=Variety of Fluxes.=--There are a good many fluxes employed, including tallow (largely used for lead and pewter), resin (used for lead, compo-pipe, and tinned metals), hydrochloric acid, diluted (for zinc and galvanised iron), and chloride of zinc (the well-known “killed spirit”). The last-named is the most generally used, being suitable for tinplate, tinned iron, new zinc, copper, and brass. Sal-ammoniac is also utilised, sometimes in conjunction with chloride of zinc. The small worker who does but a moderate amount of soldering will find it convenient to use a soldering paste such as “Fluxite,” which is sold in a tin, and can be kept handy and applied to the work with a sliver of wood. “Tinol” is a paste flux in combination with a solder.
=Preparing Zinc Chloride (“Killed Spirit”).=--Make this flux at home from finely snipped new sheet-zinc and _pure_ hydrochloric or muriatic acid. (This is sufficiently cheap at any working druggist’s stores, and infinitely preferable to the contaminated oil-shop quality known as “spirits of salt.”) Stand the acid outdoors in a stoneware crock, add the zinc cuttings a few at a time at first, and when the first violent ebullition moderates, put in the rest. Be sure to provide an excess of metallic zinc, observing that a quantity remains undissolved after all chemical action ceases. Leave the metal in the liquor for twelve hours (covering the crock with a pane of glass), then decant and filter into a wide-mouth glass jar of handy size. _Do not add water_ to the concentrated zinc chloride solution; dilution is sometimes recommended, but should never be done; the heavy, slightly syrupy, water-bright liquor should be used as it is. The alleged “cleaning” qualities of this chloride can scarcely be admitted to exist, and its principal function is to shield the surfaces of the work from oxidation; this it fulfils by the formation of a viscid glaze on the heated metal when the salt reaches its anhydrous (waterless) condition by evaporation. The addition of water to the flux, therefore, only uselessly prolongs the period occupied by evaporation, and wastes heat.
Always remove all trace of flux from finished work, first by soaking in water, and afterwards by washing with soda, soap, and water. Otherwise, there is the risk of the work being corroded.