Well, it could be you’re the village idiot, but I doubt it. If you
write Washington maybe you can get appointed to a high office…
I haven’t read anything previously by you, but the troubles you are
having are fundamental anyway. First, you don’t say what metal you
are using - that matters a lot. There are two issues at hand: The
seam itself, and the heat. Most likely your seam is not fitted
closely enough. After soldering 50,000 joints, I’m a little less
anal about joints, but they do have to be extremely close if not
"crammed" together.
Hold it up to the light and if you can see light through it, it’s
not close enough. Most people think this is so it will polish up
nice, which is true, but more importanty it’s because the solder will
flow due to “capillary action”, which is that a liquid will flow into
and up a thin crack or seam. If you put two sheets of glass together
and just touch them to some water, it will travel and inch or
something up between the sheets. When you say the solder is “Jumping
to both sides”, it’s a clue that the above is part of the problem -
there’s no capillary to flow into - it’s a gap.
Then comes heat. If you are soldering a silver ring, you must heat
up the whole piece to about 2/3 of soldering temp. Bear with me, but
this is because the silver conducts heat so well that it steals heat
from your seam. Goldsmiths sometimes bring me silver to solder
because they just don’t have a feel for that fact. Then, when you
are warmed up, you want to heat the seam, making sure that you heat
both sides fairly equally -“left, right, left, right” until it flows.
One thing I often do, which is easier in gold, is to just “slump” the
solder on one side, so that it is actually bonded, and then go to
the other side and pull it across.
The fundamental principal of all soldering, silver, gold, brass,
bronze, lead, pewter - and even welding, is that the solder will
follow the heat - it will literally flow to the hottest point, and
you can even pull it around with the torch. Finally, If you use the
above thoughts, which are just the basics of soldering, and your
metal is clean and fluxed, it WILL work. There’s no big mystery, you
just have to play by the rules. And truly finally - take your time.
You can’t take all day with a hot piece, but just use the torch
wisely, apply heat as needed, no hurry, making sure everything gets
what it needs, and then the solder will go phluggh, and voila’ - a
soldered ring.