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Tinning Cardas Litz Wire - The simple way

Yes, you could get all of your exact measurements and order it from P.C. with the ends already tinned. Or, if you want to simply order your wire and play around at home and do things your way, here's another method.

If you don't want to invest in a solder pot, don't bother. All you need is a small 100 gram roll of your favorite solder, a vice, a torch, and an expended .45 casing. Yes, you read that right. Use a bristle brush and clean it out a bit. Use your torch and melt a good three feet of small gauge solder into the casing, dip the end to be terminated into some flux, them drop it into the casing. If you hold the tip of a very slow flame just against the casing it'll take about a minute to a minute and a half to tin. If you hold the flame a bit closer and wind up with something closer to boiling solder, you'll get it tinned in under a minute. Going any longer and you'll fry your wire. The end up higher than what is tinned will become stiff from the enamel melting a bit so don't think the cracking sound is the sound of wiring breaking. I spent an hour one afternoon tinning, cutting, checking resistance, cutting again, and tinning again to verify all of this. I only cut about 1/2" of insulation off for tinning.

Also, be careful as the casing heats up while in the vice it will loosen because of the heat and may fall. Please be careful and watch for the signs that tell you that you need to clamp down on the casing. But in all reality if you have anything that you can use to melt solder in it will work just the same. Common sense should dictate. Use what you have.

I wrote this only because of my recent search for the best tinning method and everyone has these crazy ideas that are abrasive, time consuming and completely unnecessary. This one is the simplest by far and I think most people have these things already lying around the house. Just note, after a few ends that are tinned you'll notice a reddish liquid on top of the solder. Let the casing cool and then chip that out to clean up the solder. It is the enamel that was melted off during the tinning process and if it builds up you won't be able to tell the difference between the red stuff and the copper and whether or not the solder is taking.

Hope this helps someone out there looking to play with Cardas Litz wire.
johnjiv
timrhu
2,779 posts
 
Where were you a few years ago when I had a pair of StraightWire Black Silc cables that needed tinning. I ended up buying a solder pot on ebay to perform the task.
Although I must say, I sold the solder pot for 3 times what I paid for it, after cleaning it up of course.
johnjiv OP
1 posts
 
Nice! At least you got something out of it for your troubles.
rbrowne
175 posts
 
Audio Note Kits recommends the following method for preparing their litz wire interconnect cable:

"The last step now is to tin the ends of the wire. Basically you need to apply some solder to the ends. This does two things. It makes the cable easier to work with when you are soldering to the RCA or the selector switch and it also burns away an invisible protective coating on the wire which can potentially cause a non connect!

The trick here is to apply some solder to the iron and then let the heat and solder work on the wire for about 5 seconds; it will seem like a long time. When you start to see some brown bubbling, or the solder take to the wire, then the invisible coating has burned off. Then try make a nice shiny tin - it does not need much solder and don't worry if the plastic melts a little. One end is now finished!"

A solder pot or something similar as originally posted would be a better solution for thicker wire such as speaker cable.
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