Soldering gold bezel to sterling plate

Hello, I’ve recently started incorporating gold and gold-filled items into my silver work and have been running into an issue:
My 14kt gold bezel keeps sinking into my silver plate like it’s quicksand just as my easy silver solder flows.
I know I’m a newb at gold, but I haven’t been able to find anything on this online or in my literature.
Thoughts?

Hi,

have a look at this recent post, talkingvabout a similar situation

julie

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Metallurgy is an interesting field of study.
Your problem I believe is : silver is used as an alloy of gold to make green gold as well as copper.
Pure gold melts at 1945 degrees F.
Sterling silver 1640 F
14k gold 1550 F
Copper 1984 F
So when you add two or more precious metals together the melting temperature decreases…
so when you add copper which melts at a higher temperature then pure gold the result is a metal that melts at a lower temperature then either of the two you have added together.
Thus when you are soldering alloyed gold to sterling silver the metals will fuse together at a lower temperature then either one would melt at by themselves if heated up to the same temperatures separately.
Often times if you are good and watch your metals closely you can simply fuse them together without using any solder. Seams have to be perfect for this to be successful.
You can use a solder but easy solder will work best for starting out or even a lower karat gold solder than the gold you are using will help you until you learn all the ins and outs. Keum Boo jewelry takes this to its fullest I think… you take sterling silver and pickle it to get a layer of pure silver on the surface then you lay very thin gold foil on the surface and then heat from below and use a agate burnisher and then rub the gold into the surface of the silver… at around 650-950 F the pure gold sheet will alloy itself to the silver sheet and be one piece without any solder.
So as you can see the process starts way before solders would normally melt.
That said yes you can still solder silver and gold together… justbtakes some practice and a close eye on the metals while doing it.
Have fun and try new things…

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Thank you! That is very informative.

Ive been dying to get into gold, but currently cant due to money going into equipment i need. I cant wait, and see theres so much more to learn!