So this is my second post…on al role here!
I am having a slow time making friends with my new Swiss torch. The
rubber hoses are new and so stiff I feel like I’m manoeuvring garden
hoses! The welding hoses in our metal shop at the school I teach at
are the same…but they have had the benefit of getting dragged
around a lot, I guess. Is there any way I can ‘break’ mine in. I
think it will take 100 years as most of my hose just sits under my
solder bench.
Secondly, I bought a nice melting tip for it… rosebud, large, bushy
flame. I’m kind of unsure of how to use it. Do I need to jack up the
pressure at the regulators? Should I get any kind of large cone flame
to happen? I tried it and played with different flames with the torch
valves. It was a huge (!) bushy flame that just filled the crucible.
Seemed like SO much flame…everything…the crucible, borax coating
at least looked HOT…like reddening, but my ounce of silver melted
to a blob and just stayed that was, and it took long. I felt like I
had generated so much heat it was making the room hot and set off our
smoke alarms! So I went back to the largest of the regular tips that
I use for soldering and managed to pour my ingots, melting the ounce
of silver a bit at time. (I pretty much only cast the largest ingot
size in the mould, so lots of heating-pouring-reheating.) How DO you
cast those thinner ingots?!
Any advice would be very appreciated!
Thanks, Linda (BC, Canada)