Hurricane
Well-known member
Thanks for those very kind words, John.
It has been a pleasure discussing the various options and sharing my findings with you.
People might be interested in my last PM to you when I explained that your experience in top welding made me have another go myself.
Top welding is a bit of a challenge.
If you read back, you will see that I bought a cheap hot air electronics soldering station to do my top welding.
Hand welding gives me the option to "pull away" from the job if the welding starts to go wrong.
Hot air soldering stations can be bought on eBay for about £40.
All my work to date has used one of these to do the final top welds to the mitre corners etc.
This is the one I bought:-
You have to feed the plastic welding rod into the joint manually but it gives me more control over the potential of damaging a panel that I have just spent a long time getting right!!
After finding that John managed to do the top welding in the same way as Trakmark had suggested - i.e. using his normal hot air welder with the speed welding nozzle, I thought I would have another go.
SWMBO bought me a new Leister Hot Jet S welder for Christmas.
One like this:-
Being smaller, the new welder is significantly easier to use than my old Steinel one.
EDIT - sorry - I've mentioned this welder and the old Steinel one before.
So after installing the flybridge last month, last week, I thought I would have a go top welding with the new welder.
And I was pleasantly surprised to see that my test top welds looked great.
The big benefit of using the normal welding speed nozzle is that you can push the welding rod into the groove easier than just pushing it manually.
So, my thanks to John for showing me that top welding CAN be done by us - just like the professionals do.
It has been a pleasure discussing the various options and sharing my findings with you.
People might be interested in my last PM to you when I explained that your experience in top welding made me have another go myself.
Top welding is a bit of a challenge.
If you read back, you will see that I bought a cheap hot air electronics soldering station to do my top welding.
Hand welding gives me the option to "pull away" from the job if the welding starts to go wrong.
Hot air soldering stations can be bought on eBay for about £40.
All my work to date has used one of these to do the final top welds to the mitre corners etc.
This is the one I bought:-
You have to feed the plastic welding rod into the joint manually but it gives me more control over the potential of damaging a panel that I have just spent a long time getting right!!
After finding that John managed to do the top welding in the same way as Trakmark had suggested - i.e. using his normal hot air welder with the speed welding nozzle, I thought I would have another go.
SWMBO bought me a new Leister Hot Jet S welder for Christmas.
One like this:-
Being smaller, the new welder is significantly easier to use than my old Steinel one.
EDIT - sorry - I've mentioned this welder and the old Steinel one before.
So after installing the flybridge last month, last week, I thought I would have a go top welding with the new welder.
And I was pleasantly surprised to see that my test top welds looked great.
The big benefit of using the normal welding speed nozzle is that you can push the welding rod into the groove easier than just pushing it manually.
So, my thanks to John for showing me that top welding CAN be done by us - just like the professionals do.