I have a quantify of sterling rings (1" dia, 22 & 20ga) to make and
have always soldered before. But am wondering if I’d be better off to
try to fuse them. However based on others comments it seems fusion
works well with fine silver and higher kts. of gold but not with lower
quality materials such as sterling, gold filled wire, low kt. gold,
etc.
Is this correct or should I consider/try to fuse my SS rings? And if
I should be able to what is the correct procedure? What do I need to
watch out for in addition to the seam surfaces fitting together very
well? Is flux used as in soldering or not?
from what you were asking about fusing a quantity of silver rings, I
think you are trying to get a technique for soldering much faster, if
so fusing is not the way. however say you had 1000 silver rings each
needing a soldering, place them on a ceramic tray or honey comb block
(used for soldering) and with a syringe with solder paste and flux
inject it were you will solder, place in a kiln, heat to the
appropriate temperature, hot enough for the solder to melt but not
the silver. Ed Dawson model maker for the trade. Maine Master Models
Of course you can! Award-winning jeweler Marne Ryan has built a
career out of fusing sterling to sterling and gold to sterling. Her
fused and layered jewelry pieces and vessels are wonderful.
I’m a jeweller in Owen Sound Ontario Canada and am rather new to
Orchid - been lurking for a couple of months. I work with my husband
Andrew, and we both do a fair amount of fusing with sterling silver.
One trick we’ve found is to coat the metal with boracic acid and
alcohol mixture (and burn off the alcohol) before fusing. It gives a
fine layer of flux over the surface which seems to help. I usually
fuse shapes onto the surface of the plate metal, Andrew does a neat
technique where he scratches patterns into the molten surface with a
scriber - basically draws in the molten surface.
One problem with fused sterling though - it is difficult to solder
(but not impossible) as the resulting metal is rather porous.
The British jeweller, Gerda Flockinger (from the 60’s and 70’s -
although still working today I think) was a pioneer in fusing
sterling. You might want to search her name on the web and see the
work. There is another British jeweller (but her name escapes me now)
who fuses 18K gold.