Solder 'eating away' at the silver either side of the join?..

[FloWolF]

Soldering 2 pieces of square wire sterling together at the ends at about 30 or so degrees to each other, and after I finish and clean up the piece, there's now a 'hole' right in the inside corner where the silver wire has been eaten away coming into the joint - looks like a cartoon key-hole instead of a crisp angled or slightly over-filled corner, if you can visualise that.

Was using solder paste from Cookson, first joins with hard solder and second with medium solder - all 4 joins that I made showed the same issue to some extent - it really does look like the silver has been dissolved/etched out.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? I'm sure it's got to be me...

Thanks for any suggestions goodly peeps. Be well!

Shaun.

[caroleallen]

Are you able to show us a photo Shaun?

[Dennis]

Guessing without a pic, what you seem to describe is ghosting. This occurs when solder is not flowing, but you go on heating, so that it sinks into the silver.

It is possible that you are heating your paste too directly so that it becomes de-natured before it can flow as intended. Then the resulting useless ash sinks in and leaves a gap.

I only use strip solder, myself, but as a beginner experienced this with pallions too. Dennis.

[Wallace]

happens with flux glassing over too

[FloWolF]

Dennis, Wallace - you could be right - I was struggling to both see what was going on and to heat the piece where I wanted it, and since it did eventually melt and flow I may not have noticed I'd overheated the piece and the solder - the light is difficult in my workshop at the moment is my excuse!

Carole - no photos I'm afraid - I managed to make the piece usable, then stupidly I held it in angled self closing tweezers before soldering it to the next piece (ring band), and soon as it got hot enough for the medium solder to melt, the piece collapsed and crumbled under the pressure of the tweezers - I've done this or similar enough times in the past to have known better too!

I'll be back at the bench later and already cut 4 more pieces for the feature and will have another go taking far more care with the heating - I've no material left after this if I ruin it again - wish me luck!

Thanks again folks, be well ',;~}~

Shaun.

[CJ57]

The medium solder isn't a great idea, hardly any of us use it as it doesn't flow well. Use hard as much as possible and then easy for the last solder. If you can't get your solder to flow use a pick or you can make one from heavy binding wire just to pull the solder along, occasionally it gets stuck in a bubble and if you are soldering a long seam it does no harm to give it a bit of help

[FloWolF]

The medium solder isn't a great idea, hardly any of us use it as it doesn't flow well. Use hard as much as possible and then easy for the last solder. If you can't get your solder to flow use a pick or you can make one from heavy binding wire just to pull the solder along, occasionally it gets stuck in a bubble and if you are soldering a long seam it does no harm to give it a bit of help

Hi Caroline thnaks for the reply - I've now got extra easy, easy, and medium in solid strip, medium in paste, and most recently hard in paste too, and it was the hard paste that gave me most trouble on the piece in question, but I have had more trouble in the past with the medium paste and not flowing I agree.

I have a solder pick I made out of a strip of Ti sheet and I make good use of it - whenever I have the lit torch in one hand, invariably I have the pick or occasionally the tweezers in the other hand ',;~}~

I re-made the piece yesterday and actually managed to complete the building of the ring and it only took me a couple of hours, and everything went smoothly - the feature itself is made of 4 22mm lengths of 1mm square sterling wire each shaped into an uneven 'S' then 2 wire pieces join together at each end to make a shape similar to the 'filigree wave' pendant I posted here recently, the second 2 pieces only fastened at one end and then the two 'waves' are interwoven, before the other 'wave' is closed up - I made all 4 joins in hard solder using the paste in this case but I put the paste underneath the silver this last time and heated from on top - the joins formed without any eating away at the silver this time.

To lock the inter-woven shapes together I used 4 pallions of medium solder strip placed where the square wires crossed each other and it flowed perfectly, and I managed to use pallions of the medium strip again rather than an easy, to solder the feature to the ring band (with an excess to create a strong 'fillet' joint I could clean up later), and again that went smoothly also (too as-well) - I protected the joints on the feature with the heat guard paste from Cookson and although I know it's not really for this kind of job (where heat conduction is a possible issue) it seemed to protect all the joints on the feature from melting, or even just getting over-hot and showing up again - it kept the direct heat of the flame away from where I didn't want it.

- I really think Dennis nailed it again with my torch technique (he and I had this conversation previously when I was struggling with a solder paste issue) - I needed to be paying much more attention and taking greater care with the direction(s) and intensity of the torch heat, especially with the paste solders!

As usual, just slowwwwing right down and paying much closer attention, actually speeded up and generally improved the whole process.

Will put a picture up of the assembled (but not yet 'finished') ring shortly to try and make some sense of what I'm describing above lol!

Thanks again Caroline ',;~}~

Shaun.

[FloWolF]

Couple of photos of the assembled ring:






With the previous 'build' of the feature (for want of another word lol), it was the inside of each 'S' end/point that had etched out into a 'keyhole' shape instead of a crisp 'V'.

As you can see that didn't happen this time heheheh... phew!

Just needs a little more gentle knocking into shape with the soft mallets, bit more filing/abrasive work, then a good final polish and it should be good to go! - It's a paid commission for a friend so I really hope she likes it ',;~}~

Cheers again folks - the help from this forum has been invaluable.

Shaun.

[enigma]

Looks great Shaun! No easy task either by the look of it.
I would definitely get some hard solder strip if I were you, I like mine much better than paste for 90% of jobs now.

[FloWolF]

Looks great Shaun! No easy task either by the look of it.
I would definitely get some hard solder strip if I were you, I like mine much better than paste for 90% of jobs now.

Thanks Sarah - only took me 3 goes to get it right heheheh! ',;~}~

I wanted some strip as well as the paste, but only had enough for one or the other at the time, and I wanted the paste for some specific tasks like consolidating the braided bands I make - hard to put tiny pallions at every point the wires cross/touch and much easier (for me anyway) to just dot a tiny bit of paste right in there at each position, flip the piece over and heat until it flows.

Soon as I get chance (money-wise! Just too broke ATM!) though I'll get me some hard solder strip too, and also some 'easy' grade paste then I'll have more or less the full collection to choose from in both forms - that way I can at least choose exactly what to make a mess with ',;~}~

Cheers!

Shaun.