Source for white metal requested

[fcriscuo]

I recently ordered a back-ordered Tameo Ferrari 1/43 kit from SpotModel. It's scheduled to be shipped in late May. This will be my first white metal kit and my first experience soldering metal parts. Most of the YouTube tutorials I've watched, recommend developing soldering skills by first working with scrap pieces of white metal. This makes sense given how much these kits cost. I've found sources for metals used to make jewelry, but not white metal, and the used metal kits available on eBay are too expensive for this purpose. I'd appreciate any recommendations for finding white metal pieces. Thanks in advance.

[peteski]

I'm surprised that someone recommends soldering white-metal kits. If the kit is actually made of what in U.S. is usually called white-metal (or Zamak), that alloy does not solder easily.  If the metal in question is Pewter (tin-based alloy), then it can be soldered, but it would be quite difficult to do without melting the parts themselves.  If there is some new building technique out there, I have not heard about it.

Tameo most likely uses some Peter alloy. I'm experienced in soldering (bot as a hobby and professionally) and I would not consider soldering Tameo kits.

Here is some reading material on Zamak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamak

And on Pewter:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewter

I have soldered kits made using photo-etched brass parts, but that is something all together different.

Most modelers use either CA (superglue) or epoxy to build metal kits.  My recommendation would be to forget soldering and use adhesives.

[NOBLNG]

From what I have researched, you need to copper plate the white metal before it can be soldered. Here is a link to a thread I started with an inquiry about soldering it. I ended up using Milliput.  https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/156256-die-cast-body-modification/

Edit: I never did try the MuggyWeld stuff in my link, and I had no luck with ordinary solder.

 

Edited Tuesday at 11:20 PM by NOBLNG

[Matt Bacon]

Welcome to the club! First of all, you need to know that you don’t solder white metal kits like you’d solder electrical components or brass. You need  “low temperature solder” (which is basically the same stuff as white metal itself). And instead of heating the parts you are soldering with the iron and touching the solder to the hot parts, you melt the low temperature solder on the iron and let it flow onto the cold parts you are joining and into the gap between them by capillary action. So you need to be able to hold the parts you are joining together as you want them to be when joined. Use clamps or tape, and do the bits that are exposed, then move the tape and do the other bits. The solder sets really fast. 
You can probably source some old gaming figures or model soldiers to practice on if you want, but when I took the plunge with the white metal Finecast kits I have been building I just went ahead and did it, after watching a couple of videos online. Google “low temperature soldering” to find them. 
Any questions, just ask…

best,

M.

Edited yesterday at 07:59 AM by Matt Bacon

[Brizio]

Recently I received some old transkit, and they have white metal parts. Few transkit have a rollcage, and I was wondering the same, if was possible to soldering insted to use CA glue. I cleaned up the parts, because the flashing. 

But since these transkit are old, rare to find, I opted to laser weld all the rollcage parts. It works great and is pretty solid. I welded different material, even diecast. It could be tricky, but it is doable.

As soon I start to build this kit, I'm going to post photos.

[peteski]

45 minutes ago, Brizio said:

Recently I received some old transkit, and they have white metal parts. Few transkit have a rollcage, and I was wondering the same, if was possible to soldering insted to use CA glue. I cleaned up the parts, because the flashing. 

But since these transkit are old, rare to find, I opted to laser weld all the rollcage parts. It works great and is pretty solid. I welded different material, even diecast. It could be tricky, but it is doable.

Good for you! I don't think many modelers have access to laser welders.

CA or epoxy work well, but the joint strengths is nowhere as good as welding.

6 hours ago, Matt Bacon said:

Welcome to the club! First of all, you need to know that you don’t solder white metal kits like you’d solder electrical components or brass. You need  “low temperature solder” (which is basically the same stuff as white metal itself). And instead of heating the parts you are soldering with the iron and touching the solder to the hot parts, you melt the low temperature solder on the iron and let it flow onto the cold parts you are joining and into the gap between them by capillary action. So you need to be able to hold the parts you are joining together as you want them to be when joined. Use clamps or tape, and do the bits that are exposed, then move the tape and do the other bits. The solder sets really fast. 
You can probably source some old gaming figures or model soldiers to practice on if you want, but when I took the plunge with the white metal Finecast kits I have been building I just went ahead and did it, after watching a couple of videos online. Google “low temperature soldering” to find them. 
Any questions, just ask…

best,

M.

Matt the technique you describe sounds more like brazing than soldering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazing
Also, if the solder was the same stuff as the kit parts themselves, wouldn't that also start melting the kit parts?! I suspect the melting point of the solder is lower than the metal used for the kit.   Don't you also need  a soldering iron with adjustable temperature to keep it for getting too hot?

[Matt Bacon]

20 minutes ago, peteski said:

Matt the technique you describe sounds more like brazing than soldering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazing
Also, if the solder was the same stuff as the kit parts themselves, wouldn't that also start melting the kit parts?! I suspect the melting point of the solder is lower than the metal used for the kit.   Don't you also need  a soldering iron with adjustable temperature to keep it for getting too hot?

Well, it's described as low temperature soldering. This is the tutorial I found:

I just use my regular soldering iron at its standard temperature, and if you look at the pictures in the thread I linked to above, you can see that the join completely disappears when you use low temperature solder on white metal parts -- the two pieces become one, essentially. So I'm going to say if it's not exactly the same composition, then low temp solder and casting white metal are very, very similar. On the "melting" part, you never touch the white metal parts directly with the soldering iron, and you don't hold the iron in place with the liquid solder on the tip touching the white metal parts either. Not to get too "physics" about it, but there's a certain amount of heat energy in your blob of molten solder, which is enough to keep it liquid. When you touch the blob onto the two parts, it runs along the seams. If the soldering iron is no longer touching anything, all the heat energy you have got is in that small amount of molten solder. As it runs along the joint, it cools as the heat energy goes into the bulk white metal (which is a good conductor of heat) on each side of the joint, and the heat is dissipated into a much larger amount of room temperature white metal. There isn't enough energy to melt any more metal, just warm it up a bit. In practice, all the soldering I did (a bit at a time) to join the top and bottom shells of a 1/24 race car made it noticeably warm to the touch, but not hot. With a bit of practice, and keeping the iron moving, you can "stroke" the solder along the join, just melting it under the tip and letting the capillary action take it further and further. You have to be careful with small parts, where there's not enough material to dissipate the heat of the molten solder, so I still use epoxy or superglue for those. But for joining major parts low melt solder is great. And if you have to repair broken white metal (which is not as flexible and easy to just to bend as you might think) it means you get an invisible repair that's as strong as the original material instead of having to mess around with pins and epoxy...

best,

M.

 

[peteski]

Thanks for the explanation, but to me in order for the "solder" to run like a liquid along the kit's parts indicates that the "solder's" melting temperature has to be quite bit lower than the kit's parts themselves. If l liquid metal actual wets another metal, there is a great amount of heat transfer going on between them (for the wetting to occur).  I guess looking at the "big picture" there really is no point trying to get into the technical details. Looks like that technique works and I learned something new.