I dragged out the resistance soldering unit this morning to solder those centres into their tyres. On the first wheel, I experimented with solder paste and a torch, but ultimately settled on the RSU. So, with only twelve joins to make, I started work with the RSU again. This time, I found that after the first spoke, the current was passing through that path and refusing to warm up the next joint.
Finally, I gave up and went to dig the trusty Weller out of Mt Deluge. This worked perfectly. A little drop of Carr’s green label and the tiniest smidge of solder offered up to the joint on the tip of the hot iron resulted in a quick poof of noxious vapour known to cause cancer in California and a nice solid joint.
At the end of play: Weller 9 – RSU 3
Pembroke:87 
Wow. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in California?
Perhaps a dumb question at this point but how do you know the center of the wheels will be the center of, well, the wheel? Do you plan to turn them true later?
Neil
Yes, that is why they don’t have holes in them yet. 😀
Gotcha. I was making a reference to the shoulder fumes and not Cali in general 😉
Solder fumes of course. I’ve got “shoulder” on the brain since my surgery to strap my broken clavicle together happened on Tuesday (finally).
Shoulder fumes are an entirely different matter, of course!
Glad to hear the surgery went ahead. What’s the prognosis for getting back on the bike? When I did mine, it was six months before I could ride again, but I had no screws or straps.
Saw the surgeon today who said 2-4 more weeks before pt then another 16-12 weeks. Great. Time to subscribe to SketchUp and start designing parts!
Or OnShape.
I think one of those wheels may be missing part of its flange!
For my surface mount electronics stuff, I’ve got a (very) modified toaster oven that gets hot enough to melt solder paste. I wonder if you’d have any luck with frankentoaster?
Maybe it’s worth a shot. I think one of the challenges with the torch was that perhaps I wasn’t using the right flux. The tyres are stainless steel, which requires an acid flux; and I don’t know what is in my paste.