Also I read much about the use of a flame and blowpipe in
goldsmithings past. Seeing the masterpieces that have resulted
from these "rustic" techniques I wonder if there are any modern
artist who have acheived much using a blowpipe.
Modern fuel/air or fuel/oxygen torches are more convenient to use,
but they are not really all that much more capable of good work than
blowpipe or similar more “rustic” tools, when those latter tools are
in the hands of people who know them well and use them. While the
classic blowpipe, used just to blow a stream of air through a flame,
such as an alcohol or oil lamp, is somewhat limited in size, and thus
perhaps not widely used, the type of torch which uses a fuel line
(usually natural gas or propane), with just a mouth tube for air
feed, is still used, and sometimes preferred, by those who’ve learned
to control their breath well enough to use it. Such a torch actually
can give great control over the heat, since without requiring any hand
or finger manipulations of torch valves, you have instant control
between a broad soft flame and a sharp oxidizing one or anywhere in
between. In the mid '70s, I visited a number of commercial jewelry
manufacturers in London (David Webb, for example, as well as others.)
At that time, I noted that many, if not most, of the shops used this
type of mouth/gas torch, and the workers at that time were even a bit
derisive of us American students who’d not learned to use such an
obviously superior tool…
In the intervening years, I’ve gotton quite good with my oxygen fed
torches, and am used to them. But I did also learn to use a mouth
blown blowpipe torch, just to try it. Works well enough. In some
uses, works better. As I said, I’m used to our “modern” torches, and
use them. But those older types are no less servicable.
Soldering with just the mouth blowpipe in a flame lamp also works,
but you need an extra hand and well honed coordination between all
your hands and your mouth and the rest of your body. Pain in the butt
to do. but it works well enough, and you’ve spent only a couple
dollars on the blowpipe, and thats if you even bothered to buy one
instead of making one. And you need no fancy fuel gasses. You can use
an alcohol lamp, an oil lamp, or even a candle to do small solder
joints, once you master the mouth blowpipe. Not so good for larger
work though.
when these tools were the norm, larger items were often soldered not
with a torch, but by setting the work up with placed solder paillons
and everything supported or wired together well enough so the work was
done simply by placing the work in a furnace or on a hearth fire.
Nowadays, if you wish to experiment, you can come close with just an
ordinary kiln, set to the flow point of your solder. The hearth
(charcoal/coke, whatever, fueled fire, instead of electric kiln) type
of setup has the advantage of a fairly reducing atmosphere, while most
electric kilns are oxidzing atmospheres. So your flux is more
important. Soldering this way is more of a bother, and take a lot of
careful planning. But then the actual soldering operation is simpler.
And if your control of the heat source (the kiln or hearth is good,
then you can very precisely protect yourself from accidentally melting
the wrong things. Furnace soldering like this is actually sometimes a
quite preferrable way to go, when there are big differences in the
weight of the various parts, making even heating difficult. Instead
of trying to control it with a torch, it becomes very much like firing
enamels…
And for what it’s worth, furnace soldering is very widely used in the
industry, where much assembly of jewelry or findings or the like is
done on conveyer belt furnaces that use a controlled reducing
atmosphere, meaning no fire scale protection is needed, as well as
minimal amounts of flux. Such methods are only modern automated
adaptations of the same way the Roman and Greek jewelers of antiquity
soldered their wares…
Peter Rowe