How'd it go today?

I dismantled two dying wild cherry, forestry shape. The challenge was to avoid damaging the smaller hormbeams beside and under them. These are healthy, whereas plenty of other hornbeams are dying ot dead all around. I'm very pleased with the result; just two or three twigs teared off.

This evening, I came to find a leak on the central heater. A fitting on the wc's radiator was dripping, like two drops per second. I emptied the system, but I have yet to take off the fitting and solve the problem, dead seal or corrosion. It will be cold to go out of the bed tomorrow.
 
Well, at least, now I know but that won't make me warner in the morning: It isn't a bad seal or a hole by corrosion, but a split on the femal thread of a brass fitting. Stress cracking I guess, some 10 years + after mounting. Of course I don't have the right size in my plumbing mess.
 
The cat's have been getting on my damned nerves the last two days. The girl's decided she has a problem with her brother, and she's stalking, and hissing/batting at him. She sits on a high perch, then gets on his ass when he moves anywhere near her. Six pounds of fury... :^/

will solder keep it going for a little while Marc, or is it too hot?
 
Wasn’t a bad day but wasn’t good either. Everything seemed like a struggle. Planned on craning out 6 decent sized trees today. Got 3&1/2. Digging snow out of 8x8 areas for the outriggers took a lot of time. Then I was short on cribbing for the setup on two trees. Slope plus being on an elevated lane. Couldn’t get the rears off the ground. Kept the picks light and off the rear quadrant. Felt wobbly. Did not enjoy. Oh well. I’ll grab more cribbing and tomorrow is another day. It shall be glorious.
 
lxskllr said:
will solder keep it going for a little while Marc, or is it too hot?
Click to expand...
Its just warm water so the temperature is pretty mild and wouldn't be an issue at all. The problem as I see it is that the split is full of crap, like metal oxides, anticorrosive stuff carried by the water and shreds of teflon. The solder/brazing would never work on that. Maybe recut the split with an hacksaw and then brazing to fill the kerf, but it surely would fill the thread too. So a new one will take a little time, but will spare me a real hassle.
 
If you have any questions Marc, hit me up! Don’t want to over tighten modern brass. It’s not as elastic without the lead it seems. I don’t know if you guys went lead free over there or not. Teflon (3 wraps) with pipe thread sealant on top for the joint prep. At least a few male threads should be exposed when done. Apologies if that info is elementary to you.
 
Far from elementary for me. Thanks for the advice and I can take them all !;).
I don't know about the lead-free brass today, I can't tell. But I surely tighten hard the fittings to cancel any possible moves and to try a leak proof mounting. I didn't won each time.
The fittings here have a lot of play in the paired threads. Teflon is so slipery and thin, that I used to screw as far as possible to have a mechanical stop, not counting on the friction of the tefloned threads, and as much as 7 wraps of teflon for the small diameters and 14 for the bigger stuff to obtain the etancheity and a good packing. More teflon didn't work because all was pushed away by the srewing instead of being laminated, and less, seemed too weak of a joint. So, I have to revise that.
I didn't try the liquid sealant at all when I did my plumbing, too new to me, and it's even more of a surprise to see it associated with the teflon.
What I used for the 2" threads on the old steel pipes was the old school fibers embeded with greasy lime stuff. The teflon didn't work with these so wide gaps, always leaking. I used the fibers too for some fittings exposed to a rotative constrain, as to get a way stronger frction in the threads, likely really locked. The tefloned fittings keep moving back and forth and loose quickly their etancheity.
You see here about all my knowledge in plumbing.
Beside soldering, but good chances are that I have it wrong here too.
 
It sounds like you have some really poor constructed materials over there. Still, that’s a lot of Teflon!!!! Teflon tape is directional though. Wrap the male end so the tape tightens as being buried. Sounds like it was wrapped in the direction of the threads causing it to push out/unravel?

Also, beware of 2 dissimilar metals on heating systems. They will expand and contract any different rates. This also causes leaks over time.

Also, sounds like you’ve used pipe thread sealant with the Teflon fibers in it? That’s good to use. But even better applied over Teflon tape
 
If they don't have a seat or an gasket/oring the fitting seals by interference threads. This means that during tightening the threads will actually seal by wedging themselves tight. As with all bolting applications you need to lubricate the threads or galling will happen and cause metal shearing. This force is quite great as the thread surface area increases, so pipe threads are especially susceptible to this. The thread sealant does 2 jobs, it will jam in the crevices to fill up gaps but most importantly it lubricates the joint so it takes less force to tighten.

Trying to solder a threaded connection is not gonna work too well because you can't get it clean. The joint will be full of thread compound of some sort, so nothing will flow there. You will be better off to redo it with new threaded fittings and both teflon tape and dope. Wrap the tape so it tightens when screwing it in, and then paint the last 4 threads with dope.
 
I do wrap the teflon in the way for it self tightens by screwing. I tried otherwise of course, but that doesn't work at all, the teflon slips immediately and is pushed away.
As for the fibers, it's hamp's fibers, like in an untwisted manilia rope. Wrap a small bunch of them in the threads, same way, same direction to tighten like the teflon but filling the threads instead of going over them, then coat/impregnate the fiber's layer with some sort of soft paste made with lime powder mixed with oil (likely the same stuff used to seal the glass in the windows back in the days, just more oily). Not one bit of teflon or synthetic fibers in that stuff. Old school, LOL.
I did saw the synthetic fibers in the shelves tough. But I feared to have the same problem of lack of friction in use after mounting. So it's worth considering and I have to try it. And the liquid sealant too.

All our simply screwed domestic plumbing is made with loose cylingrical threads. The easy renovable ones (old way) have a flat fiber gasket, or a conical seat for the unions in modern way. Some have an biconic metalic ferrule which is crimped on the copper tube by tightening. A more expensive and complexe system has O-ring and one way spring washer to lock the copper tube in place without tightening. Some are crimped (plastic tube). But every time you need to join two fittings or a fitting and a device, the threads are cylindrical and loose, regardless of the systems mentioned. I know some special applications have a conical thread and are actually interferring threads, but it isn't in the hardware store's plumbing stuff.
 
Mom died last night. My brother called me when I was on my way to work this morning. On my way home, I saw the animal control van on the main drag near my road. Spot's AWOL. Hoping she's just preoccupied somewhere else, but something feels wrong around here. I'll check outside a couple more times tonight. Hoping she turns up.
 
Brother took care of the funeral arrangements. No obituary that I see. Seems like there should be one, but I don't have all the info that goes into making one. I'm gonna pick out flowers tomorrow. Out of my element here. I avoid funerals as much as possible, so protocol, and getting stuff done is unknown to me. Also seems like there should be a reception after the funeral. Guess I'll talk to my brother about it.

Since I'll be a pallbearer, I suppose I'll have to get black pants/white shirt? A suit is too far to go, and out of character.
 
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