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feeling quite proud of my soldering, i want to shine-up and laquer the pipes. any recommendations for products? i see there are metal laquers around, but do they deal with hot water temps ok (60° at most here)?
otherwise has anyone used eg a regular waterbased varnish with fine results?
Think you can get clear lacquers that car vajazzlers use to keep engine bits shiny, they could cope with the heat.
vajazzlers? not heard that before. nice
most lacquers should be safe at 60 deg.
If worried then look for clear engine enamel.
another options is just autosol them every now and then.
Hate to piss on your chips but surely 60degC bare copper is going to radiate heat therefore lose heat and may even burn a childs face.
Everyone has a little bit of copper pipe showing up to rads etc and not everyone wants to see grey pipe lagging on exposed pipes. On hidden pipes under floors and in cupobards yes but not on exposed runs and on short radiator tails.
Exposed radiator piping is going to loose heat to the rad but is still heating your room so no biggy really. It's just the pipes in locations were you don't need heat or on hot water pipes that is wasted heat.
Shellac works I believe
Copper stills in distilleries always look pretty shiny as if there's a lacquer on them. Not sure if that's the case, or is just temperature and so on. @teacake ?
Quick Q, what do you all think the lacquer is going to adhere to once the pipes are polished?
60degC won't burn a baby robin's face....unless a sibling is holding them in contact for extended periods....
i got some brasso equivalent and some generic spray varnish which included copper in it's list of suitable substrates. gonna give that a try. will clean off with acetone before the laquer, if that answers your Q squirrelking?
re temp cheekyboy. this isn't a radiator pipe, so yes, heat-loss is undesireable. but having lagged the runs of hot water pipe form the tank to the kitchen, i found it made no discernable difference. that is to say that since the water is moving fairly fast down the pipe, and then sitting still for ages, it doesn't seem that relevant. it loses any heat it had while it's siting in the length of pipe, tho insulated, and then you have to run it for the same amount of time to get hot into the sink.
also, tho the water may be at 60 in the tank, it takes a while for pipes to warm up to that temperature with the water running through, by which time water is turned off again (just a small basin in a toilet).
so no issues there.
Clean with meths / Isopropyl alcohol, polish with Brasso (or similar), spray with clear car paint lacquer.
I did that with one homemade curtain rail, and the other I left just Brasso'd as the lacuqer chips/gets rubbed off and starts looking crap whereas it's just a few minutes to polish up if needed.
It does indeed.
Lacquering won't work.
Lacquer needs a keyed surface to adhere to, if you polish it then it will form a film but won't really stick and eventually as Dave above points out it will just flake off.
Just Brasso it and be done with it, we have copper pipes at work that some cleaners went mental on and they are still shiny over a year later, this is in an industrial environment mind.
I know it's not PC to just let it go here but, FFS squirrelking, what are you on?
He's talking about shining the pipes using wire wool or like, not applying tcut and car polish.
feeling quite proud of my soldering, i want to shine-up and laquer the pipes.
FFS indeed. Learn to ****ing read. I know it's not really the done thing round here but it will make you look less of a prat in future.