Looking for some lead pipe

Just go to your local scrap merchant. If he does not have any at the moment leave your number. Be ready to PAY! Lead like most metals is pricey at present.

You do know that you can't use ordinary solder? You need what amounts to car body stuff and tallow to wipe. Apologies if you are being told how to suck eggs

Norman

If it's for practice, then go to the local shed or builder's merchant, get some flashing and roll your own. You get to practice straight and curved joints that way :-)

regards Mark Rand RTFM

I bought 3m of 300mm wide code 4 flashing the other day from Wickes. £79 plus! Thats why I suggest the Scrappy. Mine had pipe and flashing the other day (before the posters request.)

I should have some about Chris. Where are you? I remember trying it with some success years ago- the trick is to use the right solder - plumber's solder, would you believe! - as it has a long plastic stage.

You will need a wiper of course & I suspect you are going to have to make one. Probably half a square yard of CLOSE woven linen would be needed, folded into a pad & soaked in Fluxite resin flux.

Other than that, a fid to open up the pipe and a sharp, heavy bladed knife to taper off the other end, a gurt blowlamp and a copper headed soldering iron & away you go!

Try not to breath while doing it won't you? ;o))

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

A stick should creak when you bend it, if it doesn't, it doesn't have enough tin.

Tom

I have a small bit of lead pipe, but the last time I looked it was in the library with Colonel Mustard ;-)

Regards, Tony

A stick of plumbers solder doesn't creak when you bend it,but a stick o

tin does.From a fading memory,plumbers solder is about 30% tin.

A wiping cloth needs folding with six to eight thicknesses of cloth an tallow soaked into it,not flux.

If you really want to learn how to wipe joints,try using a pot o molten solder and pour the solder onto the joint and catch it in wiping cloth held in the palm of your hand. The trick is not to let the solder run off the cloth into the palm o your hand. When you've done,quickly spit on the head of a ball pein hammer an hold it onto the top of the joint to solidify it before all the solde migrates to the bottom.

Alla

-- Allan Waterfal

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It should be a moleskin IIRC. I don't know where the OP lives but if it's in Cheshire I can supply the odd dead mole from time to time, sometimes they die on the surface after the poison gas (phosgene) has done its work. You'll have to skin the bugger yourself!

Julian.

Could I repeat myself? Go into a decent motor factors and ask for 'body solder' You don't really need moleskin or a bit out of your trousers and a wad of sheep's suint or whatever- a dip of cooking oil will suffice.

In the City of Guilds exams for car body work, you start by tinning a body panel with a high tin powder solder flux. You warm it up gently until the solder powder goes into silvery globules. With a clean tissue, wipe the excess away. You then take a stick of body solder, dipped in oil and warm it up with a soft oxy flame until it just starts to deform into a crumbly mess. Keeping the heat right, take only enough solder and with a cooking oil rag slowly start pressing the lead into the joint. You should know when the heat is right- it will not move or it will be on the ground or in your sunday shoes.

Finishing a class car, one uses a dreadnought file. Be strong-- dreadnoughts are heavy to lift.

Not doubting you for a moment, Julian, but the wiper I inherited from my dad is definitely woven fabric. Very dense & close pitched in the weave, but it is only an insulated way of wiping the plasticised lead with flux after all.

Curious thought that it might well be eighty years old as I remember he got it from my Unca Bill when Bill "obtained" a new one from an Admiralty contract he was doing ;o))

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

'Moleskin' is still in use in men's trousers( read my earlier efforts)

I am going back to the days of when I could barely see what was on top of the anvil-( about 1933) and all blacksmiths wore moleskin or 'fustian cloth' and leather aprons.

Romping back, the old words appear thus=

corduroy- cord du roi or after the logs which were laid to form roads, Cord being a measure.Prior to Tar MacAdam or Mac-Adamised

Denim- Cloth de Nimes which still has a Roman amphitheatre and a crocodile with a chain around its neck.

Jean- a type of cotton cloth.

Calico- from Calcutta- Oh, yes

we in Geordie-land have - All For coat and nee knickers.

Don't people teach history any more asks this old villein?

Wiping a joint and filling dents in car bodywork require two differen techniques,pushing solder into a wiped joint will put most of it on th floor.

An oxy flame of any sort would be useless for wiping a joint,unless i your pipe joint wiping experience you know better, especially in th use of a file to finish the joint.

Alla

-- Allan Waterfal

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Allan, Apart from my incursions in tender youthm The late Alan Robinson- author of 'the Repair of Vehicle Bodies' and the words and music to the VBBRA, taught me to use an oxy/acet torch- without a greased wooden spatula or fustian rag to apply lead.

OK, there is yet another way! I tried to keep it simple realising that overcoming one problem was enough for one day. The local Electricity Boards - jointed cable sheathing by putting the molten lead in a leather 'cloth' and wrapping it around the underground joint. there was also 'soldering' aluminium cable but I digress.. We all like a bit of excitement and being in a cold wet muddy trench suggests something!

So have I finished? Not a bit. The story- possibly apocryphal- is of my grandfather putting his hands into boiling lead- as a miner. What for, I haven't a clue.

Then- and you know that I am a Geordie- there is dropping molten lead from shot towers to make ammunition.

And then there are solder horses in the canning industries.

Enough?Well for one day.

Take care, Allan

Norm

I think the term 'moleskin' survived after people found 'moleskin substitute.' As a boy I can just about remember a plumber doing a job and asking his mate for the moleskin, however, it looked more like a wad of cloth to my (untrained) eye.

I just had a though for the OP looking for lead pipe. If lead proves difficult to find or too expensive then do some wiped joints with 3/4 copper tube. It was a normal task to make a wiped joint from lead to copper, so copper to copper must be fine?

Julian.

"ravensworth2674" wrote (snip)

Interesting, can you cite any references? I'd always gone with the superficially obvious 'cloth of the King'. That's what I like about this group, you learn something new every day - and not necessarily about engines!

Re. Moleskin trousers, I have a pait and they are certainly not made from the skin of a burrowing insectivore, but a heavy cotton cloth with raised nap giving a slightly velvety appearance.

Nick H

Thanks for all the thoughts. I've talked to people about how to do this, so I know the theory, but I've yet to actually try it. I know you need to use non-eutectic solder which sets gradually. I also know you're supposed to use a "moleskin" for wiping, but I'm unsure if this refers to genuine mole skin, or the fabric called moleskin. Anyone know?

Kim, I'm in Shropshire. Where are you? I don't have a car at the moment, so it might be hard for me to collect the pipe. But I'd be happy to pay the carriage, or maybe someone from these groups is travelling this way? How much pipe do you have and what do you want for it?

Of course copper is a possibility too. Thanks for that suggestion. I hadn't thought of it.

Best wishes,

Chris

Nick, On a serious note- there is no need to expose one's person simply to get a bit of cloth! Fustian or moleskin is a fine nap cloth which-- and I hope that you don't try- is fairly fireproof. Hence the use in blacksmiths trousers and wiping cloths.

Christopher, you can get away with most smooth cloths and moleskin is prefered because of being non stick. You can get away with most animal or vegetable fats- omitting watery margerine for obvious reasons of getting a eye ful of lead.

Overall, it is the Health and Safety concerns which have pushed this endearing sport into the background. I have no doubt that my ' grandfather' was boiling lead to make lead based paints. I suspect that it is a dying occupation now!

Here, in the UK, we don't do a lot of cathedrals but the Austrians, Swiss and the French still do a lot of copper bashing and leading. there is, I understand, a lot of copper in some whisky distilleries but i won't drink to it.

Cord du Roi? The roads are or were 'the King's Highway. So we have Roi both in French and Norman French-- and British Acts of Parliament. Well, it's Reine now but Big Ears is coming. Roads- before I was a boy- were often simply logs at right angles to the way and -- ropey up and down. Tarmac- macadamised roads were small stones driven in to the road by MacAdam and later secured with tar. Plenty of examples with granite blocks set in with tar. The word ' stone sets' is derived. Eventually, the whole caboodle becomes a mixture of tar and stone in a a sort on 'con crete' A mixture of lime and blood and stones!!!!!!

Where the Hell did I get? well, I did do the Roman Amphitheatre at Nimes- and the sails of the ships were made from - de Nimes or from Nimes.A bit about ships? Well, they sailed to join the Knights Templar etc from Aigues Mortes-- or Dead Water.

Err, enough?

is definitely woven fabric. Very dense & close

plasticised lead with flux after all.

from my Unca Bill when Bill "obtained" a new one

Cheshire I can supply the odd dead mole from time to

done its work. You'll have to skin the bugger

50 years ago as a Post Office telephone cable jointer I certainly used a fabric wipe. (Called a moleskin). see remember the first time I used my skill at wiping joints on a lead water pipe. I forgot that the telephone cable was full of copper which conducted a lot of the heat away. I used the same petrol blowlamp settings on the water pipe & melted everything. I did eventualy get to be a good lead plumber.