Why does soldering copper pipes take so long for beginners?
Working with tight, unyielding pipe sections forces beginners to build and solder fittings piece by piece out of fear that hidden gaps will cause leaks. Because every single joint has to be sanded, fluxed, and heated individually without any room for movement, a few simple joints can end up taking hours.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1renting an expensive press tool instead of buying
- 2using manual press options
- 3setting up the whole pipe run and soldering everything at once rather than piece by piece
- 4asking for advice on community forums
- 5sanding pipes and using deburring tools
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Recently changed my water heater and one of my copper lines sprung a pin hole leak. I had to replace some seriously corroded sections of line and I soldered them. Granted it was my first time doing it, it took forever and I found myself having to solder and build the section piece by piece.”source ↗
“Some of the bends in the pipe didn’t allow for movement certain ways so I really had to plan it out. It took forever.”source ↗
“I mainly did it piece by piece because I was worried being unskilled, I would not get the solder to close off the entirety of the fitting.”source ↗
“I thought I did, maybe I missed a step. I sanded it plumbers sand paper, and used a deburring tool. What else should I have done? Like I said I am brand new and just trying to learn.”source ↗
“it took me like 4-5 hours to do those few joints”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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