When I made my landing gear for my Sopwith Camel project, I did it the old-fashioned way–I cut and bent all the parts from music wire, wrapped the joints with thin copper wire and soldered everything together. So, the first step for producing any wire landing gear is to install the two main verticals onto the fuselage before you start. Use your favorite gear straps to secure the horizontal part of the gear in place within the slots of the landing gear blocks.
My standard, “Go To”, solder is from Stay-Brite. It is a high silver content solder and it works great. Also I use thin copper wire to wrap the solder joint area, fine sandpaper to clean the music wire where the solder will be applied and an 80 watt soldering iron. The Stay-Brite liquid flux makes the job go quickly and painlessly.
I use common cloth pins and some straight balsa stock, (here one of my sanding sticks,) to help keep the wire struts properly aligned. As you can see, the wire has been wrapped around the first solder joint and the solder has been applied. Basically the process is, clean the wire with sandpaper, apply some of the liquid flux to a paper towel and apply it to the areas to be soldered. Wrap the copper wire around the joint area keeping the coils tightly wrapped next to each other. Tin the soldering iron and apply a small amount of solder to tin the surface. Apply a drop or two of the flux to the joint area and apply heat to the joint…
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