[TowerTalk] Soldering to Aluminum - Thanks!

[Dan Zimmerman N3OX]

I wanted to mention that I've succesfully soldered to some aluminum
flashing using the following method, which was inspired by the motor
oil and brush posts here.

Put down a big bead of rosin core solder on some freshly scraped up
aluminum (in air, no oil here, just roughen it up).  Try to get the
flux to spread out over the surface.  Now the bead is simply sitting
on top of the aluminum.  Get it hot, and just start scraping at the
aluminum with the soldering gun tip.  Everywhere you scrape, the
solder wets!

I'm sure it's much, much harder to do with a piece that has
nonnegligible thermal mass, but for what I was doing; trying to make
some capacitors out of aluminum flashing, it worked great.

As far as I can tell, it's mechanically solid and electrically sound.
The solder certainly wet to the aluminum in a way that I've never seen
before.  What a trick!  Thanks TowerTalk!

73,
Dan