Mary, My students all strickly follow my Eight Basic Rules of
Soldering, which I follow myself. At the end of the 7 or 8 week
course, they usually have it down pat and soldering is no longer a
mystery. The one thing that seems to take longer than all the
preparation and set up, is torch/flame control. Some get it right
away…others need longer. In my view, all the prep and set up is
mechanical…a simple following of the rules. Torch/flame control
is the real art part of soldering.
Mostly I try to do my soldering out in front of me, holding the
piece with tweezers where I can see all areas of the piece and watch
the solder. I call it “air soldering”. That is where I solder all
my bezels, rings as well as bezel/back plates. When I have to ‘set
up’ the pieces, I normally stabilize the large piece and solder the
smaller piece - such as a jump ring or prong, using the off-hand (or
free hand)method…that is holding the part in tweezers bringing the
large piece up to temp and then touching the two. This requires
’pre-soldering’ of course. When I have to support a large piece, say
a 30x40 bezel, I use a wire mesh mat laid across two charcoal blocks
to form a bridge. That gives me excellent access to the back of the
piece and allows better flame control. Small pieces can be supported
usually by poking them into magnesia blocks or using plaster of paris
to hold many in place at once.
Another thing is placement of the solder and how much to use. For
example, on bezel/backplate jobs, I use the north, south, east and
west method, placing only a small to medium size snippet at the join
inside the bezel at those locations. This works very well on bezels
in the 22x30 range. Beyond that, I might add one or two more
snippets. I prefer to ‘starve’ the join of solder and have to add a
little than to use too much and then have to remove extra solder from
ugly joins with large fillets or blobs.
Back to flame control for a moment…many students try to do either
too much with a small tip…never getting the sink up to temperature
and then wondering why the solder turned into a ball but won’t flow,
or using a large tip to try to do a small job and wondering why the
piece suddenly melted before their eyes. Be sure to use the right tip
for the job at hand and, if you must hold part of the job with a
third hand, be sure it is attached in a way so as not to interfer
with the flame or draw heat away from the area of the join.
One more thing, my students never ‘practice’ soldering. By that I
mean, they don’t use pieces of copper or brass wire and solder just
for soldering sake. Rather, I choose specific projects that ease them
into it but that require them to do both large heavy joins and small
crowded and delicate joins on actual pieces of jewelry that, when
finished, they can look at and say…“I did that!”
Lots of different views out there, lets hear them. Cheers from Don
at The Charles Belle Studio in SOFL where simple elegance IS fine
jewelry! @coralnut2