Soldering - what am I doing wrong?!!

[Jonboy_t]

I’m tying to make a copper pipe towel rail as a little ‘keep me busy in the evenings’ sort of job. It’s not going to be heated at all, so water-tightness of the joints doesn’t matter.

I’m using solder ring fittings, have cleaned and fluxed the end of the pipes and tightly fitted them into the fixings. Heated with a blow torch, but maybe 1 in 5 is actually adhering, I can just pull the rest out with no force, even when it’s cool enough to touch without gloves.

I’ve heated them until the copper goes multi coloured on one or two of the joints, so i’m pretty sure I’m getting it hot enough, but still nothing!

What haven’t I done right?!

[Jonboy_t]

Coolio, will have another crack. It almost looks as though the solder ring hasn’t melted at all in some cases!

Like the glue idea though....!

[Jonboy_t]

Cheers guys, got further with it tonight than I have in the past 3 nights thanks to you Barring the odd joint where I had to apply solder to it, they’ve all held up and look surprisingly good!

Now, if anyone can tell me how to add 15mm to a copper pipe after you’ve cut it to the wrong size, I’d appreciate that...!!