[TowerTalk] Soldering flex-weave

[Larry stowell]

The Weston St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco uses "toilet bowel cleaner" to clean the pennies (
they clean all the coins )
They Do the cleaning because the desk clerks were white gloves. Of course the time I stayed there
was 25 years ago.
 
I have used it before on flex weave and it works but you have to rinse very toughly. 

73 Happy New Year
Larry K1ZW 

-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Martin
Ewing AA6E
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 4:07 PM
To: Towertalk List
Subject: [TowerTalk] Soldering flex-weave

I've got some dipoles built from Flex-weave wire -- stranded with zillions of small conductors.  The
wire is indeed very flexible, but I need to shorten one of my antennas.  The problem is that the
copper is 
weathered pretty well by now, and it can't be soldered as it is.   (This 
is the downside of stranded antenna wire -- it turns into Litz wire after a while, you can't be sure
the current divides equally, etc.)

So the Big Question:  What's a simple, efficient way to clean the oxide off finely stranded wire in
the field?  I've tried abrasive methods (sandpaper, knife blades), but they don't do well.  Do you
know any good tricks?

If nothing better comes along, I will try acid.  That should be effective, but it's not user
friendly.

TIA / 73 / New Year's greetings,

Martin AA6E
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