Hi There. Long time since I’ve used this amazing service. Great that it’s still here. I’ve a got a commission requiring 18ct red gold combined with 18ct yellow gold. I’ll need to use the red gold solder and I guess it should be hard. I will need to form the piece after soldering. I’ve never worked in 18ct rose before. Is there anything I need to know that is different from working in just 18ct yellow? Are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of? The price of gold is so high now I can’t afford any mistakes. Thanks in advance for any useful advice. Collette
Collette,
I always found 18k rose a little tricker than 18k yellow to solder, so I would generally use the other metals solder (white or yellow) to join the parts, and if I couldn’t use the other metal’s solder, I’d sometimes drop down to 14k rose solder. If I was joining the shank, or a place that would show, then I’d roll out a very thin piece of the18k and I would placed it between the pieces and then fuse the 18k rose together. If you must use the 18k solder, I’d try to use a small clip cut off the sheet of solder, and not ball it up first. My experience was that every time you melt the solder you’d raise the flow point. I always remind myself that solder flows to where it’s the hottest.
As far as working the rose, I didn’t treat it any different than yellow.
T Jones
Thankyou. That’s really helpful. And your work is beautiful!
Hi Col
Some good advise for sure.
I have found I get the best results using 18K pink hard solder with all pink rose gold including 10,14 and 18K. Also I will quickly quench piece in heat sink or quench in denatured alcohol if there are heat tolerance stones. I do this to avoid making the rose gold brittle like you would do after casting.
Franz
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