Use picks for soldering

Jewelry Discussion
21 
One last point. Learn to reflow and remove something you have
soldered. Once you master this technique, you will feel more
confident in your torch skills.

Karen makes a great point here. Part of soldering is unsoldering,
learning how to successfully heat previously sodered joints or
elements and safely take them apart. Like many other aspects of
building anything, construction often requires deconstruction.

Soldering a bail onto a pendant or a bezel onto a shank might result
in an imperfect alignment. In this case it will need to be unsoldered
and 20 repositioned and resoldered correctly. This is something a
goldsmith should be able to do with confidence.

This sounds like an excellent practical exercise for a soldering
class.

Michael David Sturlin

22 
but it takes only one mistake and all the efforts are wasted.

The same can be said about virtually everything. You miss that swing
with the emerald setting hammer and you’re toast. :stuck_out_tongue:

This ‘no pick’ thing is an urban legend, imho, repeated because it
lends some stature to the perpetuators. I’d rather earn my stature
thru deeds instead of borrowing it with words. Again, just mho.
Everyone is free to do/think as they please.

23 
Taking a few extra minutes to orient your hands in the soldering
step will save you headache and heartache in all the prep you have
done to get you there in the first place.

Very important point. If you can, rest your little finger on the
edge of your bench, and rest your elbow somewhere. Put a towel or
something in your bench pan to raise your arm, for instance. It is
very difficult to suspend your arms, hands and fingers in mid-air and
have any control, at least I can’t do it. I always try to have three
points of contact (at least two) anchoring my solder pick / tweezers
hand and arm and at least one on my torch hand. Lock your hands in
place as solidly as possible, and move your fingers to adjust
position of torch, pick or tweezers. If you have to move your tweezer
clamp to make this work, do it. It’s worth the effort.

Also as Karen advises, doing a dry run at orientation of parts and
torch are very helpful at avoiding problems. Knowing where the flame
is going beyond where you’re pointing it will avoid setting fire to
your bench as well as melting the parts in the background. It’s a
real pain to get the solder joint just perfect, only to find a
different part of the piece you are working on is melted because you
weren’t watching where ALL of the heat was going.

BTW, as Karen hints, soldering, unsoldering and then accurately
resoldering without melting anything are among the most basic skills
you must have if you ever expect to be accomplished at gold or
silversmithing. It’s not really all that difficult, once you
understand what’s going on.

Dave

24

I use a pick for soldering; if you want a great titanium solder pick
for free just go to a good bicycle shop…

ask for a bent titanium bike tire spoke… They are happy to give
you one… One bent spoke will make several solder picks…

mark kaplan

25

Hi Leonid,

There are a variety of techniques to soldering that instructors
employ. I have taught a number of soldering workshops from three day
to a five day boot camp. All my students starting with the three day
learn chip, pick and stick on nothing but a variety of soldering
samples. T joints, butt joints, tubing to tubing, 45 degree angles,
bezels, jump rings, tiny jump rings to big cast pieces and in the
five day, we go into gold.

Chip soldering for beginners is the best and done in simple
exercises to learn heat, torch and hand control. I like working in
copper for this very reason, as you can see solder flow against the
different color of metal.

Once you see solder flowing, it has a certain look and once students
see this, then moving to silver on silver, or gold on gold is easy.

You are right about the bicycle. Once a rider has achieved the feel
of balance and motion without the fear of falling, then you tend to
not worry about balancing on a bike every time you ride one.

What always amazes students is how little solder you actually need
to make a good connection. I cut the tiniest little spec of solder
and this can be hard to see. Sometimes on a pick this makes it
easier, because the tiny silver ball against the dull grey of a pick
will stand out.

Karen
Karen Christians
Waltham, MA
http://www.cleverwerx.com

26 
The same can be said about virtually everything. You miss that
swing with the emerald setting hammer and you're toast.

Yes, this is true. Any procedure carries some amount of risk and it
is a job of a goldsmith to minimize the risk as much as possible. I
use to do some mountain climbing. We had a saying that there are
bold climbers, and there are old climbers, but there are no bold old
climbers. The same can be said about goldsmiths. There are bold
goldsmiths and there are successful goldsmiths, but there are no
bold successful goldsmiths.

Leonid Surpin

27 
Chip soldering for beginners is the best and done in simple
exercises to learn heat, torch and hand control. I like working in
copper for this very reason, as you can see solder flow against
the different color of metal.

It is interesting how a simple comment can create a debate where
everybody is right, but nobody wants to admit it.

Thank you for reinforcing the point that the best way to start
learning soldering is by placing small pieces of solder and flowing
them in the controlled manner. Pick is simply too much to worry about
in the beginning. I also recommend using this technique while
assembling pieces which were already set with stones and polished,
since results are more predictable.

Leonid Surpin

28 
The usage of the pick to direct solder flow, in my opinion, must
never be done. Use of a pick is a wrong remedy for any of these
conditions. May be you can do it. I definitely cannot ! I am also
positive that asking to perform such a feat of speed and precision
of a beginner would be asking too much.

I used to subscribe to the “this is the only correct way” mind set,
until I had my first real apprentice. She was doing some production
work and I looked up to see that she was doing something totally
wrong. I jumped up and told her (in what must have been a slightly
patronizing manner) that she was not doing it the right way, that it
wasn’t going to work. I then launched into a lesson on the whys, the
why nots and therefore you musts, telling her all the reasons that
was not the right way to do it. She emptied the job bag into her
hand, and there were a half dozen perfectly assembled and
pre-finished pieces. She looked up at me innocently and asked “So do
I have to re-do these?”

I sat back down, very humbled by this experience. I apologized to
her, having learned that even an apprentice can come up with
innovative ways of doing things, and that maybe, just maybe, she
could teach me a thing or two. I also learned that when someone
doesn’t know that something can’t be done, they just might be able to
figure out how do it.

If I have learned one thing in my years at the bench, it’s that
there is no right or wrong way to do anything. There are only ways
that work for you and ways that work for me. I have also learned
(first hand) that when someone (including and maybe especially me)
knows all there is to know about what will and what won’t work and
why, they are usually wrong. There are plenty of people that do it
all wrong all the time, just blissfully cruising along in their
ignorance of all the technical mumbo jumbo proving it.

I think I’ll just keep on pushing solder around with my old graphite
pencil pick. It’s worked just fine for the thirty five years before I
read this thread and found out all the reasons it can’t work, so I
suppose, like a bumble bee that doesn’t understand aerodynamics, or
an apprentice that hasn’t been exposed to the word “can’t” yet, I’ll
continue to bumble around like I always have. But I’ll start watching
out for all those failed solder joints that have to start coming back
soon. Some of them are way overdue.

Just don’t tell my solder or pencil about any of this. They haven’t
figured out that they can’t work the way I use them yet, and I’d
kinda like to keep them both in the dark for as long as I can.

Dave

29

Dave,

Bravo. Thank you. Whoa. Folks, I don’t care how you do the job, if
it works for you and the piece looks good, then who is to judge the
method or manner for which it is made. We as teachers can give you
only one path, our path, because it works for us. If a piece of
graphite works well, then use it. IF a large chunk of titanium, steel
coat hanger works, use it. I solder with my flame in my right hand,
I’m right handed. It works for me because I like the flame control in
my dominant hand.

Find out what works for YOU. Find what is optimal, comfortable and
time efficient if this is important. BUT…document what you do,
cause at some point it will need to be fixed, or you will want to
make it again. That is the time saving part.

If you want to bake a cake and have never baked one before, do you
rely on getting out a carton of eggs, milk, a bag of flour, a box of
baking soda, a box of baking powder, a bottle vanilla and then say,
Ok I’m gonna bake a cake. No, you will mostly likely rely on a
recipe, which is DOCUMENTATION. If you bake enough cakes, you can
experiment, you can alter the ingredients, add other items to the mix
and get a good result. OR sometimes you do everything right and it
becomes a mess. What happened here? You go back to your documentation
and realize, oh, I just left out the eggs. Oops.

Experimenting is great and it challenges you. But you must
understand the basic rules before you break them. The rule is, I need
to solder two pieces together. The rule is that heat is required and
solder is required and it should fit well to make the solder flow
into the joint. That’s it, that’s all. Now, how you get there, UP TO
YOU. I sell my tools because they work for me. They might work for
you too. The important part for me is that I will tell you everything
I can, because that is my job as an instructor.

-k
Karen Christians
Waltham, MA
http://www.cleverwerx.com

30 
There are only ways that work for you and ways that work for me. I
have also learned (first hand) that when someone (including and
maybe especially me) knows all there is to know about what will and
what won't work and why, they are usually wrong.

Students tend to have two mindsets that they will be better off
getting out of as soon as possible.

#1 - That jewelry or most anything is made by a fixed, step by step
recipe. “First do this, then do that.” Books and classes are
organized like that because there’s no other way to convey the
but in reality it’s when you absorb everything and work
intuitively according to what needs to be done that you become a
true craftsperson. That’s when it’s second nature, which leads us to

#2 - It does not matter how you do anything, the only thing that
matters is the product you hold in your hand. The quality of that
product is directly related to how you made it, of course. The point
is that people tend to think that process is rigid, which it’s not,
and to follow it rigidly, which they should not. If the book says to
set up a thingamajig and take three hours to gently push the metal
into shape, and you can do the same thing by picking up a hammer and
going “twack!”, well good for you. Again, books and classes teach
“rules” because it’s the only way to communicate in that format. But
they mostly aren’t rules at all. There are SOME things that are
rules - fluxing, annealing, and a few others. Read the thread on
cutting jump rings if you want to see no rules…Same thing - when
it becomes second nature, then you are a craftsperson. Knowing what
the metal needs, not what the book says it’s supposed to need.

There is no pick soldering or stick soldering - not really. There’s
just soldering. Whatever works is what does the job.

1 Like
31

Pick soldering with paste solder is a technique not to be
overlooked.

Pick soldering is a very interesting topic that many have agreed is
the best way to solder a specific join or one small spot. There are
also some who do not think this technique has any merit. Each to
their own. BUT… pick soldering can also be accomplished with paste
solder. Let’s say you have come across a small space that needs to
have solder applied, or solder to be added in a specific spot.

If you are using paste solder in a syringe, simply put a little on a
scrap of spare metal, be it silver or copper, or a ceramic tile. If
you are using the paste solder from a jar, it is even easier to pick
solder from this source. Get your item positioned in a way that has
the potential join easily be seen when placing it on a heat resistant
soldering board or other item you use when soldering. Make sure the
object cannot twist or turn when you will be touching it with the
pick; check this before applying heat to the object. Now heat the
object to almost solder flow point.

Take your soldering pick in the opposite hand from the torch. Heat
the point of the soldering pick very quickly and hot. Now place the
soldering pick into the paste solder. You will have a little “puff”
when touching the paste solder, but the soldering pick will pick up
a small amount of the paste solder. It will be on the tip of the
pick. Make sure the solder has formed a ball, if not, just use more
flame. You can touch the pick to the spot that you want, and behold,
solder transfer to the object. Now add back heat into the object
requiring the solder be added. Since the flux is in the paste
formula, there will be enough flux in the small amount of solder on
the pick that you do not have to worry about adding extra flux to the
object; of course the object getting the solder applied to the join
will have to be free of any pickle or this trick will not work. If
you have to heat more than two times, most likely you will need to
add extra paste flux to the project. You can also move around some of
the solder on the pick with heat or another pick if needed. Happy
pick soldering.

Beth Katz
Paste and Powder Solder for Jewelers & Metalsmiths.
http://www.myuniquesolutions.com