Brittle silver? and sandblasting

Jewelry Discussion
1

Hello Orchans,

The other night I was soldering 16 Ga Sterling wire that I had
twisted into pretzel shapes. Since I had experienced problems
with the ends of the wire staying down, I pushed down on the
peice with a pick once the solder flowed to keep the ends in
contact with the rest. A couple of the pretzels broke while
doing this. I dismissed the first on as a fluke but got to
wondering after the second.

The feel was real brittle, without plastic deformation prior to
the failure. The peices were not severely work hardened and take
conciderably more abuse at room temperature. What’s happening
here?

After seeing the posts about sand blasting, I checked at an art
supply store here in Madison,Wisconsin. They had a kit with
thing that looked like an airbrush made by a company named
Badger for $40. It had some aluminum oxide grit, canned air, and
other supplies. The clerk had used one on glass and said it had
worked well with 40 psi from a compressor and didn’t figure that
the canned air would be capable of doing the job. She also said
that the tip had pretty much worn out while blasing a boarder
around 4 2 ft square panels of glass. They also had information
on 3 guns made by Paashe that looked better. The least expensive
there was called an air eraser and would cost around $80 without
supplies. These guns had hardened steel or carbide tips.

Chunk

2

Chuck, If Im understanding this correctly, the silver broke
while you were soldering. Silver is super brittle when its red
hot-I figured that out while I pushed on the top of a fabricated
box tring to press it in place. Bad move.

3

Chunk,

I don’t know about the mini sand blasters but on the
silver…

I do not know about the silver, but bronze if physically
articulated while hot (around 800-900 deg F) can loose 70%-80% of
it’s PHYSICAL strength. Either pre bend the pieces so they stay
in shape without physical help of anneal them before bending to
shape. A couple of thoughts for what ever they are worth.

John

John and Cynthia/MidLife Crisis Enterprises
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4 
  Chuck, If Im understanding this correctly, the silver broke
while you were soldering. Silver is super brittle when its red
hot-I figured that out while I pushed on the top of a
fabricated box tring to press it in place. Bad move.

Yep, when sterling or fine silver is overheated it becomes
very brittle. Pushing on it doesn’t help the solder to run, the
pieces have to touch before heating.