What kind of soldering iron for this job?

^^^^ Common aluminum oxide sandpaper embeds bits of oxide into soft metals. I've found the dark red scotch-brite pads are good for general use. A clean stainless brush is another nice to have thing.
 
Why not replace the old spindly single wire ground bus with a 1" wide X .125" thick strip of aluminum plate. These aluminum strips in various widths are available at Home Depot. Strip all of the ground wires and the crimp and solder wire lugs on them combining some of the wires where it makes sense into one lug to minimize the clutter. Then drill your capacitor holes and a hole in the center of the aluminum plate for the star ground, use a bolt to attach all of the ground wires. I like to attach the ground wires to the bottom of the ground bus bar as it looks cleaner and provides more clearance on the top side.
 
Why not replace the old spindly single wire ground bus with a 1" wide X .125" thick strip of aluminum plate.
What he is working on is not the spindly original but a chunk of real copper from a decent gauge chunk of wire, 10-12Ga. The original design was to twist together two lenghts of the internal wiring and flow that with solder. This copper upgrade should be way more than adequate and copper is such a better conductor than aluminum, I would not want to make that change. Additionally, aluminum is difficult to solder without the proper solder. Magnepan supplies proper solder with their rewire kits so that wire can be soldered to the terminal lugs in the speakers.
 
What he is working on is not the spindly original but a chunk of real copper from a decent gauge chunk of wire, 10-12Ga. The original design was to twist together two lenghts of the internal wiring and flow that with solder. This copper upgrade should be way more than adequate and copper is such a better conductor than aluminum, I would not want to make that change. Additionally, aluminum is difficult to solder without the proper solder. Magnepan supplies proper solder with their rewire kits so that wire can be soldered to the terminal lugs in the speakers.

I'm not talking about soldering aluminum.... Cut the aluminum bar to the correct length, drill 3 holes, attach lugs to the bare wires then connect all ground connections to the new bar at the center point. See attached picture which shows a later XL-600 amp. The aluminum ground bar that is shown on the capacitor bank is the factory installed ground bar in my amp, so even Hafler switched to a ground bar for all of their later models. Just about all modern amplifiers use either a piece of plate or a very large copper pour on a circuit board for the ground plane.

Sure the large gauge copper wire is more than adequate! The aluminum bar (I've used a copper bar too) is also more than adequate and looks much better IMO.

XL600_ground.jpg
 
I'm not talking about soldering aluminum.... Cut the aluminum bar to the correct length, drill 3 holes, attach lugs to the bare wires then connect all ground connections to the new bar at the center point. See attached picture which shows a later XL-600 amp. The aluminum ground bar that is shown on the capacitor bank is the factory installed ground bar in my amp, so even Hafler switched to a ground bar for all of their later models. Just about all modern amplifiers use either a piece of plate or a very large copper pour on a circuit board for the ground plane.

Sure the large gauge copper wire is more than adequate! The aluminum bar (I've used a copper bar too) is also more than adequate and looks much better IMO.

View attachment 1421657
You mean solder a ring terminal to each wire then bolt the ring terminals to the aluminum?
 
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The Lenk gun is in the house.

FYI, this is not a dual wattage gun that is selectable between 400watts and 150watts. Rather, this is a single wattage gun rated at 150watts that draws 400watts during a brief heat-up period to get up to rated temp in a timely manor. So, kinda misleading.

Additionally, this gun is to be used 1min on, 3mins off.......duty cycle. I used it with a stop watch near by to monitor time to follow the duty cycle related instructions and I found that at the 1min mark I still needed some more heat. I released the trigger at the 2 min mark. So.....
 
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Exactly!

I might combine a few of the wires on one ring terminal just to clean it up even more.
So, i pondered going this route.

I have a hard time believing that soldering to ring terminals then bolting to aluminum is superior to soldering to copper.Copper being the better conductor plus eliminating 1 bolted termination point. Thoughts?
 
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