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Mike, Glad you got the job done all right! I wish I would have seen your first post so I could have given you my technique for leak free solder joints in pipe. I learned to solder in grade school from my father, that's some 50 years ago. He also taught me to oxy-acetylene weld and braze when I was in high school. And here where I work I had the benifit of some pointers from the fellow that certified the assembly technicians for NASA soldering. The KEY to all good solder joints, and for that matter any type of brazing, is to get the surfaces CLEAN first, BUT MORE important is to be sure to get the "parent" metal surface fully "wetted" with the bonding metal, whether it is lead/tin (solder), antimony/tin (you DID use antimony/tin, didn't you??!??), silver, brass (brazing rod), or what ever. When the parent metal surface is "wet" with the bonding material, you have to sand, grind, or some how remove material to "un-wet" the surface. Even if you heat the surface so the bonding material has melted, you CANNOT fully wipe it off - I've tried! In fact, that is one of the tests I use to be sure I have FULLY wetted the copper pipe/fitting. With the solder hot enough to melt, I wipe the pipe with a rag to see if I can get any copper to show where I have tinned (soldered) the pipe. Can't see copper, pipe is fully tinned ready to put together. The plumbers are right to "shine" up the pipe and fitting, BUT (IMHO) putting flux on both pieces and then assembling them before soldering is shoddy, crappy, lazy workmanship! I have taken apart enough joints put together by professional plumbers to tell you that that technique is a crap shoot guessing game. One in ten joints show limited tinning of the joint surfaces. AND I had one that had an untinned path all the way through the joint. YEA, it was leaking, some TEN years after it had been put together. It took that long for the solidified flux to be washed/eaten away by the water. What I have always done when I am putting copper plumbing together is to tin both pieces first. Wipe the excess solder off the pipe and let the excess run out of the fitting, tap gently if necessary. Then with the pipe hot, heat the fitting to melt the solder and push the two together. Then wick solder into the joint so you have enough to fill the joint gap. You need to be easy with the heat since you can cook the tin off the copper - that is also one way to get the "tinning/brazing" off BUT when you get done the parent metal surface is UGLY!! and you still have to sand it to get it clean so you can start over. Pro plumbers do not do what I do because, A. they were not trained to do it that way. B. it takes TOO much time, easily four times as long. AND, if it leaks after ten years - like mine did! - they get paid to come back and fix what was because of their shoddy workmanship in the first place. Back to the antimony/tin solder, all lead based solders are prohibited from use in drinking water systems. That is because the lead will leach out into the water and get picked up in your body's cells where it takes forever (almost) to flush out. Lead is toxic, especially to children, especially to the nervious system. Regards,
Larry
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