hi would you please be able to tell me how to solder around tumble
stones thanks
you don’t want to. the heat will affect the stone. since a lot of
stones that are tumbled are actually rocks, they are made up of
several minerals, and may have included water. heat for soldering
will cause the minerals to expand (at different rates) and may boil
the water. these will cause the stone to “explode” and/or split.
generally, stones need to be removed from metal before soldering.
john
i bake them in the oven all the time when i add fimo to them they
are fine they dont explode ? thanks for your reply tina
Tina- Are you using a burn out, kitchen, or enameling oven? At what
temps? A torch at soldering temp is much higher than a kitchen oven.
That’s why we only solder on diamonds and even then only if they are
not treated.
Have fun and make lot of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com
hi i just bake the tumble stone in my wood fire oven or gas oven 180
when i use the fimo all i want to do is melt silver coloured solder
around the edge of tumble stones and to use to add charms to them
thanks
i modify my response, you are not doing what jewelers call soldering
(brazing) as silver solder doesn’t melt until almost 1400 degrees F.
If you were doing what I consider to be soldering, you would be
destroying the stones. best of luck with your process.
john
Perhaps you could use silver colored fimo around the tumbled stones,
Tina, as precious metals will not melt at those very low
temperatures. You could also try silver paint, or resin. In low
temperature ranges, tin and lead solder for stained glass would need
an adhesive copper foil to adhere the solder to the stones and fimo,
and it would have to be fluxed and individually soldered in a very
time consuming manner, with a soldering iron. I don’t know if those
temperatures would burn the fimo. Look into “stained glass
soldering"or"stained glass jewellery” which I think is your best bet
if you really want to use metals. Soldering in general, is always
metal to metal, and there is an article titled “Soldering” on
Wikipedia which will give you a better idea of the vastly different
types of soldering. The majority of jewelers here on Orchid never do
soft soldering as above, we use hand held torches with powerful open
flames generated by a mixture of pressurized gasses, and our lowest
temperature solder only begins to melt at 618 celcius.
I hope you find a way to achieve the look you want.
Michelle
I wonder if making a bezel around each stone before you imbed it in
the fimo would work? The solder will not melt in the low temperature
of your oven. Of course this assumes you are familiar with making
bezels and torch work. Sounds like an interesting project and your
idea of incorporating stones inthe fimo is very creative. Alma