Off The Wall Question.

Hey all.

Might seem kinda weird. But I need some advice from people who know about using brass as your bonding metal on 1/2 copper pipe and aircraft aluminium. Possibly as well with fine gauge steel meshing.

You see several years ago I twisted and glued myself up a ferret backpack cage from an old army backpack frame. It's aircraft aluminium. Chopped it down to size. Cut copper pipe and made a framework emerge from the base I made. Once wrapped in tiny gauge .5cm spaced steel meshing; Kinda ends up looking like a ferret hiking cage.

My experience level was quite low, and at the time I thought it best to stick with glue and zipties. Mind you it still looks very professional I must say. Over the years I've made better repairs, and started using rivets and metal sewing Thus abandoning the zipties formerly anchoring the mesh.

Now I want to clean it all up, solder it all together again with brass. Then my NEW concern is soldering brass into the sewn caging on the framework.

Any suggestions.

Copper and brass can be soldered, but you can't solder to alumunum.

Sandwich the mesh between the aluminum frame and a strip of aluminum then drill through the entire sandwich and pop rivet it together.



Look at this link!
click here for pop rivet instructions

Actually you can

Harris Company makes an aluminum soldering kit called Al-solder 500. This kit contains an alloy made just for this purpose (not regular solder) and it also contains an aluminum flux. If you decide to try this follow the kit's instructions and watch your flame as it can melt the aluminum quite quickly. Check out Harris Products website for more info. Other companies manufacture similar products, I am just familiar with Harris because I've used it in dissimilar metal joining classes. We solder aluminum to copper and you can't crack the joint apart.

To be specific; The aluminum is famale to a male copper pipe.
It's not for flow, just slightly structural.

Is there another reason why aluminium wont accept brass brazing besides galvanic corrosion?

What if I drilled small anchor holes in the aluminuim and copper, then let the brass fill them? Then I'm not relying on intimate contact to seal the deal.