Source for Tin plate to make tanks

I ordered this for personal use and will need to get some more, but don't know if I would bother to get and stock it for those (rare) people who enjoy cutting, bending, and soldering their own tanks.

You could probably call them and ask for some specially cut to include in an order, but, unless you are also ordering a kit or some such, and specifically ask that it be left flat, it will probably have to be rolled in order to ship.

Oh, and I don't remember the cost, but it still is not cheap.

Has anyone had any success (or failure) using aluminum sheet for tanks? I would expect aluminum to be lighter than tin or brass...

But I too would be curious if someone has actually been able to do it with thin aluminum sheet.

Or you can try this REALLY crazy idea:

http://home.planet.nl/~wakke007/

I made an aluminum tank a few years ago, using the eutectic welding rod they were selling at the 96 NATs. It was OK, but it wasn't significantly lighter than steel and it was pretty much a pain in the posterior to make. Besides, carbon tanks are a lot lighter and I can just buy those if I needed to remove weight from the nose. But I don't, so I use plain old homeade steel tanks. I use the K&S tin-plated steel, and just make the tank body in two parts. I am pretty confident with a soldering iron.

Of course I don't know much about the US but a good source over here is motor oil cans, some (few unfortunately) brands of which are still sold in 5 litre (1 Imp gall approx) tin cans rather than plastic. And there's also stuff like caterers sizes of cooking oil, mayonnaise, etc, which again are often in pretty big sized tins. Such things will yield good flat sheets of good quality tinplate if first rinsed out (try kerosene, you can clean off properly when you get flat sheets) and then cut apart carefully (use a very fine-toothed hacksaw - 32 tpi - or even better, a jeweller's piercing saw, rather than sheet metal shears). This avoids too much distortion.

Unfortunately, over here anyway, the vast majority of tinned food now comes in tins which have been coated inside with some sort of "paint". I have tried using this a bit and it's OK, but a hell of a job to get the "paint" off the areas where you want to solder without damaging the bond between the tin and the mild steel base material.

Best of all (IMHO) is not tin at all, but nickel silver sheet. Try a model train shop which caters for scratch builders, they should have it. It should be available in sizes from 5 thou (inches) up. Normally (over here anyway) it only comes in pretty small sheets, but the suppliers do offer larger cut sheets to cater for those who work in the larger gauges/scales.

NS is really lovely stuff to work with and has no problem with accidentally damaging the tin/parent metal bond that can arise with old tin (with NS there is no such bond of course, it's "pure" NS all the was through the thickness). It's a kind of silvery/slightly yellow/gold colour (attractive), doesn't tarnish much at all, is stiffer than the equivalent tin (so you can use thinner sheet than tin for the equivalent tank), and takes solder wonderfully well (low-melting point as well as "standard" tin mans and electronics solders), and needs only minimum flux to get good sound solder joints. But it does conduct the heat away quicker than tin, so even more so than with tin, you need a good big hot iron with a nicely tinned shiny tip, then you go "in and out like lightning"! But it does cost more than tinplate from the hobby shop, and I have no idea where you might find any scrap sources. In UK there is at least one supplier from whom you can also order larger sheets by post, and guess there must be a US equivalent somewhere.

Hope that helps.

Chris,

Go to McMaster Carr Supply Company online (www.mcmaster.com) and enter "shim stock" into the search window. This will get you every type of material and thickness you could ever want. And they take Visa. As an example, you can get a 12" by 120" piece of 1010 plain carbon steel 0.008" thick for $25.89. A lifetime supply I would guess. You can get brass and many other metals as well. The only down side is that it will come in a roll, which is standard industry practice.

Best Regards,

Many years ago, when I was editing MACA Newsletter, I published an article about tank making, and the writer talked about sources of tin plate.

1) Pineapple cans. These are still unvarnished on the inside and outside. The inside has a grainy appearance, that's fine (it's been left unpolished). The cans also have corrugations, which is ALSO fine, since this adds a lot of strength (and strength is what you need in a Slow Combat tank.

2) Other types of (food) tin cans have a varnish on them, but you can remove this using a torch. Just char the varnish, and then remove the residue with steel wool. You only need do this where metal meets solder (i.e. at the joints). Something like the "family size" Campbell Soup cans or the big V8 cans will yield largish metal sheets.

3) For big pieces - old K&B/Fox fuel cans. Fox reportedly had stacks of these for the asking some years ago. Another source would be Chinese restaurants. They use cooking oil that comes in huge 5 gallon cans. Ask them to save them for you instead of throwing them out in the trash. These will require the flame treatment.

Anyone remember Carny tanks? These were made out of Carnation milk cans. Whoever was making them sliced a piece off the side and soldered a piece there to close it off.

Dave Moffitt