Advice on white metal soldering

The stuff you're working with sounds a lot like a product marketed to gunsmiths called "Cerrosafe". It's used for taking chamber castings and it melts at 170 F.

Most soldering irons operate at around 700 degrees F, so it's going to be tricky to work with material that melts at 250.

I would only use a temperature-controlled soldering station for something like this. Weller makes some very good units for around a hundred bucks.

You don't say what you're using for solder, but 60 % tin/40% lead solder melts around 360 F, way hotter than the melting point of your material. I don't know if you can get a solder that melts below 250.

I'm not familuar with white metal? Please explain what exactly white metal is and what it's used for.

Any soldering is generaly considered only a sealant or to increase a conductor ability and usually at under 1000� on common base metals. The filling solder is liquid at a considerable less temperature than the base metal. To accomplish this, solder contains a few different metals in there mix to control heat required to melt as well as for flow ability.

Braze welding is where your joining base metal from heat fusion. This could be what your trying to accomplish and why I aked what white metal is as it's apparent that it has a low heat fusion point.

Could be your trying to use the wrong filler metal for the base metal composition.

Soldering irons are rated in watts that is in direct realtionship to it's BTU input. 1kw= 3540btu so a 15w iron has about 54btu of heat. That's very low. If you can't move very fast without melting your base metal then you need to lower your input BTU to your iron. Radio Shack and others have adjustable soldering irons that might help.

Give us some more info to go by and see if we can help.

T_Bone