Shadow on my bezel. Why?

I am using fine silver bezel wire and hard silver solder. I keep
getting a “shadow” mark where the joint was formed. Even the most
rigorous filing, tripoli-ing and crossing my fingers is not working.
What am I doing wrong?

Regards,
Andrae Streicher

Andrae, It could be that the shadow is excess solder that was not
filed off after soldering. Solder is a different color that sterling
silver. Make sure your joints are tight fitting and that you file
off all excess solder. This problem can be seen most vividly when
you size a ring. If you hammer on the joint before removing the
solder, you drive the solder into the shank and you’ll get that
classic discolored area and probably some pitting too.

Larry Seiger

andrae - sounds like you might be getting a slight surface flow with
the fine silver & the higher heat of the hard solder (without copper
to absorb the heat) - it doesn’t sound like the first soldering if
you’re attaching the bezel so do you really need to use hard solder
for one the last bit of work? keep in mind all my suggestions stem
from strictly empirical discoveries that i’ve noticed while working.
ive

hellow, this shadow could be caused by too much solder. aspecially on
the commercial bezel strip( very thin), only a very small amount of
hard solder should be used, these solders have copper in them, and do
“soak” into the fine silver sometmes leaving the grey area. hope this
helps.

Todd Reed