Soldering White Gold

Jewelry Discussion
1

Hi,

I wander if someone can give me some advice on Soldering white gold.
I work mainly in Silver and occasionally solder 9ct gold to silver.

Some friends recently asked me if I would make their wedding rings,
which I was really happy to do and am making them as their wedding
present. They are having basic D shaped bands in 18ct white gold.
His band is about 2mm thick x 6mm wide and hers is about 1.5 x 4mm.
I’m finding it more difficult than I thought to get the join right.
I’ve made sure it’s completely clean, got the joins as exact as I can
by trying to file them to join perfectly and also by cutting through
with a fine blade, but once I’ve soldered there is always a tiny
little hairline on one side where it hasn’t joined properly. I’ve
tried about 6 times now and at the rate I’m going I’m going to end up
forking out for more gold.

I did have a look through the archives but couldn’t really find any
thing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I need help!

Thank you,
Karen

2

Karen,

If the small crack is always on the side away from the flame, brung
the flame around to that side and draw the solder to it.

Jerry in Kodiak

3

Hello Karen,

Perhaps you’ve heard of using boric acid dissolved in denatured
alcohol to keep firescale off of silver? Well, we use a ton of that
stuff in goldsmithing. The metal must also be very clean. Those are
your first steps. The next step is to make sure your flame is not
so high in oxygen, this will cause the metal to oxidize quickly,
burning off any flux you have applied. Then there’s the flux,
although you can use regular brazing flux the do it, it works a
little better with self pickling flux, it’s a flourescent green color
and has the consistency of water.

Hope this helps.
Dave