Let me ask a newbie question regarding enameling that I can’t seem to find an answer to anywhere else. I have spent the last five, maybe more, years looking for ways to add little bits of color to my price point pieces. Imagine a small bezel or just a disc that has been domed soldered on to a simple bracelet that I can add a colored stone to or colored resin. Both methods are labor intensive and create a lot of waste. I am researching whether or not torch fired enamel might serve this purpose. My worry is that the bezel will have been soldered and enamel has to be fired at a temperature close to the melting point of hard solder. I suppose that I could do the enameling first and solder the enameled object to the piece of jewelry with easy solder. Can any of this be done or should I stick with lapidary or resin? Thanks for any help…Rob
Hi Rob,
Since no one has responded, I’ll add something. I’m not an enamelist, but I’ve taken a bunch of enamel classes over my lifetime. You need a solder that melts at a higher temperature than enamel.
Here’s a thread about IT silver solder and eutectic silver solder. Both will do what you are describing. There’s also a number of other threads in Orchid on the topic that also have helpful info.
Unfortunately, IT solder used to be sold everywhere that sells silver solder, but I can’t find it anywhere these days. I still have some and I treat like a lost relic from the past. I only use it when absolutely necessary. Eutectic solder is still available through Thompson Enamel.
Two other things to consider. Cold connections - bezel or prong set an enamel piece like stone. Also, I think you said that you have a pulse arc welder. You can possible weld your component in place before enameling.
Unfortunately, all of the regular solders, (easy, medium and hard) melt at too high of a temperature and will destroy your enamel. If you’re really lucky, you can solder enameled silver with a super low temp tin-based solder like Stay Brite, but I wouldn’t recommend that.
Hopefully, this helps a little bit and that some of our enamelist members can fill in details.
Jeff
Thanks Jeff and Neil too. I have always known that there is IT and eutectic solder but, up until now, have never really needed to know much about it. Now I have something to search on…Rob
Beth Katz at www.myuniquesolutions.com sells IT and eutectic silver solders. I believe they are either paste or powdered. The IT has a high flow point of 1475F that is probably higher than most vitreous enamels. People us it to solder on findings. The eutectic solder is also fairly high temperature solder and it’s around 1435F according to the facts at Beth’s website. Eutectic flow is the lowest temperature where the silver and copper melt together. This solder supposedly can be enameled over without causing bubbling or spalling enamel.
You can torch enamel by heating the underside of the piece (either the counter-enameled surface or the metal if it is thick enough not to require counter-enameling). If you torch your colored enamel (good side), you will likely discolor your enamels.
Hope this helps. Go check out Beth’s site.
Donna
The tool I would use is a pulse arc welder.
judyh
I have some old IT sheet solder from Otto Frei with a labeled 1540* flow point and just checked their website. They are still selling it, claiming a 1560* flow point.
Worth knowing about if you need zinc-free solder or very high temp solder.
Neil A
Judy…I have also wondered about that. Thanks…Rob
That’s one of the big perks of laser welding or pulse arc welding with enameling. No solder.
the silver copper eutectic is at 72 wt% silver and 28 wt% copper…the lowest melting point of any combination of pure silver and pure copper… it has a greyish color compared to sterling. Melting point is at 779 degrees C or 1435 F… adding either a little more copper or a little more silver either way raises the melting point. going with 75% silver and 25% copper gives a melting point of 1472 degrees. 80% silver and 20% copper by weight has a melting point of about 1650…hard silver solder has a melting point of 1355 and a flow point of 1450…Sterling melts at 1640…moving further towards silver from the eutectic point increases the brightness of a pure silver copper alloy…The situation is actually more complicated than just looking at melting points… when solid, the mixture of metals separates into two phases, one copper rich and the other silver rich… these are in microscopic grains within the solidified solder. For practical purposes it makes no difference…
I used to make my own silver solders by mixing pure copper and pure silver, melted together and rolled out into wire or thin sheets…
Zinc is added to soft solders to lower the melting point even further than the eutectic silver /copper mixture and to keep the color of the solder bright… Three component alloys are far more complex and have to be modeled in 3D…
Oy! You think setting stones and colored resin are labor intensive?! Ha! I just spent 31/2 years on a project that involved vitreous enamel. Even though I have done it a few times before, it took me a year and a half plus some coaching to get enameling dialed in. Not mastered, but dialed in. It took me a week just to make and fire the color samples. Enameling is as much a science as it is an art. Re the solder issue. Enamel likes to work with .999 silver. If you are working with sterling it can be done, but needs to be heated and quenched several times to build up a precipitation of fine silver on the enameling surface. Do NOT polish that surface as the the layer is only a few molecules thick. Also enamels hate solder. If you make a .999 bezel it will need to be fused or soldered with IT solder. And yes you can still get it at Otto Frei. Now that’s the easy part. For starters enamel really needs to be counter enameled to be stable and durable. You can’t counter enamel with a torch. See my post form 2014 about enameling. And the cost of a good kiln, all of the tools needed, as well as the enamels…ouch!
Rio Grande has a a decent basic kit for the tools needed. They also offer videos and books on the subject. And Thompson Enamels sells sample kits of both opaque and transparent enamels to learn from. They also have good educational info. I recommend The Thompson Enamel Workbook. Be prepared to fail a bunch of times. Learn form them and move on.
Now all that said… don’t be discouraged. It can be frustrating and expensive, in the beginning, but oh so gratifying and addictive.It’s like falling down a beautiful colorful rabbit hole. After all working with metals the colors are pretty limited. But enamels? Oh the colors are so Intoxicating.
Good luck and have fun with it.
-Jo
Jo…Thanks for your in depth reply with all the possible pitfalls. Having worked in precious metal for over 50 years, I know a bit about screwing up and I suspect that things aren’t much different with learning to enamel. I really just want to put little bits of color on some of my work, but I am willing to invest in what I need to buy and know to let it go where it will go. The tiara is very nice. thanks…Rob
Re soldering on enamel and sterling silver. As Jo said there is a science to this. I enamel on sterling and frequently solder pieces together before enamelling. This is a common process in England and there are many good enamelists who use ‘standard’ silver (sterling) for all their enamel work. Check out Phil Barnes book and also look up Jane Short and Shiela Macdonald to name a couple of artists who use sterling in most of their work.
However there are some guidelines. Most enamels (not all) will react to the solder, so if you can keep the solder inside the bezel it helps. Or clean up really well. Generally I try to enamel on pieces with no firescale so once you’ve soldered on the bezel a wash of nitric acid helps remove the firescale. Or solder and then engrave the area to be enamelled so as to remove the firescale. If you’re looking for a bit of colour and not all over, even cutting in with a burr can help remove the firescale, just make sure to prep any areas before hand that are going to be enamelled and keep them clean. Also, I do use hard solder, very seldom IT but I have to keep my fusing temps lower (740 c) but generally it’s not an issue as the pieces are in the kiln for very short time periods. Kiln battes molded to shape the piece also help avoid distortion and support the piece especially if the solder gets to Liquidus.
Generally I try to solder before enamelling but sometimes I need to do it afterwards, but it will change the colour of the enamel.
I don’t always use a flux on sterling, but if you need to hide firescale there are some good fluxes that will deal with this.
And some colours are just tough to use on sterling. I prefer the leaded enamels, mostly Japanese some from Europe. I don’t use Thomson at all.
Have you tried cold (low temp) enamel?
Thanks for the suggestion. In my efforts to add color to my work, other than for using laipary, I have explored various 2 part, UV and other types of resin an durenamel. They are all messy, labor intensive and the final product is not hard like enamel. I will explore Efcolor, but I suspect that, if it is resin based, the same will be true for Efcolor. Thanks…Rob
I’ve never used EFcolor enamel. I suggested it as a potential option for you because it was suggested to me by a friend named Paul Hamler. He recently bought a rose engine lathe and wants to explore doing enameled guilloche work.
Like you, I’m skeptical that any resin product can ever be as durable as vitreous enamel.
I’ve never tried enameling items that have already been soldered. I can certainly see how this could potentially pose a problem.
I would be grateful if you were to share the results of your experimentation, and I will be happy to do the same.
I have some play time at the bench coming up this weekend and will try to devote some of it to experimenting with this. I suspect that opaque enamels would be no problem, but transparent enamels require a higher firing temperature and a longer soak time and thus are likely to fall apart. Unfortunately, soldering after enameling could potentially cause the enamels to become over-fired and take on a dull and lifeless appearance. Will have to try both approaches to see if there’s a solution…
I’m not an enameler, but I played one in a movie once. its a struggle. Jo gave possibly the most insightful answer. So, I will add just my admittedly limited experience. I’m a technical geek. I suck at design. 1) oh, god just don’t do it. A piece really has to be designed to be enameled. It’s in the planning. Yes, I have done it. Just as you suggested you wanted to do. If I recall you make heavy and beautiful cuffs. You might be able to pull it off. It ends up being iffy. My compromise was to make an enameled jewel and set it. 2) the melting is not the bigger issue, the zinc is. Most solders have zinc in them. I have IT solder and have used it. Never use it anymore because I can use Argentium which I can fuse. Eutectic has zero zinc, so maybe an option. It traditionally has been used for enameling. Once it flows it alloys (as all solders do) and the melting point goes way up because … it isn’t eutectic anymore. With no zinc. Don’t use IT. You can make a eutectic solder yourself. As I remember you have an ingots and a rolling mill and such. I forget the ratio of silver to copper but you can google that. I’ve made it. Just like making wire. 3) I am going to hate myself for saying this … Just use resin. You really have to plan to enamel and its a bitch.
I have used resin. I don’t like it for a number of reasons, mainly because it is not hard enough to withstand the daily wear and tear that my jewelry is typically exposed to. I am willing to take the time and incur the expense to learn a bit about enameling. Thanks…Rob