Need few hints on gold to silver fusing

Jewelry Discussion
1

Fellow Orchidians,

I would like to fuse gold to silver and for the gold to achieve a
wispy look. That is, I want the gold to look like it was the result
of a single pass of a spray paint can. Eventually, I would like to be
able to work with sheet, foil, leaf or powder gold. I do not have a
particular karat of gold in mind nor a particular alloy of silver.

Any thoughts on this would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Martin Buchholtz

2

Martin,

I see a few technical problems with this…

  1. Silver has a lower melting point than gold. You therefore should
    seriously consider heat sinking your silver if you want to melt gold
    on this.

  2. You need to be careful about what type of silver you use. I think
    fine silver would work far better than sterling due to firescale.

  3. I have had fair success melting PMC3 silver clay slip as applied
    to fine silver construction elements, both as surface alteration as as
    gap filler.

You therefore might want to try this:

  1. apply a watery PMC gold clay slip to the surface of your silver,
    amount of water depending on the desired visual effect.

  2. attach silver to heat sink.

  3. apply butane torch to gold to fuse it upon the silver without also
    melting the silver as well.

I’ve never tried it, but I’m thinking of doing something like that
sooneror later. You can tell me how well it works.

Best,
Andrew Jonathan Fine

3

you can try applying powdered or filings of gold in the karat or
colour you desire after you clean and flux the metal first. warm it
then heat until you see the silver becomiung shiny- if you heat
until the gold melts you’ll put a hole in the base material. If you
have a tripod for soldering this is a good time to use it!if you heat
from underneath the metal is bonded faster ( eutecticly) and more
evenly than passing a torch over the top until both metals reach the
point of liquidus. However from what you are describing it sounds
like keum-boo will give you the appearance you are describing. You
can find technique articles online at a number of sites… rer

4

Hello Martin

there is a PMC/Art clay product called Aura 22 which is a
gold-bearing paint - you apply it and then heat the silver to achieve
fusing. Easy to use, fairly expensive to buy, but you don’t need
much. Try PMC type suppliers.

Or Keum Boo as many replies will tell you!

best wishes from a cold but sunny Bristol UK
Tamizan

5

Thanks Andrew and R. E.

I can picture the PMC slip working. I will try it with some Prips
flux as a thinner. I have never worked with PMC before - anything
else I need to know?

I forgot that I had tried some sterling filings with some white flux
on sterling long before I got involved with this current project.
This worked OK and gave me a course finish that I never tried to
massage further. Think I’ll take another look at that also.

Martin

6

I think that keum-boo would give you the look without much fuss.
Although there are many resources out there, the book written by
Celie Fago is really the standard for this technique and I highly
recommend it.

Sandra Graves, Isis Rising

7 
I can picture the PMC slip working. I will try it with some Prips
flux as a thinner.

Well, I guess you could try adding flux as an experiment, on scrap,
but PMC is fine silver and should not benefit from flux. A better
choice as a thinner would be lavendar oil and/or water. Lavendar oil
is used to help PMC adhere to already-fired metal clay or sheet
metal. I’m not sure what exactly (if anything) it contributes, since
it does not make the metal clay stickier, but it evaporates cleanly
and quickly, and is widely used for this purpose.

Noel