Hi,
..I wish that zinc was not a scourge to pulse arc welding…
Julie
Hi,
rabbit hole warning!
julie
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Hi,
Try lo temp rose gold solder, Lots of white flux,!
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I went to one of my not so recently visited places in my shop and found about 2 lbs. of “copper” wire solder and 1.5 feet of “brass” sheet solder. I probably bought them when I last pondered soldering copper and brass with something other than silver solder. The wire was probably from Rio #132199, the brass solder also from Rio #503052. I made my usual twisted copper and brass bracelets with each solder and make the following observations.
- The brass and copper both need to be very clean, annealed and the joints well formed with little or no gaps.
- The joints have to be well fluxed. I use a heavy paste flux and apply it liberally.
- The solder needs to also be clean and readily available to be applied both as pallions and thin wire form for touch soldering.
- The pieces need to be well heated before concentrating on the joint to be soldered.
- The solder applied, I found both to be kind of fussy and they puddled before they ever flowed. The sheet didn’t flow as quickly as the wire. I never saw the bright flash that you see when silver solder flows.
- A lot of time was needed in the pickle. I also used a hot super pickle solution for the brass to remove the red stain.
- Both cleaned up fairly well, but I had to go back and redo one joint on the brass bracelet.
- They are both ready to be polished and formed.
I have always enjoyed moving large heavy pieces of metal. The cost of silver and definitely gold has prevented me from doing this for a long time. Using copper and brass as a substitute works as I don’t worry about screwing something up and not being able to sell it, so I have a shoe box full of copper and brass “ Oh sh*ts.
Lots of fun…Rob
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Sounds like they were successful, if rather fussy, experiments. If the result was joins that looked good I’d say that with practice and a bit more experimenting you’ll have a working process.
Two suggestions:
For flux look into the fluxes specifically made for copper alloy brazes. There are a bunch sold by McMaster-Carr, and probably any local welding supplier.
Pre-heating fluxed pieces in a kiln or furnace might simplify things. Or perhaps use two torches to keep general heat on the piece with one while applying concentrated heat to the joint with the other.
Also, search the Internet Archive for books on brazing. There are quite a few available for free viewing.online.
Here’s one: Brazing manual : American Welding Society. Committee on Brazing and Soldering : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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I have to polish them to finish the experiment, but they look OK. You are correct about practice. Like anything new, you have to work at it. I have been a bike rider for years, to include the kind that you pedal, put gas into and a battery. A lot of road bikes are brazed and some of the bracing work is amazing. I may take your suggestion and do some research into brazing since that is what we really are doing. Thanks…Rob
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I polished them and they look good. The wire solder does show gray, so you need to try to hide the joints. Brass solder looks yellow. I normally use Handi Flux and that is what I have found so far to use when brazing. If I am going to use these solders in any kind of production, I need to get more comfortable with them….Rob
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Hi Rob, so which solder color color do you like best? the brass?
jukie
The brass…Rob
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Great discussion!
I would like to add:One school I attended when I was younger used, used brass for the instructional projects we worked on, donated by some company I don’t know the history of. I found I had to clean the brass before I started working it. If I used the shear to cut off a slice and ran it through the mill to make my half round (for rings, to size up and down) I risked embedding whatever was on the surface thus contaminating my project and future solder joints.
Brass solder doesn’t play as nice as silver solder. Practice, like has been discussed already. Always a good idea to bone up on procedures, amazing what we forget or overlook sometimes and it happens to the best of us. Brazing rods: some run at a very high temp so you have to be careful when your Materials are of different gauges and total mass is very relevant. Also the metals you are marrying and their properties, melting temp. Pure copper is much higher than brass also gauge of each member. Importance of where and how fast you play your torch. Porosity is another problem but is likely a byproduct of contamination and or too much heat. A lot has been covered in this discussion. And the welds on the bike are probably TIG Welds, I always stop and examine joints like that too..~~~*Stv
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Higher end, especially chrome moly steel frames, used to be lugged and brazed. Possibly to keep the frame member from warping or doing damage to the thin walled tubing that might happen if they were welded. Cleaning up these welds to make them more attractive and reduce weight was a problem, but modern welding techniques have solved them. Lugs were also just pretty to look at. I currently own three bikes. One is 40 years old and the lugs still hold. Modern steel, titanium and aluminum frames are mostly welded now. Carbon fiber frames are glued. The pieces attached to the frame used to be called braze-on. I have been a serious bike rider as long as I have been making jewelry and the bike industry has changed a lot over the 50 years that I have been riding. For health reasons, I now ride an electric bike. To accommodate the weight of the motor, battery and electronics, the frames are heavy with lots of thick welds…Rob
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Here are pic of the different joints being discussed
Common Bicycle Joinery Methods | The Randonneur Project Common Bicycle Joinery Methods | The Randonneur Project
And another very interesting link:
Steel Bike Frame Welding & Fabrication - Is this a lost art? – Baker’s Gas & Welding Supplies, Inc. Steel Bike Frame Welding & Fabrication - Is this a lost art? – Baker's Gas & Welding Supplies, Inc.
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Back in the 1950’s i visited the Harley factory. The motorcycle frames were assembled with brazing material packed around the joints. The whole assembly was then heated to melt the braze material. This caused some warping. The frames were put on a giant steel table, with lots of movable blocks. Two men used large pry bars and other equipment to correct the shape, mostly by eye. Harley production was lagging at that time because these two guys were the only ones trained to do that step.
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I remember getting to ride on the back of a full dresser belonging to a friend of my Dad’s. I grew up in the 50s. Lots of things were handcrafted then. Those old Craftman had the deft touch that is hard to find these days. A real work ethic and pride!!! It hurt them when AMC Bought them, they bought it back.
I couldn’t understand the Giveaway of Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth for a mere pittance of it’s real worth!
So Many companies are Global now. Glad to have a hideout in my workshop. Not Fernando’s but Steven’s Hideaway:skull_and_crossbones:
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This is what happens when two pieces of different clean metal surfaces are tightly clamped together. If compatible metals, such as copper and silver are clean and clamped, silver atoms will slowy diffuse into the copper and vice versa. The joint that is formed is an alloy of both metals. The process at room temperatures takes decades. Heat applied facilitates diffusion and hastens the process. Brazing does exactly the same thing, except instantaneously.
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It’s really sad that the price of silver and gold is so high that you can’t use it anymore. It’s okay if you’re sitting on a store of it. The spot price of gold is hanging near 4K per oz., after hitting 4.2K/oz.. Silver hit an all time high of $51/oz just /lbthree weeks ago.. today’s spot is $49.50… Silver is holding near $50… even the price of copper is rising, trading over $5.00/lb.
I have lots of $19 - $25 silver stock and finished jewelry on hand and have so far based my selling price on it. Once it calms down, I will adjust my selling price to whatever the new number is. Let’s hope that it settles down. This won’t happen until after the first of the year at the earliest when I usually place a big (for me), silver order. I did adjust my prices up a little bit earlier this year on my heavy bracelets without any impact on sales. Gold is another story. I don’t make anything out of gold until I know that I have a buyer. The copper work that I have been doing lately has been fun most of the time. It is tricky to solder (braze). Thanks…Rob
I have enough years at the bench to remember how “nobody is going to buy jewelry at that price!”, was pretty much every jeweler’s reaction when Gold shot above $150/oz for the first.
Time will tell. In my experience most of the resistance to a price increase comes from within our industry, as we remember what the price ‘should be’….and we tend to project that reluctance on our customers.
Just my observation after 50 years at the bench.
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I had to retire from hobby jewerly making due to neck spine problems. When I started in the early 1990’s, I bought scrap silver cuttings from native American jewelers. The price was $2.50 per oz. I ended up with more than 22lbs of raw ingots from melted down cuttings. The highest price paid was about $4.50/oz. When I tried gold, gold was at a low.. I bought bullion 90% gold coins and melted them, added silver to make green gold at 18K… have I some cast ingots still ready to roll, in addition to several ounces of gold scrap. Gold prices then were under $400/oz. Barrick Gold, the gold mining company ran the Homestake mine in South Dakota.. when the price of gold tumbled to $250/oz., Homestake closed. Barrick’s main concern was to transfer environmental risk to the State in exchange for donating the land and mine to the State. They walked away from over 20,000,000 ounces of gold reserves. The abandoned mine with a mainshaft 5,000 feet down from surface was perfect for the National Neutrino Laboratory..
Now I’m stuck with nasty tax problem. My intent was to send all of the precious metals to a refiner in exchange for investment grade bullion.. a like for like exchange for precious metals had been abolished over 20 years ago. I can only give a good faith estimate of my basis. The receipts were old and lost in a move. I have to report a capital gain, taxed at 28%, Precious metals are considered collectibles, like artwork, antiques, jewelry, gemstones and any asset that is valuable personal property. All are taxed at a flat long term capital gains rate at 28%. In addition, given the high price of precious metals, any transaction involving them are considered as cash. Anything worth $10,000 is treated as cash and must be reported by the refinery to the IRS as cash. The purpose is supposed to disclose drug dealing and money laundering. There’s no escape from death and taxes.
This has gotten away from the topic a little bit.
I have tried to keep my prices consistent for the past year. I do a lot of business locally and I know personally many of my customers so price consistency is a good thing. The continuous raise in the price of silver means less profit from March to October but then I have more sales as I get closer to Christmas and the associated holidays. I had two shows out of town and I based my prices for Out of Town on the September price I paid for metal. My prices and costs are up about 20% from the same shows last year. The sales have been good and like Rob I haven’t seen a great deal of reticence on the part of the customers. Fewer younger customers maybe but I try and have a bracelet or two I can market below $100.00 for that group. (Remember when $100.00 was a weeks worth of groceries for a family of five?)I am buying no more silver until it settles out.
I have worked right along with copper and brass. Both are fun to work with but they have as many similarities as they have uniquities. Copper is fun to stamp and patinate while brass is quirky. Soldering is a bit of a trial but both do well as heavy twists. I put out a display of copper bracelets of various styles at the last three shows we did. The interest was very high and sales were good. I recall there was a book or two on making copper bracelets and other jewelry at A.C. Moore several years ago. I never bought one and I can’t remember the authors but the cover of one had a bracelet that was a wide cuff with copper and brass washers soldered to the top.
Now I need to find a pin catch that works dependably.
Don
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