Soldering a heavy ring

[Figgypud]

Good evening all. I hope someone can help me with this - please! I am soldering the joint on a heavy silver ring. I have sawn through the joint a couple of times to ensure a really good close fit, hammered it tight and checked against the light to ensure it is really tight. But - when I heat up the ring, the joint is opening up. (I should say that the silver ring has a band of very thin copper fused with silver running round the outside, that was pre-soldered to the silver before it was bent into a ring, however it is very thin and I don't think it can be pulling apart the heavy silver). Any ideas please?

[Goldsmith]

Use binding wire around the ring to keep it closed when heating for soldering.

[Figgypud]

Thank you. I will give it a go.

[susieq]

Figgy - I hope that by now with Goldsmith's advice you have successfully soldered your ring.

This said I also often find that my ring/bangle seams open up initially BUT if I keep heating gently then they will re-close. Personally I hate using binding wire - especially for bangles as I can't get the darn stuff tight enough. I know the theory, it's the practice that defeats me. Instead i was advised to keep the join at the front and heat gently playing the flame to the back of the ring/bangle thereby transferring the heat more gently to the front to dry up the flux and stop the pallion of solder from jumping around. It's at this stage that if it's going to and it often does, a small gap annoyingly opens up, but then as I keep heating the metal at the back and up the sides towards the front (but not at the front) the gap then closes itself back up. I have no idea why this happens, I only know that it usually does. May be worth a try if you're still having problems.

Susie

[CJ57]

Hi Susie, have you tried 2 twists in your binding wire, not only the main twist but opposite side either leave enough wire to do a full turn or you can do diagonal twists at intervals with your pliers to tighten the tension. Til your joint is tight?

[susieq]

Hi Caroline - yes I have tried the opposing twists and have even managed to break the binding wire twisting it too tightly, although I think on that occasion my problem was more to do with trying to force together a poor join. I now know time spent getting a good join is never time wasted.

I also find, particularly with larger pieces such as bangles, that if after getting a good join I then anneal the piece, quench, pickle, rinse and then set up for soldering, that any gap which appears as I heat will close up satisfyingly before the soldering temperature is reached.

As I solder more complicated things then I'll probably end up re-acquainting myself with binding wire at some point.

Oh - and I also learned never put cheap binding wire in the pickle. I only did that once in class. I was not popular.

[CJ57]

Oh I don't know pink is maybe in this year, yes we have all put binding wire in the pickle in our rush I mostly use the heavy iron wire which tends not to break like the finer stuff, I wouldn't be without but it's what you are used to

[Edhelien]

This is happening because copper and silver have different thermal expansion. I do lot of mixed metal rings and they all need binding wire.