Pewter Candlestick needs love

[Prajna]

Hi again, font of knowledge and engineering wisdom, I have been asked to fix the above-mentioned (and below illustrated) candlestick by a friend who inherited it from her grandfather and it thus has considerable sentimental value.

It appears to be pewter, to my inexpert eye, and, as you can see from the less-than-optimal camera phone photos, the 'stick' has come unstuck. It looks to me that it was attached to the base with a bolt that was then soldered over. Someone appears to have attempted to stick it back together with some species of hard, powdery glue but the evidence is that that was a less than optimal engineering solution.

Hopefully, if you've not yet hit the back-button due to my needless verbosity, you can see where I'm heading with this: how do I go about achieving a near perfect repair of the kind of quality that will leave me basking in accolades and warm appreciation?

 

[Onthespotwelding]

You can get Pewter solder I’ve Never tried welding pewter before

If you want perfect results leave it to a professional

 

[Prajna]

You can get Pewter solder I’ve Never tried welding pewter before

If you want perfect results leave it to a professional

Well, seeking perfection may have been intended to add a little levity rather than being an absolute requirement. It would be nice to achieve the best I can manage though.

 

[voipio]

Pewter melts at between 170 and 230degC, depending on composition, and has very low thermal conductivity. The melting point of ordinary solders is way too high to use safely with pewter. There is Tix solder, which melts at 135degC, giving a little bit of headroom to play with. A small flame, or a large-ish (but heated to a low temperature) soldering iron would be the way to go, with the correct flux, followed by a clean up with jewellers files and emery paper.

 

[Gragson]

I bet there is a fair amount of experience in that process in applying the level of heat, less it becomes a big blob.

 

[Brad93]

Pewter melts at between 170 and 230degC, depending on composition, and has very low thermal conductivity. The melting point of ordinary solders is way too high to use safely with pewter. There is Tix solder, which melts at 135degC, giving a little bit of headroom to play with. A small flame, or a large-ish (but heated to a low temperature) soldering iron would be the way to go, with the correct flux, followed by a clean up with jewellers files and emery paper.

That guy has clearly done that for many many years. What a pleasure to watch.

 

[Prajna]

Pewter melts at between 170 and 230degC, depending on composition, and has very low thermal conductivity. The melting point of ordinary solders is way too high to use safely with pewter. There is Tix solder, which melts at 135degC, giving a little bit of headroom to play with. A small flame, or a large-ish (but heated to a low temperature) soldering iron would be the way to go, with the correct flux, followed by a clean up with jewellers files and emery paper.

That's very helpful, @voipio. I'm not sure I need to solder it because I could probably just remove the remenants of the original bolt (though I will probably need to unsolder the bolt head in the base) and replace it with another bolt.

 

[Cobbler]

I tried to solder some broken pewter cuff links for my father in law years ago, I failed miserably as they disappeared as soon as I touched the soldering iron on. on hindsight I should have used epoxy.

 

[Prajna]

I'm thinking that it should be easy to melt the solder off the bolt head in the base so I can extract that.

 

[jerrytug]

Degrease, key the surfaces and epoxy, would be my choice.

 

[Prajna]

Degrease, key the surfaces and epoxy, would be my choice.

Sounds quick and easy. I have plenty of time though and am up for a bit of a challenge. Is there a better alternative than to carefully extract the broken screw/bolt and replace it? The previous repair was a glue job and that failed, though I suspect the reason it failed was because there is still the stub of the broken bolt between the two parts and that prevented a close fit required to give a strong joint with the adhesive that was employed.