I have to repair a screen rail where someone in the past has added an extra wiper - hence, there are three holes, the central one being slightly larger than the outside two, drilled in the rail. I should say this is a top rail of a 1930 saloon - standard brass tube arrangement. Anyway, Has anyone got any bright ideas as to how I could fill these in? Clearly, I will want to replate afterwards, so a repair in brass would be important.

tia for any suggestions/experience.

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Hugh,

Prior to replating, solder in three lengths of brass rod, and carefully file back to shape.

Feel free to email me off line if I can help with the details.

Mike

Gotcha! Good idea - thanks!

Silver solder should be used as this plates as easily as the original brass, I am not sure you can plate soft solder !

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Malcolm

Lead (soft) solder plates without any problem. (Think of all the plated items on a car which have been assembled this way - lamps for example) Indeed I had some items done only last month.

The windscreen repair could be silver soldered if one wished, but this would be un-necessary as the repair is unstressed.

Lead solder would be very considerably easier, probably achieved with a with a hot air gun in this instance.

Cleaning up afterwards would also be simplified.


Mike

Thanks Mike, I have never tried plating over soft solder as I assumed the lead base would prevent the plating adhering to the metal, I am glad I put in my pennyworth now as I would agree softsolder is certainly easier ! You live and learn!

I must give it a go one day with my Nickel plating kit.

You may well be right about soft solder, but my experience doing many similar repairs over 25 years has shown that silver solder not only gives a better repair, but gives a better, more permanent base to the plating. As far as I know rad-shell repairers still dress repairs, cracks etc to the brass with silver solder. The negative is each little stick is dammned expensive! Good Luck, Bill in Oz

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Bill

Only in the last couple of weeks I have had to repair the radiator grille of a Lagonda Rapier. This had had quite a severe blow on the 28 vertical slats/louvres, probably from a large bird. The repair necessitated unsoldering dismantling the whole unit to it's component parts, straightening the slats, and then reassembling.

The original construction had been wholely done with lead solder, and the repair would have been impossible had hard solder been used, particularly this is so as I achieved the job without damaging or discolouring the plating.

My point is really that soft solder had been used in the original construction in 1934, had been plated over at the time, and the plating was very reluctant to leave the solder to let me get at it. Indeed I had to go around with a Dremel before I could properly re-tin the structure for reassembly.

My client was happy anyway

Mike