Rad Drain Cock

[Rich]

>> Your options increase if you consider that you can silver solder a brass fitting to the steel plug. <<

Rich,
Someone suggested "brazing" in a fitting. I know next to nothing about metal work and welding. Is this the same thing? I have one of those giant soldering irons my wife had for making stained glass windows a few years ago. Do you think that would that work?

-B-

There are low temp, low strength silver solders and there are high-temp high strenght silver solders. High temp silver soldering is indeed brazing. There isn't a significant difference between soldering and brazing, other than in common usage brazing refers to using higher temp melting filler material.

Anyway, for your application, I would suggest silver solder that is 45 - 56% silver. The tensile strength would be likely be over 50,000 psi, which is very strong indeed. The melting point of the solder would be over 1000 F, so a small oxy acetylene torch would be suitable. An iron will not do the job.

Parker.com (find the brass products catalog) has brass fittings that are male/female tapered pipe tread. You could drill and tap the plug, screw in the brass fitting, and then silver solder.

If you want to find somebody to do the brazing for you look for somebody who does commerical refrigeration install / repair work.

A couple of links to get your started:

http://www.jwharris.com/jwref/chart/
http://www.muggyweld.com/video.html (entertaining brazing videos)

 

[Beowulf]

Rich,
Thanks for the information and links. A generous forum member has offered to fix me up so I'm in good hands on this project.

-B-