Why Solder Will Not Flow.
There are only five reasons why solder does not flow where you
want it to.
- Not enough heat: I tell my students that if it does not solder within 60 seconds, they need to turn up the torch!
- Not enough flux: I teach that with silver solder you can never have
too much flux! Of course, you can as far as just soaking your charcoal
block or soldering pad, but not as far as a good solder joint.
- Not getting the silver hot enough, quick enough: The solder becomes
oxidized (dirty) and does not want to flow.
- It is not solder! Now and then a student cuts a small piece of bezel
or sheet off and then mistakes it for solder.
- The piece that I am soldering is dirty: I usually just throw it into
the pickle for a while and start over.
I believe that not getting the piece hot enough is the reason for difficulties about
95% of the time. Sterling silver solders differently than any other
metal that I know of. Because it conducts heat better than any art metal
that I use, it has to be heated differently than copper, brass, nickel, or
gold. It conducts heat so well that the whole piece must be thoroughly
heated before concentrating the heat on your solder joint. I teach that after putting on
the solder, you need to start heating the piece at the farthest point away from
the solder as possible.
By the way, I teach all my students to solder every solder joint with
"hard" solder. It melts at about 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. This means they have to
get good with the torch. All the jewelry on this web site was done by my
students with only hard solder. Most were done by beginners that never
knew what solder was five weeks before they finish the piece or pieces
on their page. We do not "wire" things together either!
All "soft"
solders will not stay polished like sterling silver. I teach that you should use nothing but hard solder,
because of just that, polishing. I like to solder a piece, and polish it
so that you can never see the solder joints when I am finished. This makes
it looks as if it were cast. Think of it is way: to make "easy (1325)",
"medium (1360)", and hard (1450), they have to add more and more "junk"
metals to bring down the flow temperatures. I like hard because it
polishes almost as if it was sterling and stays that way for years and
years. My wife has pieces that I polished over 20 years ago, haven't
touched since, and you cannot see any black oxidized solder lines.
Here is a really quick step-by-step of how I teach soldering.
- Set the piece up on a solder surface of your choice. I like charcoal
blocks for a lot of different reasons.
- Cut some hard solder. I use only sheet solder. I cut this into large pieces
compared to most silversmiths. Pieces 1/8 x1/4 inch is my average size.
Sometimes I use pieces twice that size. I refuse to put several
"snippets" on when I can put one large piece on. Remember, I use only
hard solder. If I was using easy, I would have to use very small pieces,
because of the ugly solder joints it makes.
- Light the torch of your choice. All the jewelry on this web site was made
by the students with a $10.00 torch from Ace Hardware! This is the
world's worst torch to use for silversmithing, but I am extremely proud
of their work, especially their first pieces. By the way, I am not the
type of teacher that does the work for my students, it is all their own work.
- Spray on Dixon's self pickling flux. That's right, I spray it on. I
was taught by an 80 year old silversmith almost 30 years ago. He had
gotten quite shaky, and could not "paint" on flux without completely
moving everything. Because of this, one night I tried putting flux in a spray bottle
and spraying it on. It worked great, and I have used this method ever since. Of
course, I have found that I did not invent the wheel. I have talked to
many people who have used spray bottles for years before I did!
Everything that I teach was taught to me by someone! I just have tried
to use the best method for me.
- Heat the piece only enough to dry the flux past the "crusty" stage.
- Spray on more, and heat the piece again if it did not get completely covered
with flux. I flux the whole piece every time!
- Using bent tweezers that are spring-loaded to shut, place the solder
on the joints. Use lots if you are using hard solder, almost none if you
are using easy.
- Begin heating the piece as far away from the joint as possible. I
teach my students to keep the torch moving so that their reaction time
is increased. They can move the torch off the piece more quickly if they are already in
motion.
- Watch for the silver to start to change color as the torch moves over
it. It will start to "shimmer." This is not quite the same as the shimmer when it melts, but a
color change for sure.
- Watch for the Dixon's flux to puddle, and then melt into a "syrupy"
brown thick puddle. I watch the flux more than anything else to know
what temperature my silver is at. I believe it must melt and flow into
this syrup stage at about 1350 to 1400 degrees.
- When the flux does its syrupy thing, I move the torch to the joint,
and at the same time, I move it up slightly away from the piece. This is
how I adjust the temperature of the piece. It heats up a larger area,
which I believe you need in order to solder silver. (Gold is just the
opposite, I think.)
- The split second the solder flows, get off it, and I mean off of it!! I
would like to shout this. I have found that you can rarely fix anything
by simply adding more heat after the solder has flowed.
- There is no 13 (unlucky you know!). If it did not solder, ask yourself
which of the five reasons was responsible, pickle your piece for about
10 minutes, take a break, eat something, or at least I do, and then come
back and start with step 1.
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