Cheshire Railway Modellers

he other weekend Fred had again been a demonstrator at the Farthing Gate show.  He recounted a conversation he’d overheard at the next table between a boy of about nine and a chap building a bridge from metal sections.  It went something like this …

“Whayer doin?” asked the lad, in a half-bored tone.

“I’m soldering,” the demonstrator replied.

“Whazat?”

“Sticking two pieces of metal together using solder.”

“Howd zitwurk?”

“Do you make models from card at school?”

“Yez.”

“Did you stick the bits together with glue?”  The lad had.

“Well, solder is like a glue.  But to become sticky, it has to be so hot that it melts.  When it cools and goes back to being solid, it holds the metal together very strongly.”  He then showed the lad and invited him to pull apart the bits he’d just soldered.  He couldn’t.  The lad was most impressed.

The demonstrator went on to explain how the metal was thoroughly cleaned to provide a good bonding surface and flux applied to prevent the metal from reacting with the air when it got hot.  The young fellow started to ask quite pertinent questions.

He quickly appreciated that different materials have different melting points and so molten solder can run between pieces of metal without them melting.  Later he realised that by using solder of different melting points fresh components could be added without other bits becoming unstuck.  He even grasped the use of a block of metal as a heat sink.  However, nobody could explain why solder actually sticks metals together.  After a while, he was allowed to solder some parts to the bridge.

Later in the day, he returned, this time with his father in tow.  “Thazbits ayedid,” he announced with pride, pointing to several cross-members of the bridge.

“Don’t be silly,” was the curt reply.

“Ayedidem, dinaye?” he appealed to the demonstrator, who confirmed the youngster’s achievement.  Father was most surprised.  The lad then went on to explain how it was done.  The parent was dumfounded at his son’s newly acquired knowledge and skill.  He admitted that he thought soldering was a black art completely beyond him.

“Kid’s can pick up things so quickly,” Felicity observed.  “They haven’t yet learnt that some skills are supposed to be difficult.”

“Do adults just need to give them the opportunity and encouragement?” the chairman mused.   “We should never underestimate what youngsters can accomplish.  It would have been so easy to ignore that boy.  No doubt that incident raised his self-esteem.  Perhaps as a result, he’ll become one of the leading railway modellers of the future.”  And none of us could find a reason to disagree with that.

Archived copies of previous Jottings can be found here.

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