Working safely

Jewelry Discussion
1

Was: WKM silver cleaning solution

I renamed the thread so that it reflects what we are discussing.

Hi Jeff,

I'm not only looking for safer alternatives of what's considered
the industry standard, but also thinking about our environment.

No argument from me there. It is an interesting problem which touches
many aspects of any fabrication process. If we are torch soldering,
as an example, we need the joint to be clean and kept clean while we
do the join. How we get there can be approached in many different
ways, 2 extremes could be 1) mechanically abrade to remove oxides and
sulfides and then degrease with a soap and use a substance like borax
to keep new oxides from forming during the soldering. 2) Use a very
strong aggressive flux and skip the cleaning steps and go directly to
the soldering.

Needless to say the choice is a personal one for the one man shop
and often made by accountants and process engineers in a
manufacturing facility. It really does come down to dollars and cents
for the manufacturer, Make 1 million widgets a year, save 10 cents in
labor and you are talking of one hundred thousand dollars profit made
or lost…

Being Green does cost money often and is a choice one has to make
often on a personal and on a professional level.

My suggestion for this thread would be, if people are interested, in
continuing it, would be to discuss alternative and hopefully safer
methods of doing what we do every day and maybe come up with some
good processes.

Kay

2

Sorry, but I am at a loss to see how the method 1 is more green than
method2. The flux of method 2 is going to be borax based and borax
as mined is not monominerallic so when you take into account the use
of soap, which causes algae blooms when in the watercourse after
treatment, is going to be less harmful and time consuming than
method 1" I clean up a joint prior to soldering but this is with
files, not soap. Now, your methods arent detrimental to the work done
but arent greener either. In what way are they safer and to whom or
what" You can look at the biochemical oxygen demand of method 1 and
make the decision that it is moreharmful then method 2 but some form
calorimetry would be needed to decide whether the soldering itself
gives you a saving if the joint is ultraclean. Nick Royall