My background is 20yrs+ in electrical soldering from BGA to SMD and all manner in between including automotive and AC. I have during that time I have also been a small manufacturer for the scrap metal industry and, seeing you work, I can give you one pretty good bit of advice I've learnt. After a light dry and preheat, start heating only from the bottom and feed solder in from only the top. Copper is an excellent conductor and doing it this way ensures everything it heated through enough for the solder to wick into the joint. It's also an absolute indicator because if the solder won't take from the top then you know the material is still too cold to make a solid joint. I hope this helps.
Another tip: use female fittings on pieces that take the most effort to build. If you drop that liebig and mash the soft copper threads you need to replace the fitting. When you remove the bad piece you can heat the other joints and cause leaks. Best to make it so that is less likely to happen in the first place. And definitely use the ready made tee fitting that already has the reducer as previously suggested. Cheaper and easier!
Nice job Robot, heat is either your enemy or your friend. If you're clean and fluxed like you were with just enough heat to cause capillary action and then stop solder joints will turn out like yours did.
It would be better to have the water inlet and outlet on opposite sides with the inlet pointing down and the outlet up with the whole thing tilted down at the inlet end to ensure no air in the tube and a constant flow of fresh water all round the inner tube. It might work the way you did it but will probably need a strong current of water.
It may help with circulation. but I do not find any hot spots without it. you could also have the inlet and outlet on opposite sides (might be better to do both on longer units). Thanks for the tip.
Its one of the "more odd" American pronounciations, "Sold" still has the L, "Soldier" as well, not quite sure why "Solder" is given special treatment. But as they say "The UK and the USA, two nations, seperated by a common language".