My First AtlasO Turnout Wiring Attempt

I was looking for ideas on what needed to be addressed and how to address shortcomings of AtlasO's 2R turnouts...here-forth called switches.

I was told to not trust the copper cross plates on the underbelly of the switches and to add my own wires to the frog, both sets of rails and also possibly the points, but I decide to let the points use the built in copper plating in the ties.

I went ahead and soldered 5 wires; one to the frog, one to each the right and left rail on one of the diverging ends, and soldered jumpers to the other diverging end's rails to assist the embedded copper plates.  I wanted to see if I could do the soldering myself without a resistance soldering machine, and I wanted to see if I could solder to the bottom to the rails to avoid unsightly solder joints on the side of rails.

It was suggested on the OGR Forum to use wet paper towels to  act as heat sink for a soldering iron.  I went a step further and soaked a sponge in water to do the same.  I set my variable setting soldering iron to its highest setting-850 degrees or so.  I used solid 18 gauge wire for all connections.

To prepare for the connections, I cut away several pieces of ties (see photos) in such a fashion that it would not hurt the overall integrity of the one-piece plastic tie casting. (I choose pieces between the ties that were at diagonals and/or were opposite of sections that weren't cut).

At this point, I filed all areas I was going to try to solder to.  I then added flux paste to each area.  I then tinned both the wires and the rails.  Tinning the rails was easy.  The frog is a big metal casting, so it took a lot of heat to tin it and you could hear the sponge sizzling from the heat.   I did push the switch into the sponge to ensure good contact with water and I did make sure not to melt any of the ties.  I was able to easily solder the wires to the rails by bending the ends of the wire into an L shape to allow more area to solder to the rail.  I did the leads first and then the jumpers.  An idea for the future would be to cut a piece long enough to do the jumpers and the leads and just strip some wire also in the center of that one wire so it can all be one piece and I wouldn't need to worry about the lead coming off when I try to solder the jumper.  The frog was a pain and as I tugged hard on the lead to make sure it was a good solder joint, it pulled off easily twice.  After each time I filed the same spot again and even harder than the time before.  I put more flux paste each time and got the third time to hold pretty strong.

I am curious to see how a resistance soldering device would make this any easier or stronger solder joints.  Perhaps I should consider using a high grade silver solder.  If anyone knows of a good resistance soldering unit for sale, let me know.

Here are some photos.  Feel free to click on the photos for larger sizes and to comment as always.