I’d like to try some granulation as a decorative effect on my next
piece.
Is it true that fine silver makes better, rounder granules than
sterling?
Can fine silver granules be fused to a sterling silver base plate?
Or do they have to be soldered?
Sincerely,
Marie Meyer
Hi Marie,
Don’t know from ‘better’ granules, but all I ever use are fine
silver. (except the occasional bit of 22K gold, but that’s a whole
different thing.) One big reason being that fine granules give me
just a smidge more insurance against melting than sterling ones
would.
The other reason is that way I can use them for anything, either
fine silver pieces, or sterling pieces, rather than trying to keep
track of two different sets of granules, with the inevitable
intermixing happening in exactly the wrong spot for any given
design.
You can do full-on fusion granulation with fine granules, or any
other granulation technique. Not so much with sterling.
FWIW,
Brian
Hi Marie
Sterling granules will be black because of the copper firescale. Fine
silver is shiny and form better spheres. The best results to melt
fine silver is use the soft charcoal soldering block. Fine silver
granules can be fused only to fine silver base adding Blue fuse or
copper plating the granules-cechk eutectic soldering. If you want use
fine silver granules to sterling baseyou need to use solder, best is
in syringe paste solder. I tried to fuse fine to 950/1000 silver but
this didn’t work.
Rudolf
rugevit.com