Lesson Learned - 6/1/12

Hooray for June! Today, while trying to solder a new slide lug onto a Silvertone trombone - which the internet says is a Sears instrument - I was having a lot of trouble getting solder to flow into the joint. Because the lug had  no lacquer on it and was made of brass, every time I touched the solder wire to it, solder would just flow onto the surface of the lug itself. My coworker, M, reminded me of a trick I'd long forgotten - to tin the part before soldering it. That just means that before placing the lug on the instrument, I should have heated it and put a little bit of solder on the bottom surface that was going to contact the trombone. Then I could have either stuck it on and just heated it until the solder flowed and adhered to the handslide, or at the very least if I still needed to add more solder, it would have been easier to get it to flow into the joint if there was already solder there. It's frustrating sometimes how easy it is to forget a technique like that when you don't use it for a while. I need to keep exercising my vocabulary of skills.