The new rosin (resin) arrived. It costs about $20 for a pound of rosin. It's a mix of chunks and powder. The dancers use it as a powder to coat the bottom of their shoes. For our purposes it doesn't matter since we're melting it. I like seeing it as chunks so I'm more confident I'm really using rosin.
I cut some of the candle shaped tallow into chunks to help melt it. I'm making a mix with 40% tallow (stearic acid) so I've measured out 4 ounces of tallow.
This time I was very careful to heat it slowly to avoid any chance of damaging it with heat. I set the hot plate at it's lowest setting and let it heat very slowly.
The tallow was fully melted at about 170 degrees F.
Once it was melted I added 6 ounces of rosin, stirred it in, and let it melt.
It was a gooey mess as it slowly heated and melted. This took about an hour.
As it got to 200 degrees the rosin was fully melted.
The old batch was a very brown color. I don't know if the resin I used was contaminated or I just let it get too hot. This batch looks like you would expect with the yellow resin and white tallow mixed. I made application sticks as with the old batch and did some soldering. This batch is like magic. I'm discarding the old batch. The solder flows faster and only takes one application of flux. It looks like I could actually solder these with just my soldering iron because it works so well. That will be my next effort as I continue making cables. This is exiting. If it works well I'll make the cables for the WACO tail surfaces.
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