Splicing wires

Many thanks.

Although I have since discovered T-type connectors I have just purchased one of these. It would be useful in places where trailing a cable for a soldering iron is fraught.

Oh, you really need to be able to manage things like this on a boat. We have a little (11 metres) canal boat in France. I have a full set of red/blue/yellow crimps (that's up to 6mm2) plus a hydraulic crimp tool for up to some ridiculous size (> 50mm2). The hydraulic crimp tool wasn't too expensive and it's a real boon being able to crimp great fat cables.

There are many gas soldering irons that run on lighter gas. I had one myself and it was very effective - unfortunately catalyst part got damaged in my toolbox.

Because I needed to solder things away from 240v , I have a gas powered soldering iron, Very useful

They don't look very convincing to me. Especially when it comes to connect wires of different gauges.

Wrap some multicore solder round the joint, cover with cooking foil and apply a lighter. When cool remove cooking foil to reveal a good soldered joint. Very good for outdoor work.

I've found when soldering out of doors that the most important thing is keep out of the wind and/or shelter the piece you are trying to solder. Using an iron capable of easily soldering the joint indoors may/will not be capable of the same outdoors if the flow of air over the work piece takes away too much of the heat from the tip of the iron.

Just curious, why is soldering against the rules for narrowboats?

Vibration. The same conditions exist for automotive use, where the cable is specified in terms of diameter of strands.

Soldering will wick between the strands and make what is effectively a single core. That will flex and fatigue and eventually break. In reality the strands nearby will break off, one by one.

Crimp or screw terminal with ferrules is the norm.

Thanks, I thought it might be something like that.

Joints will melt in a fire.

That sounds like a fuse, might be a good thing where current flow would halt at some point where the insulation also becomes toast.

I am more aware that gas pipes must have compression fittings. Soldered joints in gas pipes are not allowed on boats.

The bolt hole is slotted so the two halves can be angled to take different diameter wires.

They are a pig to use. The clamps fall out as does the (not so) captive nut.

In hindsight I would have super-glued the nut in place, and the cutters in place too so they don't fall out.

As I was working above my head I had to place the wires in the top part and offer the lower part up into place. Hold between finger and thumb and tighten bolt/nut.

The irony was that after making sound connections I discovered the cable itself was faulty, and of course inaccessible. I presume there was a nick in the cable and corrosion has set in, being 12V DC.

So, new cable and all is now good.

The largest soldering iron you can get, is the 200W ones for sheet metal work. We used those irons in shop, for fastening tin plate pieces together. The Tool Shop here still deals in those irons, but they have to be ordered in. They don't sell enough of those to keep them in the store (I doubt there are students or a shop today, doing tin plate projects :-) ). We also learned to weld, and the soldering was just for stuff an (old style) welder would damage.

My 80W iron had just barely enough heat, to solder the ends of

Generally, I would not advise soldering mains wiring, I doubt that is code. The wires would need to be mechanically secured to one another, at a minimum. You can't just strip two solid wires, hold them parallel for half an inch, reflow solder them, and go have a beer. That's not safe. Find a web site with a picture of how messy "mechanically securing" a solder joint is. It will be hell to insulate, after you are finished. Because you're going to be shoving that back into some box (and stressing it).

Electrical tape is not really an insulator. Shrink wrap (polyolefin) is better, but there are still issues with mixing such an approach with 70C wire insulation (heating the shrink, damages the 70C insulation).

Solder is also not a mechanical fixing. It fatigues and can fail on you. There are many different solder alloys, and a lot of them are soft. Others are brittle and will crack on you.

Pretend the ghost of the fire insurance inspector, is looking over your shoulder.

Paul

If done *properly* it is *completely* safe. As long as you use insulation over it and use solid wire.

It's not so good with stranded if the stranded is under stress. or movement.

The problem is doing it properly without a cold joint, which means its easier to e.g. twist the wires together first.

That's where half of the 'support before solder' advice comes from - It's all about not having movement while the solder solidifies.

The other half is about using solder on stranded wires where solder wicking creates a stiffened part of the wire that abruptly ceases leading to a potential area of stress concentration and metal fatigue.

That is why a lot of aerospace and automotive applications will prefer wire wrap or crimp.

Dad had a big old Wolf soldering iron, the element had gone on it, so it was always used on the gas hob ...

Weller still seems to make the 100/140W soldering guns. I've used two of these (and obviously more than two hands) to solder car engine earth braids. I once had a Megane with a wildly fluctuating speedometer reading over certain speed ranges, which turned out to be ignition crosstalk into the wheel sensor line due to a broken earth strap between engine and body.

That has to count as one of the most obscure faults...