Cut your flux brush about in half, at a slight angle. This will reduce the amount of flux on your brush, and prevent your solder from bubbling up and splattering.
Pour a small amount of flux, just enough for the task at hand, into a small container. Don't pour the leftovers back into the flux jar, it will contaiminate the rest. Do not use the lid of your current flux jar, as it should be sealed at all times so it won't dry up and become all gummy.
When finished soldering, wash off the flux by washing it with warm water and a soft sponge that has some Neutra 5000 neutralizer on it. If you have a laundry sink, it is likely the best place to do it.
Clean your flux off right away after finishing soldering. Flux will oxidize your solder seams if left over time.
Back to topWipe your hot iron tip on a wet sponge on a regular basis while soldering. It must be a natural sponge, not a plastic based one. The one that came with the Mika iron stand is the type that you want to use. If you have any dark gunk build up that won't come off on the sponge, try rubbing the hot iron tip against a block of Sal Ammoniac, and then against your wet sponge.
Back to topWhen tinning any brass pieces, like a lamp cap, rub it with fine grade steel wool, wash the residue off and dry, and then apply some Action Tin tinning paint. Apply with a fresh flux brush, and hold the piece with a pair of pliers. Touch the piece with your hot soldering iron, let the piece heat up a little, and then start moving the iron slowly and smoothly over where you have applied the Action Tin. When the whole piece has been covered, wash it off as you would regular flux, dry, and then inspect for any missed spots or unsightly solder blobs. Apply a little bit of regular flux and touch with your soldering iron. If you are doing a lot of this kind of work, an 800 degree iron tip will speed up your work.
Back to topWhen finishing soldering on a suncatcher, coat the edges with flux, tin with solder, repeat on the other side, then flux and tin the outer flat edge, with 60/40 solder. Then take a roll of 50/50 solder, and hold the suncatcher with a pair of pliers, in a vertical position, and begin to apply the 50/50 solder in small amounts along the top edge, moving the piece around so the top edge that is level changes. Then go back and connect the little bobs of 50/50 with more 50/50. The melting point of 50/50 solder allows it to sit on the edge on a piece of glass better than 60/40 can. Building up the edge of suncatchers helps the foil from being ripped off accidently, or just peeling back on its own from being damaged during the cleaning process. This will also allow you to bury a length of fine wire (20g or 22g) around the outer edge of the suncatcher as reinforcement, if the suncatcher has a design that has a part of it sticking out on its own, unsupported by the main body of the piece.
Back to topWhen soldering 3-D pieces together, first tack the panels together with a high and low tack. If later on it turns out that there is an alignment problem, it is much easier to dis-assemble a few tacks, with a piece of paper inserted into the space between the pieces of glass and moved up into the molten solder while your iron is at the tack joint. The paper should be able to move through the solder, separating the two piece of glass.
Once your 3-D piece is tacked together and looks OK, turn the piece over on its side, and, using 50/50 solder, fill in the inner seams, moving the piece around. Be careful and support the piece by holding it at the top part above where you are soldering, to prevent against the piece collapsing, not that it will, but just in case. Once the inside of the piece, say a lamp, has been soldered smoothly with 50/50, turn the lamp over, and to solder the outer side there are a couple of ways to do it. You could sit in a chair with a large old towel in your lap, and balance the lamp between your legs, or get a few boxes or similar supports to prop the lamp up against, and make the lamp so that at some point there will be a level solder seam. Using the 50/50 solder again, fill in the seam roughly, it doesn't have to be perfect, at first. Do all of the seam filling first, and then go back with 60/40 solder and, making sure the lamp seams are horizontal and level, finish the soldering by smoothly soldering each seam.
Back to topWhen you have a gap between your pieces of glass, fill the gap in roughly with solder at first, but then go and continue soldering somewhere else on your piece, to let the heat of the solder dissipate before finishing soldering . If you keep soldering a wide seam for too long, the solder will go molten on you, melt through to under the piece, or just cause a heat crack in your glass. That distinctive heat crack "snick" is not a sound you want to hear. This idea also applies if you have any long narrow pieces of glass, or any points that are fragile (special bandsaw cuts for example).
After soldering, inspect the solder seams for small spots of copper foil that wasn't covered with solder. Take your sharp knife again, and carefully trim off the exposed foil.
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