaller than the desired jet size. This wire is then pulled through the jet after squeezing and the top of the nipple smoothed off with fine emery paper. Tony
REFRESH WHITE LETTERING ON CONTROL KNOBS. Yet another tip.... If you ever need to freshen up the white lettering on the thermo-plastic control knob of an Optimus/Primus regulator knob: TIPPEX typing correction fluid can be very useful, and it dries fast! https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Tipp...ocphy=9046884&hvtargid=pla-420604039371&psc=1 Best Regards, Kerophile.
