MENDING THE KETTLE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19867, 15 June 1927, Page 2

MENDING THE KETTLE

TIPS FOR TINSMITHS FINDING THE LEAK THE USE OF SOLDER (By Robert Magill.) The man who is handy with a stick of solder is the man whose wife tells other men’s wives what a good husband she’s got, if only she could keep him from messing about in the kitchen. Still, he can take a few old milk-tins and make himself a motor-car out of them, or if he lives in one of these new steel houses he can stick a spare room on to it. In the old days when everybody wore armour the only way you could darn a sock or sew a button on your trousers was by using solder —unless you did the job with a hammer. However, when repairing a holo in a kettle, four things are necessary. One is the kettle. This is called a tin kettle because it is made of iron. It has a handle which gets in the way cf the tap when you try to fill it, and splashes water all over your best suit. The rest of it consists of a lot or kettle round a hole in the top, which contains a lid constructed so as to fall off when it is hot, and burn your fingers. A kettle is the sort of faithful servant you never think about until something happens to it. You usually put it on the fire and forget it until it tries to attract your attention by blowing its lid off and spitting at you. But some day you will go back to that kettle and find it like a canary with indigestion. It can’t sing. It’s empty. But the water isn’t lost; it’s all on the floor round the gas-stove, because it has run through a hole in tho kettle. This is not the kettle’s fault, although it is your fault when you trickle through a hole in your sock. If you look at a drop of water through the microscope you will find that it is full of fierce little animals with rows and rows of teeth, called microbes; and naturally, when the water starts to boil, these get all hot and bothered, and try to bite their way through the side of the kettle. “Solder” or “Sawder” Having got the first two things, the kettle and the hole, you want a soldering iron and some solder. Some people call this solder, with the ' *1” liquid as in lubrication, while others refer to it as sawder. Both are right, but you can always make tho man next door feel very ignorant if you pronounce it the opposite way to him, because he’s never sure of it himself.

I The piece of soap you first stuck in tho hole will not last very long, and it 1 is unwise to try to darn the hole in a I kettle even if you use wire wool. And the stamp paper you get nowadays isn’t the stamp paper it used to be before the war, so there is nothing left but to repair the thing in a proper way. j Commence by wiping the underneath ; of the kettle quite dry. After you have ■ bidden the tea-cloth you used, where 'your wife will never find it, fill the kettle once more and hold it up to the ! H g ht - 1 You will sec water trickling from it, but don’t be in too much of a hurry to ; mend the place where the water | irickles. This isn’t likely to be the i hole. The water always drips off somewhere else just to confuse you. I Generally the oly way you can find I the hole is to hold the kettle sideways ■ and look through it. If you haven’t got 'sense enough to empty out iho water before you do this the first time, you [will have on the second occasion.

Now place the kettle so that the hole is in a convenient position. If you want to turn the thing inside out, there is nothing to idop you, and you will usually find that the hole is on both sides.

i It is now absolutely essential to get |the edges of the hole clean and bright, Iso scrape them with a chisel, some sandpaper, and a bradawl. By the time they arc really nice and bright you'll be able to turn the kettle upside down and stick another lid in the hole. The water won’t come out of the top as fast as it will out of the bottom. Using The Iron. In theory, of course, the hole remains the same size, and you now put the soldering iron in the lire until it is nearly red-hot. If it sets lire to the table-top [when you lay it down, it is hot enough. While it is heating, dab the hole with , some stuff you buy from the ironmongjers, called flux. Next take the stick of solder in one hand, and tho iron in the other —and you will discover that the iron has got cold while you were trying to find the flux I almost forgot to tell you about. When everything is ready again, hold the top of the stick of solder over the hole and touch it with the iron. You will doubtless iniss tho kettle altogether and let a drop of hot solder fall on to your trousers—while the soldering iron settles down to burn its way through the carpet and escape. The wife will probably come in, before the soldering iron has managed to get right away —and before you can do th© same. Don’t worry —you won’t need to say anything.

The real idea is that the solder should stop up the hole, but as it melts like money on a Saturday night, you have to get a move on to keep pace with it.

At the same time, some of the solder will adhere to the kettle, until by and by you will have the whole of the bottom covered with a sort of large bump [made of solder, with the original hole still running right through the middle of it. But it is quite easy now to stop this up—by pushing a piece of rag through it, which can be renewed whenever it has burnt away. One final piece of advice. Tho only safe way to prevent the water running out of a kettle once it’s got a hole in it is to stop putting water in. When you want a cup of tea, boil the water in a saucepan.