Continue from: “Half round dead soft Argentium wire”
Terry,
have you tried welding with AS yet, no bubbles like SS, the pieces
just seem to reach out and touch and merge and it's so slow at
transition. I have not seen any ill effects from this yet, have
you? I find this easier to control than soldering especially on
jump rings and putting a filet on bezel bases. I have started
rolling my own bezel material of AS, if the stone will take the
heat, I put the stone in with it, if not I just wrestle with the
burnisher unit it is set. A post a couple of days ago made me think
to try that, and it worked.
Up till now I had been avoiding using 100% AS on pieces because I
didn’t think I could harden them sufficiently in my household oven -
now I will most likely switch completely over to AS, except for
Bezels and gold accents of course.
Your question about ‘welding’ AS - I assume you mean fusing?? No, I
have not tried any fusing with argentium, but I will, especially
with jump rings - I just hate trying to get that tiny little piece
of solder to hit the join - it always creates a bump. I’m sure
someone else has already done this and could comment from
experience. Quite honestly I have not done much sweat soldering with
AS either, but assume there would be not problems provided the fit
was good and you didn’t get too hot.
No, I have not tried any fusing with argentium, but I will,
especially with jump rings - I just hate trying to get that tiny
little piece of solder to hit the join - it always creates a bump.
I'm sure someone else has already done this and could comment from
experience.
When soldering the joints in jump rings, paste solder works well, it
eliminates the ‘bump’ you mentioned.
Place a dab of paste solder on the inside of the ring so it contacts
both sides of the joint. Then apply the flame from the outside of
the ring so both sides of the joint come up to soldering temp
together. Remove the heat when the solder flows. The dab of solder
should be a sphere (or close to it) about as large in diameter as the
wire the ring is made from. Any solder that’s not pulled into the
joint will migrate around the inside of the ring & be barely
perceptible.
I am a big fan of fusing in general, but especially with argentium. I
do experiment a lot and have been fusing with argentium and fine
silver. I still do bezels with fine and fuse the argentium to the
bezel. I have found it works amazingly. I fuse the bezel together
first, so no solder involved. Due to the lower melting temp of arg.
the bezel doesn’t mishapen at all when I fuse the argentium to it.
quite fun!
Okay, I’m a little nervous about answering a technique question
here, since I’m not nearly as advanced in metalsmithing as most of
you…but…
Fusing Argentium works really well - in fact, whenever I can use a
fused join instead of a soldered join, that’s how I do it now.
In my experience, a tiny bit of Batterns flux at the join helps the
Argentium flow together. Fusing jump rings is really easy - I just
set up a bunch of them on a soldering block, spray some flux on the
block, and start fusing. I probably end up using more flux than is
really necessary that way, but it’s easier than having to dab it on
each join individually if you are doing a whole bunch of rings. Any
flux residue left on the rings will pickle off.
When soldering the joints in jump rings, paste solder works well,
it eliminates the 'bump' you mentioned.
You can also use solder filled wire for the jump rings, thus
eliminating the need to add solder in any form. And at that point you
don’t even need a torch, you can solder the ring with a Hot Spot (or
similar tool).
Wow, that’s very interesting. I may have to check that out. If I’m not mistaken, I think I bought some solder filled wire to experiment with but haven’t done so yet. Thanks for mentioning that a torch isn’t needed although that’s the only thing I have for soldering at this time. Again thanks for posting the info.