Hi everyone, I would like your opinion. I started out in silver and do my bezels with fine silver and don’t have any problems getting a nice tight fit to my bezels by hand. I have been practicing in yellow gold and purchased 14kt yellow gold bezel wire and solder. I can do the bezel by hand on larger stones, but not as tight and smaller stones under 10mm I need to hammer set. Hammer setting is fine for hard stones, but I have some adorable small opals that I want to set in yellow gold. So my question is, would 18kt yellow gold be soft enough or should I go all the way to 22kt yellow gold for bezels for smaller and softer stones so I can set them nice and tight by hand. Thank you everyone in advance.
Oh, I should mention that I use 28 ga fine silver and 30 ga 14kt bezel wire so for. I plan on sticking with the 30 ga with a higher karat.
I would use 22k. The cost difference is minimal, the look is ten times better and they will only be slightly harder than fine silver.
Thank you. I have read that folks fuse 22K bezels. Would I be able to do that with 30 ga bezel wire. Thanks again for your advice.
You can fuse, sure. I prefer soldering, but 22k solders are hard to find. I do however have recipes for easy, medium and hard 22k solders without cadmium. I was looking for some 22k solders and, by luck, found an article on orchid about cadmium free solders from 9-22 karat. Here they are if you want.
22k solders:
22K Hard Solder, 970 Pt (917 Au, 42 Ag, 30 Cu, 11 Zn)
- 1 gram gold
- 0.09 gram master
22K Medium Solder, 880 Pt (917 Au, 4 Ag, 29 Cu, 50 Zn)
- 1 gram gold
- 0.09 gram master
22K Easy Solder, 810 Pt (917 Au, 10 Cu, 73 Zn)
- 1 gram gold
- 0.09 gram master
Master alloy recipes:
22 hard solder Master (506 Ag, 361 Cu, 133 Zn)
- 0.506 gram silver
- 0.361 gram copper
- 0.133 gram zinc
22 medium solder master (48 Ag, 357 Cu, 595 Zn)
- 0.048 gram silver
- 0.357 gram copper
- 0.595 gram zinc
22 easy solder master (120 Cu, 880 Zn)
- 0.12 gram copper
- 0.88 gram zinc
Thank you for all the recipes, but that is way beyond my capabilities right now. Rio Grande does have 22k gold plumb solder in hard, med, and easy. I might try fusing, but I think I will buy the solder too, just in case. I seem to be good at melting gold for some reason. Thanks again.
