Soldering with Hard Solder

[rockshelley]

Hi everyone...I was wondering if anyone could provide advice on soldering with hard silver solder. This is not for a project that I am currently working on but I continually have this issue when working with hard solder.

I usually use medium solder in wire form and I am either soldering copper or sterling silver. I make sure that the area is perfectly cleaned and free from oils or firescale or dirt, brush on some handy flux, stick a little piece of cleaned solder into the flux and then proceed to heat it up with the torch. Sometimes the solder moves because of the flux but it always melts and flows the way I want it.

Enter Hard solder in sheet form...I bought some of this because I was making a ring and wanted it to be very sturdy and the store didn't have wire solder at the time. I follow all of the same staps but no matter what I do...I can not get the solder to flow. I melted my ring without making the solder flow and had to buy new supplies to start over.

Does anyone have insight into what I might be doing wrong?

Rock Shelley

[CJ57]

I have no idea Shelley, very few people here like medium solder for just those reasons and prefer to use hard and then easy if it's a bigger job. It sounds as if you are doing all the right things.
The only thing I would add is I always flux the pallion of solder as well as the metal to be soldered to. If you heat up the piece until the flux is a bit sticky then add the fluxed solder pallion it should stay in place better too. Maybe someone else will have an idea!

[susieq]

Hi Shelley - not used the sheet hard solder but I do use strip hard solder which I thin first by putting through the rolling mill a few times - if you don't have a rolling mill, then it can be hammered to make it thinner. I do find I need to clean it quite carefully afterwards though otherwise I can have problems getting the flux to stick to it.

If the piece is melting before the solder is flowing then you could be heating the piece up too quickly which in turn can cause the flux to burn away before it's done it's job of allowing the solder to flow.

When I'm having trouble getting solder to flow and I think I'm in danger of melting the piece, then I'll stop, quench, pickle, rinse, sigh and start again.

Hopefully others will be along soon with some more helpful suggestions.

Susie

[Aurarius]

Shelley, can you give us a link to the hard solder you're using? If you've never got it to flow even with sufficient heat to melt your piece the question arises whether it is in fact solder.

[Dennis]

Hard solder needs way more heat to get it to flow, and the heat needs to be applied at a point opposite the joint at first, so that the whole of the ring reaches soldering temperature.

Against all your intuition, this problem most often arises if your torch is too small, so that turning it up high with a fierce hissing flame, it simply melts the part of the ring its directed at, but never heats the whole thing enough.

Remedy: buy a bigger torch, use two small torches together, one in each hand, or be content with a lower melting solder.

However, as Aurarius has said, the sheet might not be solder at all, because it normally comes as wire or strip. Dennis.

[CJ57]

Shelley, can you give us a link to the hard solder you're using? If you've never got it to flow even with sufficient heat to melt your piece the question arises whether it is in fact solder.

I had wondered about that as well as I've only seen Gold solder sold that way, however I think Shelley is in Canada so it's maybe sold there

[rockshelley]

I actually tried about 5 times on the first ring and the hard solder with no success so on the 6th time I went a little nuts and melted the metal a little bit on purpose because I was a tiny bit mad...haha...well I eventually got it to work with new silver and medium solder but I will definitely try thinning it out before use next time. Thanks very much for the tip :)

Also, I won't be able to post a link to the solder because I bought it at a local small jewelry supply shop. They don't have a website and their solder comes out of a plastic container and they cut the amount you want and put it in a little plastic baggie....so actually it is a possibility that the solder is not really solder. I had considered that but I have no way to know for certain since it didn't come in a package. I might have to buy some from a more reputable source with proper package labeling and give it a try some time.

Also, I have been using a hardware store propane torch so that is probably part of my problem but in the absence of funds I have to make do. I will keep that in mind next time though because maybe I can somehow compensate for the lack of flame control on my torch.

Thank you everyone for your help :)

Rock Shelley

[Goldsmith]

Try melting the hard solder on a piece of scrap silver, just to confirm that it is actually a usable solder.

[rockshelley]

Thank you, I will try that and let everyone know the results.