Hello Lee, Try building an “oven” from thin slabs of soldering brick
sides, back, and top that sits on your soldering brick. Make it
wider than deep and high enough to allow your torch tip to extend
inside a little ways. The oven traps the heat and brings everything
up to temp more evenly. If you have access to a kiln with percise
temperature control, that might be even better.
Have you thought about the belt attachment bars??? Ask your
customer about how s/he intends to attach the belt. Perhaps you can
plan the design so there are fewer solder joints!!
Let us know what worked for you, Judy in Kansas
Judy M. Willingham, R.S.
B.A.E. 237 Seaton Hall
Kansas State University
Manhatttan KS 66506
(785) 532-2936 FAX (785) 532-6944
Hi Lee ,Sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble. When my
pieces have gotten that large I usually use two torches to get the
piece up to temp. Hope this helps, the heat is on!!! Helen
Yes, Lee, soldering heavy sheet metal is another world! I suppose
you are using a larger torch tip. Try building a (tufa, or the
like) “nest” all around and over your piece, closed everywhere
except in front (but with some little vents in the back). That
way, you don’t lose so much heat due to radiation. Sometimes, I’ve
had success by heaping up the tufa blobs in my annealing pan, around
the item, to reflect more of the heat back onto it. Good luck! Judy
Bjorkman
Hi Lee, I got to your post late. I use the solder from underneath
technique. You have to heat slowly and very evenly or as you found
out you end up with the plate warping. You did not mention what
gage of backing plate and bezel you are using.
If I was to do the project I would cut 1/8 " high bezel pieces from
18 gage sheet. I would pin the four pieces to a fire brick to form
a 2x3’ bezel. You do not have to cut them accurately at this stage.
Let one end overlap at each corner. Solder the pieces at the
corners. Then cup off the overlap once the frame is soldered. I
would use 18 gage sheet for the backing. Cut the back larger then
the bezel frame. Set the edges of the backing on two seperated fire
bricks. The backing plate should be large enough so that the bezel
is above the opening of the fire bricks. This will allow the bezel
to get heated as you heat the backing from underneath.
Be sure to coat the back side of the backing with anti-fire scale
flux. Run paste flux on the front of the plate under the bezel. I
make several marks on the bezel side with a Sharpie pen. I found
the marks start to disappear as the metal gets close to medium
solder temperature.
Heat the plate from below with a large acetylene torch. Move the
torch over the entire surface of the plate. Don’t rush it. If you
concentrate the flame in one spot the plate could warp. Once the
plate has reached solder temperature slide the assembly on to one of
the fire bricks and move the torch to the top side and run it around
the bezel.
Place the assembly on two separated fire bricks with the bezel down
and heat from underneath when soldering on the buckle findings. Be
careful not to heat the bezel too much or you might melt it. Jump
the flame to the top side on the buckle loop and post.
Trim the backing to the bezel. Epoxy the stone in the bezel. I
like to rough up the back of the stone and the inside surface of the
backing before applying the epoxy.
Just a thought. A 2x3" buckle assembly would not have much twisting
strength. Will the stone be strong enough to handle twisting? A
buckle that large would not do well with a thin gage bezel folded
against the stone.
you could try using charcoal that really holds the heat and if that
doesn’t work carve it out of wax and cast it it will be heavier but
it will be alot easier. Just my two cents but I think everything can
be done in the wax but am very envious of people who work directly
in the metal good luck, oh one more thing when in doubt more heat
and more solder that always gives great results, just kiddin
I have soldered belt buckle bezels before so I can sympathies with
your dilemma. The way I have achieved this is to use a rose bud to
apply heat. Its many orifice tip provides a larger heat spread and
will bring the piece up to temp much quicker. Using a piece of
hardware cloth will help in keeping the heat transfer to a minimum.
if a rosebud won’t do it alone, use it to keep the piece hot and use
a smaller directed tip to flow the solder by applying heat to the
outside to draw the solder out. Ringman
I’m not 100% certain, but I think it’s possible you may have
misinterpreted your friend’s advice, and I think it may still serve
you well. Here’s why I say this… two years ago, while I was at
Revere, I was struggling with a large and relatively heavysheet of
reticulating silver, without much success. After more than a dozen
attempts at depletion gilding, I asked Alan for some advice, and
he’d suggested using the torch to really heat up my charcoal block
until it glowed white hot, then covering the glowing area with the
silver, and then heating it from above. This worked perfectly for
me and probably will do so for you, as well.
To simply heat from above,alone, in the manner you’ve described,
would be alot like playing Sisyphus, trying to push theproverbial
heat downhill!(Especially tricky with silver, which is capable of
transferring heat from one area to another with alarming rapidity.)
As I recall, I had to keep my Boley AA tweezers handy, to lift the
sheet and reheat the block two or three times but, eventually, I got
the result I was seeking. Another approach to this might be wrapping
a coil of 19 or 20ga. iron binding wire around a dowel, then pulling
it off and making the equivalent of a hotplate’s heating coil, to be
placed under your silver sheet atop the charcoal block, immediately
after heating the block. While this’d enable some of the heat to
escape, no doubt, it’d also make it a good deal easier to slip the
flame back underneath to reheat it, when needed. Last, but not least,
you could try using a finer version of the same coil (i.e. 30 gauge)
and first crumpling it up, then tamping it down into a flattened
“bird’s nest”, to be used the same way (which’d hold more heat in).
Let us know what winds up working best for you, okay?
Lee, I had to do a similar piece recently. My solution was:
Put the silver piece on a charcoal block. I know this doesn’t allow
heating from below, but sagging was a problem for me too, so I
decided to just support the silver and heat from the top.
Position some firebricks to reflect as much heat as possible back
onto the surface/body of the silver.
Get an assistant or become ambidextrous and with 2 Bernz-O-Matic
plumbing torches, available at any hardware store, using propane or
MAPP gas (they also have an oxypropane setup available, too), heat
the silver till the solder flows. I know, it feels kind of like
using a flamthrower after using a Smith Little torch…
Anyway, I used both torches to heat the main body of the 16 ga.
silver and once it all got to temp, used one of them to draw the
solder . I didn’t time it, but it felt like I must’ve heated it for
about 15 minutes before anything flowed. Big silver pieces are not my
favorite
