I don't think so. I'm sort of a soldering guru, having taught a couple thousand people how to do it. It doesn't scare me and is so much more reliable than any form of glue when dealing with brass. That being said, it too has its limitations and works best when you nail it on the first attempt. The more times you try and re-solder something, the worse it gets, very much like the problems with re-gluing a CA'd joint.
So... today was another day resolving catastropes. Some days I wonder why I punish myself like this. It's almost as bad as my attempts at playing golf. I did it for years and only got frustration. It was that kind of day.
It all started nicely. Since yesterday's J-B work was now solid I added the railing around the SK platform first forming the curve around a piece of brass. I attempted to use thick CA to glue the railing to the platform since I was afraid of un-soldering the angle brackets, but this wasn't working so I bit the bullet and soldered the railing in place. It worked!
I used J-B to glue the radar assembly onto the upper parts of the mast. I then set this in a vise on my secondary workbench and all was well with the world.
I then went back to the SC antena tower. It too needed a radial railing on the work platform and GMM included a specific piece of rail at the right length. I soldered the ends of the rail together and then soldered the rail to the round platform. If you look closely you can see the SC antenna with it's backing glued on with J-B. I added a piece of 0.032" brass rod through the hole on the top of the lattice tower, and extended the rod through the bottom so it will serve as additional support to the final assembly.
I also added the long ladder on the tri-masts vertical leg. First I tried to get it in place with J-B, but was having trouble so I soldered this also and didn't un-solder anything else. Then castastophe struck.
I was in the process of making my own yardarm in preparation for the new PE to arrive from Loren Perry at GMM. He found a spare Essex yardarm detail and is sending it to me for the price of the postage. I assembled the new yard out of three peices of very fine telescoping tubing. As I noted yesterday, a close inspection of the real yard showed a circular cross-section. Again, I soldered the three pieces together and then chucked the rod into my Dremel and files the joints smooth.
The smallest tube, which I believe is .5mm, has a hole in the middle that I wanted to fill with a piece of fine guitar string (to really stiffen the yard). So I attempted to find my piece of High E guitar string in a plastic container on the shelf over my work bench. There is a corollary of Murphy's Law called "the law of selective gravitation" that says that anything dropped will cause the most amount of damge". It came about from NASA when a wrench was dropped while making a space satellite and caused a million bucks worth of damage. As I moved the box, a bottle of MicroMark Pressure Sensitive Adhesive fell off the shelf. It landed on the plastic container that held some of the finished PE peices like the five long range radio towers.
The box exploded its parts in every direction. I was able to recover all of it except for one radio tower. I simply can't find it anywhere. And believe me I've looked everywhere.
I'm hoping it will come back from the quantum rift tomorrow. Otherwise, I'm going to be building an Essex with only four of the five antenna towers. It might be a blessing in disquise since I have one wrecked base for them. But that wasn't the worst thing that happened!
I pushed my roll-around auxiliary work bench out of the way to search under it for the missing tower. In the process of pushing it, I must have contacted the vise that was holding the SK antenna assembly with the curing J-B. I had pushed it backhand not looking at the bench when I did it. Big Mistake!
When I next noticed the assembly, the SK antenna was no longer on the mast. I found a mangled back frame on the bench nearby and the antenna facing on the floor. This was J-B'd yesterday so it was cured, but now fractured. I spent a long time, re-forming the back frame, cleaning off all the J-B and getting it ready to reattach. I decided to solder the back frame to the facing, and it worked. Incidentally, I ordered and just received a solder paste and dispenser from Kester (Amazon) which will make it easier to precisely add solder to these micro-assemblies.
I then attemped to solder the antenna to the mast after cleaning off the un-cured J-B. This was a solid brass rod and the heat needed to tin the piece melted the J-B that was holding the mast to the PE base and it fell apart. The soldered railings and brackets DID NOT LET GO. So at least that worked.
I made a new mast, this time out of 1/16" tubing, not solid, so it wouldn't take so much heat to tin. I decided to solder the antenna to the mast first and then J-B the new mast back onto the platform. Meanwhile all this handling distorted the railings and brackets at least three times, and the round platform also broke loose (it was CA'd), and I put that back on after soldering the antenna. The antenna soldering worked also, I re-glued the new mast to the platform so it is again curing overnight, only this time it will be a complete assembly.
Whew! I'd like to say this stuff never happened before, but I suffered similar trials when building the Missouri. I rolled over SK-2 radar assemblies with my desk chair wheels and had one of the main gun director radars darn near destroyed when a piece of white cardboard (which I was using as a clean photo background) fell forward, hit the radar and crushed it. It was the last one I had and I re-formed is as best as I could. Stuff happens!
You can see some of the fine screen details have been filled with solder (more reason to use solder paste from a precision dispenser). And those railiings have taken a beating. I'm going to leave it alone... I've done enough damage already. Hopefully, tomorrow will be less eventful. This is a hobby and is supposed to be relaxing. Yeah! Right!